Pressure is the catharsis for every form of change. Pandora’s positions on homosexuality are, dare I say it, beautiful. I will not degenerate this thread any longer, thanks for the invitation though.
We don’t look as much alike as I thought we did, Anthem. We could be mistaken for cousins, but probably not brothers as I thought before.
Don’t take it as an invitation. It’s more of a “Don’t put your women issues on me, Mr. Neediness. Your shamelessly kissing up to Pandora in hopes of a woman’s approval is pathetic.”
Air Force grooming standards are out of whack. 
The dude’s either a civilian contractor, on leave, or has got fungus growing on his face…those are the only times i’ve seen bearded men in military.
I think you should put everything that you say in parentheses.
=D>
The dude is right here, waiting to deploy, so you can ask him directly.
Our flight got delayed for over a week, so I didn’t shave.
You’re unbelievable. Not in the good way.
If you go to his post and start at the top, you’ll see the following on the first line:
He was aware of the facial hair seeming out of place from his being in the military, and because of that he made the above the very first thing anyone (with enough care to understand him) would see.
You can’t even follow someone to the end of the first sentence.
Your ego makes you so hard headedly convinced of the flaws of those who disagree with you that you can’t even process anything that might prove you wrong.
You’ve yet to provide a single valid counter argument against any point I’ve ever made to you. That is why you repeatedly bring up my writing things in parenthesis, as if it’s a valid criticism. You couldn’t follow my points because they weren’t short and simple enough for you to paint by the numbers. You see, people with a genuine interest in philosophy have had plenty of “…wuh… I don’t follow…” experience when reading something, but they notice their role in not getting it, and they slowly and carefully look back, trying to put things in perspective. This is called critical thinking, learning. Not only do they learn more about a subject or perspective they once were unable to consider themselves–opening up a new potential of what can be thought about and what can be learned/properly understand/interpreted, but they also learn of their own limitations, not only in a general sense, but through introspection of how their mind works when confused.
You aren’t genuinely interested in philosophy, though. You don’t have the mind of a philosopher. If you are confused your mind seeks an immediate, understandable solution. It was my fault, you take comfort in, because I write a lot of things in parenthesis. You love of driving fast doesn’t only apply to your car. I’ve read your posts through the years, and you’ve sped passed so many road signs that–if you could only (take the time to) read them–would inform you of your reckless driving.
Maybe you’ll actually realize how much you have missed when you start considering that your reckless driving is maintained due to a refusal to take a good look in your mirrors, to face past proofs of your carelessness. We’re all careless at times, and we’re all ignorant, you’ll hopefully accept. Sometimes it stings to accept your mistakes, but when you can see it as it is you can process it and learn from it; a lack of care in an action, or an ignorance of some thing, doesn’t make one a generally careless nor ignorant person. What does, though, is not seeing and accepting the moments that you are.
You come to this site not because philosophy is a passion or hobby for you–you have no interest in engaging your mind in analyzing things in a new, unique way, and exploring the constructs of your own views, but because are driven to distance yourself from ways of thinking and things that threaten your ego.
You made a thread criticizing the idea of living in the moment because thinking about it made you uncomfortable, defensive. This is what happened:
- below the surface, you are aware you aren’t driving in such a way you appreciate and carefully attend to that’s presently around you, but you instead are driving to escape and avoid thinking about accidents behind you (IE the emphasis on living in the moment activated a defense mechanism to avoid seeing it as a valid criticism of your lack of focus and acceptance at/with a moment, as you only view it in the lens of speeding away from that which you avoid considering)
- your defenses seek to affirm you have no problem with how you’re being (at a present moment), as identifying with irrationally driving away from the not immediately relevant suggests a lack of self-insight and practicality that threatens the “exceptionally rational” sense of self you’ve tailored as a binky.
In order to avoid accepting that you’ve been living/thinking/being
(in “present moments”–but in the sense we are always living in the present, not in the sense one means by suggesting one lives in the moment)
in a way that has lacked the qualities you so relentlessly attempt to identify yourself with,
your discomfort towards the idea is interpreted in such a way that affirms the values you try to identify with–it is offensive because it is not rational! It does not frustrate you because it points out what you feel you shoulder be, it frustrated you because it values what people should NOT be.
You alter the very meaning and point of “living in the moment”, and you jump here and there to defend the validity of your argument, though everyone sees it as an inapplicable straw-man, because your mind brought up exactly what your problem is, but instead of seeing that the discomfort was due to your threatened ego, you projected yourself onto that which actually advises against that which you accuse it of.
Your OP’s main argument was that rational consideration of the past and future is what a person is, and to “live in the present” is to be subhuman. But everyone else knew how ludicrous this was. Nobody would advise anyone to not think and consider the past and future, to just be in the present without actually thinking. I strongly advise you to honestly consider how you could rationally think people are suggesting and and agreeing with/seeing the positive relevance of the value of (and the possibility of) “living in the present”, as you described it in that OP. You would only make sense of it that way, and deem your impression logical and socially-applicable enough for you to start a new thread on a philosophy site, if you were emotionally motivated to prove its advice as a threat to what makes one a human. Surely you can see that?
It was based on its advice threatening your ego, it threatened your seeing yourself as the insightful, practical, past and future considering rationalist you want so badly to be. It is you to yourself, not the advice of “live in the present” to others, that urges a full-on absorption and oneness in the feeling of the moment–a foot placed firmly down on the pedal, the mind inseparable from the blurred object darting into and passed the headlights–rather than carefully and practically using one’s rationality, and experiences, to accept one’s part as a larger, more various and more encompassing self, the human that one actually is, actually experiences.
I hope you take what I wrote seriously. It was carefully written (over at least 2 hours now) as an attempt to help you accept things that may bring a lot of shame and confusion for awhile, but will ultimately take a big weight off your shoulders. I certainly didn’t spare criticizing you as I wrote it, and I have genuinely found you irritating, but I didn’t spend such a bulk of my evening writing this just to insult you when I could’ve done it with a sentence. I want to make it clear when I say I have found “you” irritating, and suggest “you” are irrational, I am only referring to the “Pandora” I attribute the posts in her name to. For all I know if you were a coworker or something, and I never heard you talk about the things you write about here, I might find you very smart, funny, polite, likable or whatever quality. I am not making any absolute value judgments about you as a person; but simply your state of mind and motivations when making your arguments in ILP.
I’ve said things about your lack of having a mind suitable for philosophy, and other insulting things–like earlier in this post I made a remark about your only being capable of “following” simple points that you can paint by numbers. To be clear, those aren’t comments regarding your potential
(for all I know you may one day come up with some groundbreaking physical or economic theory or whatever that completely turns everything preceding it on their heads; there is nothing that convinces me that isn’t a possibility),
so they shouldn’t be taken as me accusing you of having a permanent, unalterable limitation that defines you.
All my criticisms of what you can and can’t do, and how you are, only refer to “Pandora” as I know “you” according to relatively few observation and interactions, all in a very specific context.
When I say you are incapable of something, “you” (my image of you) includes the issues and motivations I see; when I say “you can’t read and process a single sentence” what I mean is “for as long as you are ignorant of your issues, and the role of your defense mechanisms in all this, you can’t read a process a single sentence made by anyone whose words have activated them”.
Okay, I’m done.
Lots of words, lots of words, lots of words … and I’m mad that Pandora isn’t a simple-minded buffoon for buying into my propaganda, AHHHH!!! 
What propaganda?
Who’s got woman issues??
Here ya go suckas…for your viewing pleasure.
you obviously look like a dork.
Thanks. That doesn’t offend me because I’m both smarter, and cooler than you in real life. Oh wait, I also know like 100 times more about philosophy than you. Yeah. That too.
edit: Thought about it, and I’d also like to point out that I have sex all the time, and I get to drink and do drugs and sleep till noon, and I make a pretty good amount of money, and I totally get away w/ being an immature asshole in my life. Which is very, very rewarding and satisfying.
You know that feeling you get when you’ve been out in the sun and you take a big drink of something and just go “ahhhh”. I feel like that all the time. Have fun butchering Quine and misunderstanding Kant and Hume in your other thread.
I’m impressed, you the man dawg. =D>
I’m sorry I didn’t mean those things. Let’s be internet friends.
Philosophy requires the ability to correctly understand things which are incorrectly stated.
Smears’ last 3 posts, ending with the most recent, are respectively complimented by his 2nd, 3rd and 1st photos.
I’ll take that as either a compliment, or an ill formed insult. I’ll stick w/ my favorite principle, that of charitable interpretation. Compliment it is!
Oh I get it. It’s like a crazy math problem w/ the pictures and the order of my comments and all that.
Very clever sir…