do you give a ....?

when we dont like someones opinion or belief should we care?

on a trivial level:

if you create something such as a piece of art and someone criticizes it is it important to take their opinion into consideration?

on a sophisticated level:

if the foundation of your beliefs is at stake should you care? your philisophical core… individualistic beliefs, religious beliefs, social beliefs?

on a dangerous scale:

if youre a complete asshole can barely fit into society without scaring/endangering someone do you care what other people think? is it wrong to think that their opinions dont matter?

on a tame scale:

if you just simply dont get along over a minute detail in your life. color of curtains do you care about the other persons considerations?

Well, I don’t give a fuck about your post.

JUST kidding. It was there; I took it.

Isn’t the alternative not to listen to anyone? Might miss some useful data. Didn’t you post with the intention of getting a response?

Okay - tell Uncle Fausty.

What happened?

What did they do to you?

Oh Jesus, of course we shouldn’t care. It probably will because we humans be a competative species but oh well…

I’d say our caring about what others thinks is akin to sliding a guitar pick up and down the solipsism string.

Most of our lives are a sporadic solo to one degree or another.

Hendrix baby.

Jimmy Page.

Just considered this:

In arguing our beleifs, we’re perhaps more likely to be proving these things to ourselves rather than other people…

We should care. i’ll exaplain some other time.

Why care about the opinions or beliefs that others hold?

For better and for worse we are all in this thing together. Beliefs and opinions help us to connect together and they help us to break those connections apart. Ideas coordinate bodies together. A collective may be more easily be able to do what a single unit would find more difficult. Likewise a single unit can more easily do some things that a collective cannot as easily accomplish.

Our coordination between bodies can be rather loose. Do don’t have to share too many different opinions and beliefs to accomplish a single goal.

A poet writes for an audience not for himself.

Not necessarily, Duder. Emily Dickenson never thought anyone would read many of the poems she wrote.

In response to Xander, that’s all well and good in a social sense, but on a personal subjective level it’s a differant story…

This is a question of filtering data.
Be very selective in who you listen to and what you expose your mind to.

You should care if what they are criticizing has to do with the skills in which you employed to achieve an aesthetic result, your technique. You should not give a fuck if they criticize your creation.

If you eliminate the social context then how does the question of caring about the opinions and beliefs of others make any kind of sense? That you are aware of the opinions and beliefs of others indicates that you are already inside of some kind of social context.

oy. i’m too late. this seems like the kind of thing i’d want to write.
i cant really do better than this.

looks like everyone else already posted all the nessecarys… :blush:

I’m not talking about elimenating the social sense, Xander. A sense of the social is necessary to a balenced individual; it’s required to maintain empathy for others and, conversely, empathy for self.

The question was “when we dont like someone’s opinion or belief should we care?” and I don’t think that has anything to do with the social sense. If the question was about when we don’t like someone’s actions, that’s a totally differant story; then they’re affecting the objective world, the world we both share and then it’s my business. Of course, much of the time people with dangerous enough opinions will commit dangerous enough actions; so, I guess, yes, often it is necessary to care when someone else’s belief crosses your own, but only in as a reflection of their actions.

Then again, if your goal in life is to change the hearts and minds of others, like say Jesus or Bhudda or Zarathustra then it’s a somewhat differant story I suppose, but that’s out of your own need, not an attempt at rationalization like that whole paragraph above.

That’s not a bad thing at all however, often it is very necessary to act irrationally; call it “the will” or “the holy spirit” or whatever. We all have to be here debating for some reason… I guess I just contradicted myself. Oh well :slight_smile:

so basically youre saying judge people by their actions not their thoughts? id ask if words count as actions but youll probably say yes so ill just skip that. so the only time you shouldnt care about what other people are doing or when people are criticizing you is when your belief or the belief of others is never communicated and basically doesnt exist in any realistic sense?

whats the value of an unspoken unacted belief? is it even possible to harbor such a belief? i dont personally think so.

debating this is kind of trivial i think. but i touched on it none the less.

when your proving things to yourself via debating what its purpose? is it to further your intentions? arent everyones intentions on some level social? unless theyre suicidal or severly reclusive which is extremely rare and usually considered mental illnesses.

or how about this angle… whats the point of thinking anything if youre not sharing it with someone or something else? survival doesnt require philisophical thoughts. animals dont have these problems of socializing with complex communications (which is what i attribute all misinterpretations and thus conflict to… complexity). they know… growling means fuck off. fangs mean fuck off. flashing the goods means sex. thats all you need to know. yet we insist on so much more.

for the sake of self esteem yes socializing and criticism needs to be kept under an emotional control as a defense against stress. but for other reasons is that what we need to be doing? self esteem is also boosted by dunking weaker peoples heads in toilets thats not always the desired result of life though. i suppose defining what the purpose of communicating is in any given context is important if thats even possible.

we dont always talk to trade information or to make a plan of action. a lot of it is to make bonds and connections so i guess depending on the situation. i want to focus on the socialization aspect though. the making bonds part. the other aspect is easier. when opinions clash and bond making faces bond destruction.

like we have our philisophical opinions we pretend to live by and to some extent we all do. in the end we can possibly fundamentally disagree on something and we blow it out of proportion and accuse the other person of basically risking the sanctity of all thats holy. we can argue to the end of time on certain things like theology. colors of the drapes. music/art tastes. humor/linguistic styles of communicating. in the end i have no idea whos right on certain topics. we can attribute each others beleifs to their rearing and genetic disposition or whatever but the conflict… like… what the hell is the point of having beliefs when they make conflict? they turn potentially beautiful things into war… literally.

as i said in the other post its almost like we have an inability to communicate information effectively on certain topics and get held up in this vast amount of bullshit.

What builds self esteem is victory.

Victory can be anything from the defeat or the healing and salvation of another man. One victory can be the opposite effect of the other. Absolutely subjective.

I’ve met some people who synthesized agreement about almost everything. Social chemelions. It feels “soulless” to me, but some people are capable of it…

SINNNERRRR!!! UNCLEEEAN!

god is all-mighty, he can speek for himself. Why would a human need to try to talk for him?

White drapes for all!!!

Disco + Picaso.

wel man I dno abt U bt I got tel stylez wit mah communi.

I am.

That’s why I said:
“Don’t die for or fight for the truth.”
^
And then everybody disagrees with me.
But you know I’m right.

I blame it on the hustling bitch wholes of mass media!
Too much social competition & mind control poop.

so the point of your response “dont die for or fight for the truth”?

i totally agree.

yesterday i realized the best way i could explain what i wanted to ask is by asking what the point of trying to achieve a healthy lifestyle is. a perfectly healthy lifestyle one where you live exponentially long periods of time in a youthful state is totally impossible. trying to acheive mental perfection is the same thing. its impossible to do everything right, to know everything and to answer all questions in an efficient and productive manner. everything dies and every product of our existence will be wiped from the universe in due time.

its life and let live all over again. still years after the idea has been invented people are incapable of doing it. yet there is always the urge to be right. stupid humans.

cba,

Why not just consider other people and their opinions simply as circumstances in this world we all have to navigate. I mean, imagine the following question: “Should I care if a giant rock is falling towards my head?” Well, given that information, that this rock is falling towards my head, I conclude certain things, such as: I will be either in alot of pain or dead if the current state of affairs does not change. I may also use my imagination to attempt to predict a plan of action that would sufficiently change the state of affairs in my favor. Than I may enact whichever plan I decided on. Bassicly, the original given information was somehow implimented by me, and thus it can be said that I care about it. Or, upon aknowledging the information, I could have decided: “I dont care” which I imagine would mean that that information is not to be implimented by me.

So, now, the same applies to humans. A human attempting to comunicate to you is information. Every circumstance, actually every percieved moment is always new information. On this fundamental level, there is no diffirence between a person talking to you and a rock falling towards your head or a wind blowing in your face… or any other set of percieved, emperical data. When a person tells you something, you consider the consequences of this data. You attempt to analyze the meaning behind the sounds, you maybe attempt to predict intentions or feelings, and you may choose to act on this information.

So what is the deciding factor in wheather or not to care? Consequence. Upon consideration of the consequences of a certain piece or set of data, you decide wheather or not to care. If that rock that was falling was falling 50 feet away from you onto soft grass, than maybe you would conclude that that consequence is unimportant to you, and you may say: “I dont care about that rock falling 50 feet away from me” in that you will not impliment this information. Yet if that rock was falling exactly 1 foot to the right of you, you might understand that moving to the right one foot will yield unpleasent consequences, so you conclude that you should not move to your right. Thus, you do care that the rock is falling, because that information has been implimented. The same, only a probably a much more involved analysis occurs when interacting with other people. You must consider the consequences of what they say and the consequences of certain actions you may take. You may for some reason decide to tell them to “fuck off” which may lead them to pull out a gun and shoot you. If these are circumstances you would like to avoid, and you knew this was a potential consequence of your actions, than… I would assume there must have been an alterior motive, or maybe in that moment you did not use a rational analysis of the situation but acted on emotion.

Anyways, im getting into needless details. The point is humans are a bundle of consequences as far as I am concerned when considering them. They are a circumstance in the world that a rational being would be wise to consider. I cannot tell you in general wheather or not you should care about what people say. According to my experience when people tell me things this information is very often extremely consequential. Thus in most cases I care, because I forsee consequences that are important to me from this information and thus I impliment it. But then again, in some cases, like my little 10 year old cousin, I have come to conclude that the great majority of what he says is inconsequential to me. And thus I often dont care about what he says. I would only advise you to keep an open mind and dont adhere to any general rules too strictly. If I adopted the general rule that I shouldnt care what my 10 year old cousin has to say, than I could easily run into a boy who cried wolf situation… wherein he says something that actually IS consequential but I dont care…

Thats all from me, would love to hear a response. Thanks. :slight_smile: