I wonder….how her assessment of him as not being “boyfriend material†would alter if he were indifferent and generally not in need of her as either a sexual partner or a personality that lent him support and self-esteem.
I suspect, she’d be all over him taking his aloofness and disinterest as a sign of his superiority and, therefore, proof of his value as a desirable ‘step upwards’ in her social status, but also as an ego boost of being with someone she secretly feels she doesn’t deserve.
As things stand, she fears she does deserve him, but cannot bring herself to accept this self-disparaging point of view, since she so desperately wants to deserve more…and so she’s torn between her subconscious opinion of herself and her conscious avoidance of said opinion, resulting in ambivalence.
His attentions and his interests only reinforce his undesirability, because they point out his dependence on her – who she, like most women, feels so negatively about and so takes any interest in her as a sign of weakness or inferiority – and exposes his lack of alternatives, which point to a general assessment of him as a desirable mate.
Resources and access or control over them is a sexual aphrodisiac for females. The more options a male has, or pretends to have, through symbolisms such as peacock feathers or….sports cars, the more a woman is attracted to him, often subconsciously, being unable to explain why or how, but just knowing that she feels it and that she must follow her feelings.
Sexual options are mostly expressed through indifference - most commonly interpreted and called confidence – where a male shows minimal interest in the female herself, since he has access to a variety of other females, and only shows enough interest as to establish a desire to procreate or participate in sexual activities with her.
Excessive interest exposes dependence on a particular female and is most commonly referred to as ‘desperation’ becoming a symbol of the males lack of options.
You see for women, who know themselves and their own sex so intimately, any exaggerated show of interests is illogical. A man who places her on a pedestal reveals his either complete ignorance of her and her value (as she assesses it) or an overestimation of it, or an even lesser self-assessment on his part that would consider her a prize worth sacrificing for and obsessing over.
For a woman, being unable to create and to overcome her own nature on her own, a man represents the potential for ascension beyond her limiting being, intellect and social/economical status – she must feel ‘completed’ by the male. She feels the most fulfilled when giving her self to a male which she deems superior to her, in accordance with her judgments of both him and herself and in accordance to the socio-economic and cultural prejudices as they have been formed through indoctrination. She wants to be enlarged, literally and figuratively, by a man where her own self-esteem and awareness is expanded by the relationship.
Her orgasm is directly linked to how the male treats her and what mythological constructs he personifies and convinces her that he possesses, often culminating in how he treats her during intercourse where she wants to be treated in the exact manner she feels and, secretly thinks, she deserves.
For a man a relationship is much simpler and direct - A means to an end.
With Feminization, this feminine characteristic of being defined by relationships and your place within them is becoming, more and more, a male characteristic.
So how many lonely nights have you spent analyzing this? I mean… you must understand that women are not (one singular) creature who all think the same way, react in unison, are out to get any poor unsuspecting man in a quest to f*k him up just for kicks sake. We are all different… we vary in personality as we vary in bra size. I am continuously amazed in your need to see us not only as “one very maniuplative woman” but also never as unique individuals with unique ideas… I am not here to do therapy or analyze your issues, but (and I ask this with the greatest respect) … have you been hurt? Abused? Are you aware of your constant prejudice towards women? We are not out to get you ALL… trust me.
I see it like this: ET is a young thing who saw something in a young guy who initially seemed nice. He shows her attention… but from the beginning she really isn’t attracted to him fully, but he is so nice that she thinks “what the hell” - I will give him a chance. In a very short period of time he is overbearing, far too attentive, and (shit) he kisses like a toad – so she is over it. (him). This is a classic case. Some men will always see women as slime … they automatically see women as a users with intentions that they are sinister. Detrop (and his follower puppies (like dearest Ad), did the same and assume that women are out to get you.
As a woman who has been stalked by enough men to sink a ship — I GET IT, I am here to tell you… ET is a nice girl. She does not have ulterior motives and did not lead him on. She was trying him out for size for one day and BAM - she is a nice looking girl and the guy (who , by the way has serious issues) is all over her like a cheap suit. He is the one with the problem.
All women are not out to screw over guys. Some are actually just trying to make their way and find someone to love. Stop being so damn cynical and give her a break. Just because you had women in your life who (obviously) ran you into the ground does not mean that ET is one of these women.
Don’t bring your baggage here and make this young sweet thing feel bad. This guy is a loser and she needs to dump his ass. Quit making her the focus of this and be more supportive. Please realize that many women are just as sensitive and loving as you may be… it isn’t all about men being these pathetic victims and women being manipulative bitches. Some of us actually have kind hearts.
It took me almost 15 minutes. Hardly a lonely nights work.
I haven’t felt lonely in over a year.
I’m too fascinating to become lonely.
Where did I say this?
Or was this part of the undertone?
I know the notion of each and every one being so unique as to not be reducible to a few behavioral traits and psychological dispositions, satisfies your sense of free-will, but, unfortunately, as with every other species, human behavior can be reduced and generalized down to a few common rules and motivations.
If we can categorize other species and study their behaviors, we can certainly do the same with our own.
True, reason can overcome instinctual predictability, yet women, by and all, show so very little ability in this area as to make the point moot.
It’s ironic that the more women try to prove how equal they are to men, intellectually, the more they use arguments and methods that prove the opposite.
Not only the ancient Greeks but many others have commented on the instinctual nature of females. I guess they can all be accused of being “hurt†or of suffering from some kind of psychological ailment that expresses itself in misogyny, but we can make similar assumptions about every opinion ever expressed on any subject.
Give me a perspective and I can induce and deduce a psychological framework that produced it. That’s easy.
Being male, myself, I am aware of male psychology and motives and find little to comment upon since I know the subject intimately.
Women are an alien element and so I find myself wanting to explore and know it, beyond its pretences and masks.
And yet, you all fall within certain parameters of …size.
Your ‘variations’ are limited and not as broad as you would like to believe.
Human nature is predictable. What, sometimes, surprises and strikes us as unique is when this nature is controlled or overcome with reason and due to environmental conditions.
Human beings are not as unique, as many want to think they are.
In fact, the more one believes (s)he is unique, the less (s)he is so.
It’s another one of those absurdities of life.
Where did I insinuate that she’s manipulative in this context?
I hardly think she knows what is going on to any degree that would make her consciously manipulative.
“Unique individuals�
Where?
There is no such thing.
Thank you for avoiding my obvious “issuesâ€, as I feel you should be grateful to me for avoiding yours, but …yes…I have been hurt…haven’t you?
I’ve also been bitten by a dog a few times. But I haven’t allowed these instances to affect my overall positive opinion of dogs.
I still think they are cute and fun and harmless and useful….just like women are.
Are you saying that interactions or any relationship, between two entities of whatever species, is ever governed by anything other than power balances and selfish reasons?
Maybe a little Sartre is in order.
My how “innocent’ we all are.
It’s our ignorance concerning our own actions that offers us the false impression that we lack motives.
I’d like to think that when I give a bum on the street a quarter that my motives are benign and selfless, yet, my better judgment knows that there is no gift without a return.
Ignorance is not proof of innocence. The most vile and disgusting acts are perpetrated by humans that know no better or who believe they are on the side of ‘good’.
His “issuesâ€, like mine, may be obvious to you, but I was analyzing her issues in relation to his.
Lest we forget that there are two sides to each story and we don’t make this guy out to be the ‘evil’ one with all the “issues†and her the damsel in distress.
She might be a “nice girlâ€, all things considered, but she cannot help but be a female with a feminine psychology, determined through ages of evolution and guided by environmental conditioning.
Let us not forget that physicality affects perspective, just like anything else and that if my “being hurt†by some woman and my gender makes you assume that I’m prejudiced against yours or wrong about this specific case then her environment and experiences have done no less to shape her dispositions and outlooks, just as his have shaped him.
It reminds me of the label often used to describe the 9/11 victims: innocent.
As if their actions never participated in creating the circumstances that lead to the suicide hijackers and they were just minding their own business, when they were attacked.
We can say that most of the victims were clueless and obtuse or uncaring but …innocent?
And, in my attempt to decipher the human condition, I am analyzing the methods and underlying forces participating in this search for ‘love’ and I’m exploring what this term means.
If being “cynical’ entails trying to express a perspective that is lost in all the naïve, ignorant, feel-good, Disneyworld, happy ending world of ours then I gladly wear the title and remind you of the actual roots of the word.
Give HER a break?
She’s here asking opinions on if or how she should dump this poor unsuspecting dolt, not knowing why she’s not attracted to him, when he’s so “nice†to her… and she’s the victim?
I’m here to explain why she finds him undesirable.
If you find my analysis disturbing then that’s your…issue.
I get it she’s a young, innocent, sweet thing and he’s a loser with issues…I can see the distinction clearly now.
My baggage, like yours, is not the subject here.
Whoever wants to post personal things looking for advice on public forums should expect nothing less than honesty.
Whoever brings their baggage and opens it publicly, asking for commentary shouldn’t cry ‘foul’ when what is said does not satisfy him/her.
The strategy of turning on the opinion-maker as a method of censoring commentary and retaining delusions and comfortable positions is one well known to me.
It rarely works.
It seems that the new method of preventing certain views from being expressed is alluding to the other’s sexuality or life or ‘baggage’, making it clear that diversion from an acceptable ‘norm’ will have repercussions.
I’m sure there are many of you.
But I’m not concerned with the 1% that are exceptions to a rule but I am more concerned with establishing a rule, to exempt them from, to begin with.
Tabula Rasa
Closer to a quarter page.
Advice?
Where did I give advice?
I’m out of the advice game.
Doesn’t pay.
Are you the Advice Permit Administrator?
I didn’t know I had to buy the privilege from you.
Have I ever told you what a nice guy you are?
So, well-adapted to modern living, so clean from prejudices and dysfunctions, you are.
You show such a desire to not hurt anyone in any way. No ulterior motives there…nothing but a clean conscience.
Such a desire to wipe away all disturbing and insulting elements from any opinion.
A regular knight you are.
Here we have associated the concept of free will with diversity which signifies divergence from necessary laws. Of course if the laws are necessary, than they can’t be diverged from, in which case there is no free will. Yet it would appear that these ‘laws’ frequently are diverged from - a fact which you acknowledge when you write…:
…but which you must ultimately deny, lest your supposedly universal laws should prove ‘flexible’ after all. And this is the implication behind your reasoning here - which becomes explicit further on in your post. It can be paraphrased thusly: “Putative cases of divergence from these behavioural laws are mere ‘illusions’, and there is a grand ‘veil’, a ‘play of appearances’ which covers over the ‘shadow world’ of capital ‘R’ Reality.” One example is to be found here:
In any case, we needn’t dwell on the concept of free-will. That the fact of divergence does not prove the existence of free-will, shows that in this situation it is probably a red-herring anyway, best left aside for another day.
What I am interested in is the mechanism of reduction you are using. For instance, it seems to follow from the general structure of your argument that ‘reason’ both is capable of overcoming ‘instinctual predictability’; and that, at the same time, this overcoming is ‘illusory’. If it is not illusory, than with what principle do you distinguish between it and other instances of ‘illusory’ behaviour, which are supposed to have succumb to the necessity of being reduced to the ‘underlying laws’ of human nature? And if it is illusory, then in what sense is it an ‘overcoming’ at all?
[size=75][I HEREBY STIPULATE THAT DETROP IS FORBIDDEN TO READ THIS PASSAGE][/size]
I will say that, yes. And whilst we’re relying on fashionable bastard-Hegelians to make our arguments for us, perhaps you would be humored if I were to speculate on the Christian-ressentiment origins of the master-slave dialectic itself. That is a tastily ironic thought, given the image you probably have of yourself.
Spinoza.
…
Probably the best aphorism to sum up your way of thinking, is to put a stick in a glass of water, and then accuse it of not really being straight. I can think of no quicker way of summing the whole thing up than that.
I can’t even fathom this kind of cynicism. Your ornery platitudes are sad to me. Life is such a beautiful thing and should be cherished and nurtured. What happened to the “Wandering” romantic in you? We (women AND men) are not one big ulterior motive. Please stop it.
I’m impotent, nice guy, not a eunuch.
Which means I might get a hard-on, at any moment.
You are soooooo NICE.
Bessy
I once saw a documentary on wild-dogs.
I watched them tear the underside of a wildebeest and eat its entrails while the thing was still standing.
They too were innocent. We cannot accuse them of cruelty - they do not share our human opinions about killing. They just do what they do in accordance with their nature.
And how cute they were, afterwards, when they fed their puppies with regurgitated meat.
Now I do believe most humans are just as innocent about their own actions. They just do what feels right, not knowing any other way or how it appears to someone else or what motives underly their actions and opinions… and not really caring.
They feel it to be right.
Now in this particular case, this guy’s problem is that he’s….nice.
The other things about him – him being a self-described bad kisser and a recovering drug-addict – are just details we use to justify her dissatisfaction with his niceness and exaggerated attentions.
It would have been interesting to study the effects on her if he weren’t as nice and he put her in her place every time she said something stupid and he showed only minimal interest in her as a person, expecting to be bought gifts instead of buying them for her – I say this because I’ve seen this in action - I bet she’d be leaving wet-stains everywhere she sat next to him.
And how easy it would be to play the nice guy here.
To allow you to believe whatever construct you’ve placed me in, hiding the parts that would shatter your illusions.
It’s interesting that we never really want to know the other; we want him/her to play the part we need them to play so that our lives make sense.
Intimacy is a game of discovering what parts of self to suppress and what parts to express, if and when our desire to be with someone is strong enough, and in turn of letting the other know our own limits so that we achieve a balance based on selective sharing.
It’s when, in time, the parts that were not shared start becoming apparent or when the suppression of self fatigues the psyche to the point where it lashes out in extremes, that the illusion of intimacy begins breaking down.
By then habituation makes us tolerate each other, just like you and your hubby, and other considerations force us to play a part, while secretly we dream of something else.
James No. 2
Not always illusions, but mostly yes.
Civility and civilization rests on very precarious balances. This is why we are often shocked by human cruelty and what constitutes, for us, unnatural, excessive behaviours. Reality surprises us when we’ve failed to fully appreciate it.
Divergence from the norm can be a mask worn due to changing environmental necessities or it could be the accumulated effects of specific forces on an individual that cause it to alter its original self.
Divergence is only remarkable when what it diverges from is fully appreciated so that it becomes comprehensible and necessary itself.
The rule only serves to accentuate our appreciation of the exceptions.
I need to know that leopards are mostly spotted to then appreciate the one that fails to meet this general characteristic of leopardness and attempt to explain why it is not so, in that particular case.
In behavior, I find, that the less one understands the underlying motives behind ones own behavior, the less (s)he is capable of diverging from it.
How can you alter what you do not acknowledge to be a pattern nor comprehend fully?
Furthermore, understanding is a form of alteration.
In general yes, human behaviours are cosmetic, at best, hiding the same old primitive behaviours behind civility and pretence.
Monogamy is an example of human hypocrisy.
It is an imposed standard, governed by moral imperatives necessitated by communal living and the need to integrate as many individuals, particularly males, into group dynamics resulting in harmony, yet it is contrary to human nature and so fails, repeatedly, to satisfy or to remain stable.
Even under the threat of death humans consistently indulge in sexual promiscuity. The urge is too powerful.
Its existence, as a memetic rule, has not had time to force an evolutionary alteration to ingrained, primitive sexual practices.
Monogamy exists, as a façade, hiding secret discontentment and desire, as the individual struggles to remain true, and therefore lost in the ‘theyness’ (Your favourite: Heidegger), to its environmental necessities as they are defined by moral and cultural standards, while inside another past imposes its own logic upon him/her.
Let me clarify then.
Reason is capable of altering ‘reality’ – or ‘reality’ as it is perceived – only when it is perceived and only as much as it is perceived.
How do we alter what we fail to become aware of or to understand?
Does an alcoholic control his addiction when he denies he has a problem?
I’m not totally convinced that human reason can ‘heal’ reality of its ills – in accordance with human interpretations of illness and health – as Socrates believed.
The problem of mind underlies my difficulties and so I cannot, with certainty, claim that the mind can go beyond its physical predispositions and limitations – perhaps the old dichotomy of mind/body is an outdated relic of the past.
I do believe that behind every action and thought lies a need (a necessity) and the mind is simply used to justify itself to the prevailing cultural norms or used to construct strategies of placating said needs.
Now, need can be and has often been controlled by the mind, to some extent. Ascetics routinely surpass their inclinations in an attempt to overcome their corporeal beings.
It is not surprising that most ascetics are male, because only in males has reason reached a sufficient level to attempt a behavioral alteration and only in males does the need to control or have power over Self (nature) correspond to male sexual instincts, whereas females are more inclined to belong and to lose themselves within nature or the group.
Here we see two different strategies of empowerment.
One is driven by the need to assimilate and control and dominate – a more Male/Hellenic predisposition – while the other is driven to be assimilated and become a part of and access power through association and participation and be assimilated – a more Female/Christian predisposition.
One is driven to alter what is into a more desirable form, while the second is driven to surrender to its ‘truth’ and learn to cope with what is undesirable in it.
It is evident that the psychology of surrendering to the flow and to Oneness and accepting ‘reality’ is one that has grown in popularity as choices diminish and spaces become smaller, necessitating a more docile non-confrontational human nature.
Overcoming is illusory when it is not accompanied by acknowledgment, understanding and humility.
When the mind is unable to comprehend or to accept its own self, then it is destined to remain a victim of it.
You cannot overcome what you’ve failed to fully appreciate or when you consistently choose to focus on the positive, flattering aspects of self.
You can speculate on what you think my “image of myself†is all you want.
It is interesting that Nietzsche was pretty well-off and relatively independent from the effects of herd psychology, so he could speak about the slave-master dialectic from the perspective of an uninvolved observer whose survival wasn’t dependant on it.
I guess you can pretend superiority when you’ve been ensured a non-slave status.
It would be interesting to imagine his opinions if he were born a day-laborer or if he were born in poverty where his survival was directly dependant on the very herd he despised and his options were limited by economic considerations.
Resentiment is unavoidable when one is forced into dependence. How one deals with it or overcomes it, is what characterizes nobility.
And what is a man with no ideals?
An animal.
So, I guess you disagree.
Is the stick really straight and if so what is this distorting element I place it in?
As an addition to the previous (Yes I know I’m long-winded – ironic considering how quiet I am in my real life or perhaps…not so ironic).
We forget that manipulation is existence. To exist is to manipulate your environment.
When you breathe you are manipulating the air around you.
When you move you are manipulating the space around you.
When we flirt we are manipulating the other into a positive assessment of us.
“Flirtation is a negotiation.†as some evolutionary psychologist once said.
When we pick up something we are manipulating it.
When we try to convince someone of something we are manipulating them into our perspective.
When we make someone laugh we’ve manipulated them into an absurdity.
We forget that existence is about control or attempting to control our environment using a multitude of strategies – some passive others more aggressive.
Perhaps the underlying motive is our desire to Be; to finally end this search for completion and find stability.
But manipulation has taken on negative connotations and we often use alternative words to describe it: Use, Control, Power, Own, Have, Want, Need, Convince, Seduce, and so on.
At their base all these words denote a manipulation, an attempt to control.
When we want someone to love us we want them to be positively inclined towards our well-being. In other words we want their choices and behaviors and opinions to be limited by the control of our being over them. We want our welfare to control their behavior.
But manipulation isn’t always a negative.
When someone tries to make us like them they are manipulating us.
But it is unthreatening and so we are not angered by it.
What makes a manipulation positive or negative is based on our judgment of cost.
When our acquiescence costs little or nothing, we are positively inclined towards it, when it costs a lot we feel threatened and negatively inclined.
In the thread a situation has been presented where an unknown male – we’ll have to take the authors word on it – is attempting to manipulate her into liking him.
If she subconsciously felt flattered or upraised by this, she would have no problem. Her problem begins because she feels threatened by it.
The threat is that this manipulation costs too much or demands a diminishment of self rather than an uplifting expansion of self, according to her judgment of both him and herself in relation to him.
This male’s attentions are unwanted because they do not promise a good enough reward for the price.
To fully appreciate what this means we need to analyze female and male sexual strategies as well as assess the environmental conditions that shape and define this interaction or negotiation.
Is this cynical or misogynistic?
Even these terms are defined by a cultural milieu with particular prejudices and interpretations.
I guess the easiest thing to have done would be what most did:
Simplify the issue, and offer socially acceptable commentary like:
“He’s a loser dump him. You can do better, dear.†which both flatters the author and avoids all side-matters.
Then the author would thank us all, having constructed the context in which only one possible solution can be given, and we all feel like we’ve done our social duty, by offering the expected answer to her and thusly retain her positive opinion of us.
A eunuch…if I had a eunuch, I’d keep wanting to see his empty scrotum and asking him to sing…then I’d complain that he didn’t sound like a castrato. He’d explain that he didn’t have his testes removed until after his voice changed…but I’d keep going on about it.
I’m not all that interested in wading through your life-philosophy at this point. Let’s stick with a narrow focus.
You know I don’t really see where these quantifiers are meant to get their empirical verification from. Probably if you think you need to drop the ‘mind/body’ distinction, I would also suggest re-evaluating the way in which you use the ‘inside/outside’ distinction, because right now it’s alllllllllllll fucked up. I would speculate that it is your theoretical presuppositions which inform your conclusion that such a large proportion of human behaviour, as you see it, must be ‘illusory’ in nature. All of your speculations about “the same old primitive behaviours”, and similar appeals to a ‘time now past’ speak to this being the case. Yet a typical metaphysical definition of humanity is that of the ‘rational animal’ - meaning that the ‘surface play’ of intersubjective communicative agreement, sociological identity construction etc, form an ‘essential’ part of human nature, rather than an ‘illusory’ afterthought that is tacked on to the ‘animal’ beneath. And there was never a time when this was not the case - an irrelevant point anyway, as I imagine your position can be articulated along a different trajectory than the mere chronological.
For instance, it might be said that there are certain motivations for human behaviour which subsist in duration whilst, above them, the surface play of ‘etiquette’ and ‘good manners’ changes with each season. This is a pretty straight-forward Social Darwinist position, though I prefer to think of people who espouse it as being ‘Hard Men’. Hard Men believe that life is hard and ruthless, in the same way that it is hard for flies, trees, and fish. They also believe that there aren’t really any such things as, for instance, hospitals, charity organisations, priesthoods etc - in the same way that these things don’t exist for flies, trees, and fish. Or at least they say that there shouldn’t be any of these things, because they interfere with the processes of natural selection - which in any case are necessary and can’t be interfered with. Or something like that.
Humorously then, as one philosopher observed, “the writings of the Darwinian Hard Men make up, not at all what you would have expected, a literature of the biology and natural history of our species, but a literature of moral and political exhortation instead.”
…
Now if you are tempted to conclude that reason itself is some kind of ‘illusion’, then you will have to redefine your definition of ‘animal’ as well, as the two are defined reciprocally. Either way, I see no room for any conceptual reduction here of the kind that you live and breath.
…
I think your definition of evolution is suitably narrow - if you made it any more inclusive, it would become vacuous, in the same way that your use of ‘manipulation’ is vacuous. But as it is, I think your narrow usage is also what skews your perspective here, at least as I see it. But then I consider this to be a problem with evolution itself. Your being in two minds about the ‘power of reason, or of the Mind’ is I think a pathology inherent to the discourse (of Darwinism and all of its memetic parasites) itself.
Or it could merely indicate that your reductive perspective is false.
Here I see good reason to agree with you when you say that the ‘mind/body’ distinction should be dropped. However this means dropping both terms in the original distinction, not just mind, as perhaps you are want to do.
In any case, you seem to have passed over the point of my question. If something is a law of human nature, then it cannot be ‘diverged’ from. Even the mechanism of self-awareness should not, theoretically, be capable of any more than to allow you to better understand the ‘passing show’ taking place before your eyes, so to speak. If you think that self-awareness gives you a greater causal power, then it would seem to me that you are inventing a new species at this point - with new, necessary laws, etc etc. It would say that every human who diligently studies the Origin of Species has their power to ‘metamorphize’ into Overmen triggered. But no, I still think there is a conceptual contradiction here.
However, lest you should feel obliged to deny the existence of the mind at this point, that it should not interfere with your theory, allow me to articulate an alternative first… What I propose is that there are a greater number of laws governing human behaviour, and that it does not make any sense to say that some forms of behaviour are ‘illusory’, whereas some are ‘natural’. Probably your inside/outside distinction is responsible for creating this curfuffle also.
Well come on Satyr… it’s a fucking aphorism, for Christ’s sake. Here is one indicative way to read it:
(1) The stick is straight and bent: the optical illusion is created not by placing the stick in water, but by the effect created between the two elements when the stick is placed in both simultaneously. Probably the aphorism is misunderstood unless this is kept in mind. I am not simply reversing the terms of your understanding, by saying that the ‘essence’ of human nature is made up of opposing qualities to the ones you stipulate - I am saying that there is no clear chronological ordering here, or no relevant or important chronological ordering - in just the same way that we don’t call being an adult an ‘illusion’ grafted onto the reality of childhood: even though, under duress, adults will sometimes result to child-like behaviour. The impetus for distinguishing between illusion and reality here does not derive from empirical but rather from metaphysical considerations.
On the other hand, I am asserting that there is nothing more ‘illusory’ about the straight half of the stick, then about the ‘bent’ half.
Self awareness is such that as you get closer to the whole, you are actually strippping away ‘the show’. The natural instinct to withdrawl your hand from a heat source is the same as the ‘illusionary’ instinct to act a certain way around your in laws. They both derive from the same focal point, and that is the communication between the observer and the potential.
So for example I buy into the big bang theory, combined with a panpsychism in which things for the most part simply happened to come together in various mostly unconscious ways. Think of it as a rock’s parts watching itself be a rock; those parts are mostly carbon and silicon or whatever so they simply ‘are’ for the most part. Now… when we get to a human we see that it’s a process in which its parts include eyes, neurochemicals etc. The uniform unconsciousness is in fact everywhere, but we deceive ourself almost from the start. It is because of the very fact that we have eyes and other sense organs that we believe we are original and singular entities. We are not. We are all observers, and as thus can alter the reality that we are looking at, and hence creating. We are not the mind nor the body, but rather the force behind potential for matter - God, in some circles.
In terms of Satyr’s ‘illusionary’ intuitions, these can be things such as civility, social norms, etc. But the primitive actions he speaks of relate directly back to our original conception of the potentiality that came with the Big Bang, and thus the creation of that said potential that we see in things like physics and chemistry. Now through Quantum we are beginning to find ourselves more as an evolutionary wave rather than a stagnant particle.
Self awareness is the door to a new species, as it has always been to one degree or another. Neitzsche of course recognized this, but simply reading his works will not do much for someone who wishes to attain this level of thought. Just like he tried to propell a particular buddhist philosophy forward with his will to power we must now alter the will to power to in fact empower us towards a new frontier. N talked of striving towards the overman, but when will someone declare that they’ve gotten there?
A couple of figures have throughout history already, these include Jesus and Neitzsche, who later called himself Jesus. The path towards the overman is not evolutionary, it goes on in every instance. Jesus had it slightly wrong, but the holy trinity is not so far off. God is the culmination of our collective will to potential. If you pray, then don’t ask questions or requests, simply know that they will happen. This level of self mastery can enable you to do anything. Like walk on water.
Satyr (How’s it going? I’m curious, how big is your family? I ask because I’m always amazed by how large some people’s extended families are. Most of the Greek,Lebanese,Fillipino,etc. people I know/have known have these huge families that they never lose touch with.)
Did anyone ask you to wade through anything?
I believe the topic is this poor girl’s problem concerning some loser, ex-drug-addict dude, she likes as a …friend…but finds inadequate for mating material.
The topic is very focused.
It has more to do with human sexual and gender roles than your assumptions about my Social-Darwinism or your hypothetical prejudices concerning my Nieatzchean obsessions.
From observation. From experience. From analysis of phenomena.
Where do you get your “verifications’ from?
Books?
I think you’ve adequately displayed your ability to read and to memorize and to interpret the opinions of others, in an endless debate over who said what and why – like Christians debating Scripture - , now perhaps you can display your ability to interpret the world directly without and intermediating minds.
One looks at the different clothes men wear, across cultures and across time, and one can assume that these represent his evolution, yet no matter the garment worn when they, sometimes, tear the same old skin peeks through the holes.
One can then only assume that the skin is the natural boundary of the human being and not the garment that covers it and acts as an added layer or protection and pretence.
Sure, given the duration man has been wearing clothes can be used to argue that prolonged garment wearing has altered the skin underneath, made it more vulnerable to direct sunlight or more sensitive to bug stings and injuries but it cannot be used to argue that the garment constitutes an expansion or a continuance of the human skin.
The rules of etiquette might alter, through history, yet the beast they are asked to tame remains unaltered and consistent.
Although I do recognize the altering effects of pretence, in that they establish a change with practice and training.
We use the fork long enough and we forget that we want to use our hands. In time we forget how to eat with our fingers and are dependant on utensils.
I guess that if you take a chimp out of the wild and teach it how to sign or to wear clothes and to use forks and to take a shit in a toilet, you can make the argument that you’ve evolved the chimp into something other than it was originally.
But I have my reservations.
You can train a dog to piss outside the house and it will do it to please you or because it is afraid of you, but you haven’t really altered the dog’s natural inclination to piss anywhere and then sweep dust over it or piss on the walls to mark its territory.
I would say all supposition is similarly guided by theory.
My position is that humanity is far less rational than we would like to believe.
Every ideology that contradicted instinctual behaviour failed in establishing its control in any fundamental way and had to rely on threats and promises or on indoctrination (training) from birth to pretend that a new man, a civilized man, had been born.
Everything from Communism to Christianity is doomed to fail in creating their specific ideal man since they crash head-on with instinct while those that most closely mirror natural environments (Capitalism) that go along with natural human tendencies (competitiveness, selfishness, greed)flourish and grow.
In the declaration: “… man must be overcome”, it is man’s nature that must be overcome, or else nothing can ever or will ever change, but only superficially.
I wouldn’t say that there shouldn’t be any of these institutions but recognizing why they exist and how their authority and power is maintained is essential in appreciating them and guarding against their complete authority.
That life is “ruthless” isn’t a proposition that can be easily ignored.
It is only in modern man, protected and isolated from the brutality of nature, watching death and viciousness on TV and romanticizing battle and violence because so few have experienced it first-hand, where reality has been sanitized, reverting him back to a child-like psychology where life is only wonderful and precious, under the protection of parental arms (institutions), and they grow dependant and soft and weak and demanding and falsely arrogant, having never known fear, and stupid, having never had to be totally responsible for self.
It is then that decadence takes over and the slow decline returns as part of the normal historical cycle.
Assimilation -Birth-Adolescence-Maturity-Old Age-Death-Dissimilation
And hasn’t genetic evolution been replaced by memetic evolution, through morality and politics?
Aren’t politics an expression of natural selection in the realm of thought and ideals?
We haven’t overcome natural selection; memes have simply diverted the focus from natural selection/ kin selection to ideological selection.
I am forced to remain skeptical of all things, including reason.
I still don’t comprehend which of my “conceptual reductionisms†you found most offensive.
Was it my interpretation of female sexual behavior or is this some male competitive display meant to prove your rational nature?
Broad words with no specific focus.
If my definition of evolution is “narrow”, as you interpret what my definition of evolution is given that you’re just as affected by your assumptions and prejudices as anyone else, then please expand it for us.
Then we can see how your broad evolutionary conceptualizations are different from my “narrow’ ones.
I have confidence in reasons ability to dominate nature, in all its forms, I just don’t think our species is rational enough to accomplish such a feat, at this time, and you pretending that we already have, is, at best, exaggerated hope.
Indeed.
And yours can be false, as well.
So?
The mind/body distinction is meant to differentiate between different aspects of the human condition or perhaps to group different tendencies according to what strategies are used to achieve the same outcomes.
As such it can be used to distinguish between reactive, emotional, unthinking and often irrational thought from rational, strategic, self-controlling, ordering thought.
Nature like reality and truth isn’t static but ever changing.
We can only speak about the absence of ‘Truth’ or the arbitrary nature of ‘Reality’ because we can never occupy a static point and so we can never Be in ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ but always in the process of attaining them and defining them and because we can never rise above or go beyond the universe and perceive it in its totality, given that we are both participants and observers.
Given that environments, through memes, have sped up the alteration of environmental conditions that cause evolution, one can say that the “artificiality†of human behaviour can be attributed to genetic evolution trying to keep up with memetic alteration, causing a disharmony between instinct and intellect.
For instance our physical bodies have evolved to survive in more austere environments.
Our present environments have altered to fast as to make nutrition easy and food ubiquitous. The disharmony between our intellect and our instinct, and the dominance of instinct over intellect, causes the modern plague of obesity.
We all know it is wrong to overeat yet our instincts cannot be thwarted nor controlled.
Similarly we all know what the ‘right’ thing to do is, within a particular social environment, yet we cannot help but follow our instincts which can lead us to break the social rules and risk communal wrath and vengeance.
Understanding is a form of alteration.
Contradiction?
I think that knowing and doing are two different things.
I can know how to lose weight, for instance, but be emotionally and intellectually incapable of doing what is necessary to control my natural instincts so that I can lose weight.
So, I will look for easy solutions and magic pills, instead…God for instance, to save me from an existence I am incapable of overcoming or unable to control and find fulfillment in.
I can rationally know that it will be damaging to me to risk sleeping around, behind my wife’s back, yet I will risk it all for a one-night stand with a hot ass.
Yet I cannot go against my nature, unless I employ my reason to overcome my nature.
I cannot eat shit.
I cannot drink petrol.
I cannot fly.
I cannot be aroused by males.
I cannot find fat attractive.
I cannot stop craving fats and sugars.
I cannot stop myself from being aroused by a well-rounded female buttocks.
It all boils down to the two strategies, corresponding to gender psychologies, of empowerment.
One, the masculine, seeks to assimilate the universe within ones being, to know, to become God, to control, to alter, to dominate.
The second, the feminine, seeks to be assimilated, to belong, to find solace in losing ones self in the multiplicity, to surrender to and abandon ones self to something larger.
It is not coincidental that religions and ideologies preaching holism and oneness find fertile ground during historical period and in geographic areas with population pressures, necessitating a more tolerant, docile demeanor, where individuality loses its power in the presence of a demanding community.
Knowledge, on its own, is not the consistent and precise application of it.
And yes, I am talking about a new species.
Knowledge is simply information.
How one applies it is another matter.
A truly rational man would truly be another species: Homo sapient sapient.
Different from us as we are from the Neanderthal.
What “inside/outside†distinction and where did I make it?
My distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ environments and behaviours is simple:
That which man had no hand in creating is natural.
That which can be traced back to human intervention, even if this intervention can be considered part of the natural progression of things, is referred to, by me, as ‘artificial.
Human reason and its interventions is what differentiate the two, for me.
And why do you believe this “reverting back†happens at all?
Is it because when reason loosens its control over behavior, such as when inebriated by either emotion or drugs or alcohol, our behavior returns to its most irrational and, therefore, instinctual roots.
Does the rule of least resistance apply here?
Do certain behaviors require such effort and control that they disintegrate when this effort is beyond our means and our control wanes?
Given this our choice must be governed by which half can more easily be used to predict the world around us.
Ad does follow me around like a puppy. I never thought about it until now.
(Shew, Adlerian. And quit complimenting me every time I turn around. I need to fail sometimes too, you know. It builds character. I can’t be the best all the time.)
