Why, when you visit various Philosophy Forums you skim through the threads and think they are relatively dull?
Intellectually dull.
This, I think, is partly due to fear. For example, on various Philosophy Forums people are afraid, afraid of being thought not serious enough, not academically capable enough, but what is even more predominate is the fear of being ridiculed.
People are also afraid of what they say on the internet, “someone may be out to get you”, because of what or how you said it and because of these various reasons people are playing it safe. Very few dare to be provocative.
So what is happening on these Forums? Fear is producing self censorship. Timidity and lifelessness. Philosophy is being strangled by the few who deem it their right to ridicule or dictate how one should or can express themselves.
with some people fear, and any other psychological state is very much of an issue of degree. thefear in most cases derives not unly from X the unknown , but from dynamic elements related to cognitive dissonance. The external x, of the unknown cuts both ways, what the individual, and society knws of x’s onw stnce on matters of relative importance.
Under an authorial government, secrecy was vital to
one’ survival. For ‘old guard’, these types of states
had long lasting psychological effects in terms of the reality of possible exposure of released data. Granted, the internet has released and neutalized
some of these fears, others have sufaced, equally, or
even more excruciatingly.
The traces of elements of fear which have
remained, related the degree by which the cognitive
dissonance has or, has not cohered, in direct propotion to the depth of which denial has submerged it into the sub-conscious.
Thus, some fears become totally sunk in an inaccessible depth of the unknown. They may
become that threatening. Their relation at that level, is at the point to which their phenomenal world has been reduced. The further reduced, the more
generally frightful it becomes to identify the sources
of confusion and dread. Total immersion iinto the unconscious would lead back to the most general of existential fears, the mis-appropirated childhood
trauma, which has or has not variously disabled or
enhanced the sub-sequent ‘philosopical’*outlook of that person.
*By ‘philosophical’ i mean the way of orienting or
adjusting to the world, in a general sense, the way
an existential analyst would define the peimeters of the effects of childhood trauma.
That’s because the people posting have dull thoughts.
Eliminating fear is going to eliminate caution, or the need to focus to be accurate (to limit the risk/cost).
Take out the fear factor, or reduce it, and thoughts are more likely to take the most comfortable approach, an emotionally satisfying one…
You could say, it is the lack of fear, coupled with low-risk environments (such as the internet) that causes mental retardation, dull thoughts, or whatever.
Now let’s imagine, there’s a big bad wolf in the room and a few men are stuck in the room with him.
You act on impulse, dead.
You mis-read, mis-interpret the animal, and act, DEAD!
Who is most likely to come out? The smartest males.
Who is most likely to die, or who is most likely to stay inside, frozen like a deer? The least focused, emotionally-driven males AND the less intelligent.
It is within a high-risk environment that we are able to bring out the best.
Where we are able to witness each male’s nature in a particular circumstance.
If anything, philosophy forums need a big bad wolf in the room.
That’s what separates philosophers from mere linguists, the later is akin to mind games, the former to real explorers; it takes a thinker thriugh and through to garner The Big Bad Wolf, once he is exposed there. To kiddies, You wouldn’t have the heart
It is not fear that held back the typing of most indivuals, but the realisation that what they wanted to talk about had already been written down by the greatest writers and thinking of thousands of years of human history. And instead of writing some stupid topic, they picked up books that broadened their horizon and then they came back and they discussed the content of those books and those topics were magnificent to behold.
False hope gathers as well. The positive side of the fear is that it destroys false hopes forcing the individuals to use their mental strength to gather their minds. The negative side is that too much fear destroys true hopes.
No offense, Crow, but that is hardly a suitable metaphor for a philosophy forum. The biggest brain in this place would shit his pants in a room with a real big bad wolf… and a big brain hardly counts as a big bad wolf in a philosophy forum. The only thing ‘big’ about a guy like that would be his pocket protector.
The insecure, and not the confident, are only capable of being arrogant.
The confident are not ignorant, the insecure, always are and will be.
So what fear does on philosophy forums is, it inhibits the insecure from posting, who are ignorant (intellectually dull) anyway.
However, it does not inhibit all the insecure types. Whom does it not inhibit? The arrogant type.
Otherwise, what’s left is the confident and intelligent, to whom, the insecure naturally feel threatened by.
Whether it is false hope or false fear is irrelevant to the effects upon the mind. Even false hope calms and allows for more contemplative thought as well as [false] confidence such that the person is less likely to presumptuously attack potential critics. Because he is less defensive in his confidence, he is more likely to actually consider the criticisms of his thoughts.
That is certainly true.
Confident = being certain of one’s accuracy. Arrogant = believing that anyone should care merely because it was he who said it.
More often it is simple hubris = thinking that his thoughts are important to the world.
It is relevant because it is precisely false hope that leads to arrogance. False hope is a consequence of addiction to certainty, of inability to endure uncertainty.
It’s through mental strength that one should “calm” one’s mind, not through false hope. Hope should be a consequence, not a given.
Ever watched Daylight starring Stalone? It was airing on TV the other day . . . notice how he remains calm even when he has absolutely no idea what to do next? That’s mental strength. Notice how everyone is panicky the moment they realize he has no solution? That’s mental weakness and addiction to certainty. They are in need of hope – the needy ones – of promise, of anything that will put their anarchy of the mind, what we call panic, under control.
Talk philosophy to most people not in an on-line context, and you’ll usually get a good conversation. You would think that loads of people would come here, but come to philosophy forums and you’ll get ridiculed or people think they will.
