A little while ago
Jonah Thomas
In <333842...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> wrote:
>Why is
>intelligence viewed as a commodity one offers to others, anyway? Why
>does it need to be noticed and feted and stood in awe of?
In men, it's supposed to be a sign of potential. Like, what does it
take to make a lot of money? One must provide something that's in
short supply to people who can pay for it, and one must be less
desperate for money than the customers are for whatever they're paying
for. People who're good at finding such situations are viewed as
intelligent, so people who're viewed as intelligent are viewed as
potentially rich. It's a cultural thing. In a culture where wealth
comes to those who can accurately throw a harpoon from a wave-tossed
kayak, the ability to stand on a round rock and accurately throw a dart
might be feted.
>I'm
>particularly perplexed by the drive to shame people who are attempting
>think things out and stumble in their reasoning.
There are several parts to that. At the personal level, people want to
believe they're smart because that's what gets approved (see above).
But they know deep down that they aren't. (We can all _see_ a lot more
than we can _understand_. And we may imagine that being smart involves
those flashes of insight that we don't understand how we get -- because
when it's all simple and obvious it appears not to require smarts. But
you can't tell what will produce a flash of insight, that's out of your
control. So if it's important to be smart, and it's something that
just happens out of control but never often enough, there's a lot of
room for anxiety.) When they see someone else actually trying to
think, it triggers the fear. (What if he stumbles around and doesn't
get any result? I could be like that too. What if he _does_ get the
result? I may not be like that.) By shaming the person who doesn't
*already know* we tell ourselves that we're not like him, we're smart.
At a cultural level, it's important for society that there be a lot of
stupid people. So society trains them to believe they're stupid (but
never quite admit it enough to look for something different), and
society trains them to stop each other when they try to think. This is
another cultural thing. I've run into it hardest when teaching black
students (but not all black students, the smart ones have overcome it
and tend to be exceptionally smart). Teaching math or computer
science, it's important to get across the idea that it's OK to play
with problems until something clicks. But they hate to do that in
public or see anyone else do it. They hate to feel uncertain. "Just
tell me exactly what to do and I'll do it." If they see me actually
solving a problem, they get very upset. "He was stumbling around, and
he was the *teacher*. How can he teach us anything if he doesn't
already know it all himself?" This usually isn't as overt among white
students. My interpretation is that society has spent more effort
training blacks to believe they're stupid.
>At any rate, Gil's conceit in his
>intellectuality isn't nearly as blatant as that of the bulk of
>alt.angst in that he doesn't brutally attack other people's happy
>naive stupidity, so I'm afraid I don't know what the ruckus is about.
You said it that way because you *do* know, didn't you? I expect a lot
of your subtleties slip by me, but I caught that one.
>He doesn't confuse malice with competence, which may make him less fun
>to read, but is certainly a mark in his favor character-wise.
Yes.
>He does
>adopt a rather patronizing air when discussing the many women who
>swoon over him but do not have the intellect and magic that would make
>them worthy of his love - but *lots* of men here think that way; they
>just don't post about it so bluntly, perhaps in hopes that an
>angst.goddess will look upon them more kindly if they spend their
>energy sucking up. Who can say?
You can, and did. Lots of women feel that way too. It's hard not to
be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think they're
good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
>Mainly this place is a great swarming
>mass of hypocritical ill-temper, but hey, why should it not be if the
>people here prefer that sort of thing.
"But *nobody* likes it. Everybody hates it."
"Well then, why not stop?"
You prefer it, don't you? You encourage it. Or is that like poking at
a bad tooth, hoping this time it won't hurt? Maybe the personal level
gets trumped by the cultural level.
>On the other hand, such an
>attitude doesn't usually lead to much in the way of illuminating
>insight; defensiveness stifles novelty and all of that. Perhaps
>despite the collective I.Q. insight is no more the point here than
>beauty or freedom have been.
Would you expect there to be a collective point? It's hard for a bunch
of angsters even to agree in favor of the status quo, much less
anything else. Here the argument for the status quo involves pointing
to the FAQ as if it was the rulebook for how people should behave. But
that isn't the point either, it's just one of the squabbles. There
isn't any point here.
>In which case Gil really should be pos(t)ing elsewhere, yes?
When he finds a better place. "The First Rule of Wingwalking: Don't
let go of whatever you're holding onto until you've got hold of
something else."
Layo
Jonah Thomas wrote:
>
> In <333842...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >Why is
> >intelligence viewed as a commodity one offers to others, anyway? Why
> >does it need to be noticed and feted and stood in awe of?
>
> In men, it's supposed to be a sign of potential. Like, what does it
> take to make a lot of money? One must provide something that's in
> short supply to people who can pay for it, and one must be less
> desperate for money than the customers are for whatever they're paying
> for. People who're good at finding such situations are viewed as
> intelligent, so people who're viewed as intelligent are viewed as
> potentially rich. It's a cultural thing. In a culture where wealth
> comes to those who can accurately throw a harpoon from a wave-tossed
> kayak, the ability to stand on a round rock and accurately throw a dart
> might be feted.
Ah, wealth. Just out of curiosity, was the Gemini date for you the correct
one? That would place your Mercury in Taurus square Pluto, which translates
as 'intelligence is used in a concrete, deliberate, logical way to establish
works of value and durability. The principle is challenged by abuse of power
by the father and other people in authority, who constantly denigrate the
worth of these intellectual contributions and attempt to block the ideas from
being realized. The reaction is to regather power through the study of
psychology, particularly the psychology of groups, and to apply this knowledge
to deconstruct common unthinkingly-embraced assumptions that lower the
individual's perceived value and replace them with new standards that put
the individual in a position of manipulative influence. The aim is to
transform the mentality and value structure of the entire culture in which
he finds himself so that he will be able to make his ideas a reality, rather
than continue to waste his talent under what he experiences as oppressive
narrow-mindedness. His function in society is to excise what is dead and
force a new beginning.'
> >I'm
> >particularly perplexed by the drive to shame people who are attempting
> >think things out and stumble in their reasoning.
>
> There are several parts to that. At the personal level, people want to
> believe they're smart because that's what gets approved (see above).
> But they know deep down that they aren't.
Insecurity makes assholes of us all.
> (We can all _see_ a lot more
> than we can _understand_. And we may imagine that being smart involves
> those flashes of insight that we don't understand how we get -- because
> when it's all simple and obvious it appears not to require smarts. But
> you can't tell what will produce a flash of insight, that's out of your
> control. So if it's important to be smart, and it's something that
> just happens out of control but never often enough, there's a lot of
> room for anxiety.)
And people who can have flashes of insight whenever they want look at the
rest of society with open contempt, which I'm sure doesn't help matters
any.
> When they see someone else actually trying to
> think, it triggers the fear. (What if he stumbles around and doesn't
> get any result? I could be like that too. What if he _does_ get the
> result? I may not be like that.) By shaming the person who doesn't
> *already know* we tell ourselves that we're not like him, we're smart.
Every person is born with vast potential, and is often cajoled into
surrendering it by parents who are frightened by it. It's hard to
control someone who's bigger than you, so attempts by the kid to stretch
to his full height are crushed. As I recall, that's a major theme of
children's literature. Cinderella for example. A lot of people who
manage to struggle out of that have tragic lives anyway because the
parent inside their heads won't shut up, and so they sabotage themselves
to make that parent happy. And then there are the "gifted" kids who are
hauled around like show ponies as an extension of someone else's ego,
who think destroying themselves is the only way to find out who they
are; most dramatic are the ones like David Helfgott who perform until
they break and are then released into the oblivion and privacy they
crave. But most folks just shut down from the start.
> At a cultural level, it's important for society that there be a lot of
> stupid people.
I can imagine a culture where that wouldn't be necessary. I can't really
imagine such a culture being permitted to exist though, unfortunately.
It'll be great when we can colonize space and the constant sucking drag
of outworn ideas of what is possible won't be so strong.
> So society trains them to believe they're stupid (but
> never quite admit it enough to look for something different), and
> society trains them to stop each other when they try to think. This is
> another cultural thing.
Indeed. But if you're made an outcast young enough, no one bothers to
stop you. Then later you can return to WREAK VENGEANCE ON THEM ALL,
which is a major theme of movies aimed at teens if I recall. I suppose
the downside of that is that neglected freaks who've in the meantime
gotten very smart but still have the rabid urge to join join join can
become frighteningly powerful and unbalanced once they find a group to
seize control of. If ya know what I mean.
> I've run into it hardest when teaching black
> students (but not all black students, the smart ones have overcome it
> and tend to be exceptionally smart). Teaching math or computer
> science, it's important to get across the idea that it's OK to play
> with problems until something clicks. But they hate to do that in
> public or see anyone else do it. They hate to feel uncertain. "Just
> tell me exactly what to do and I'll do it."
Hey, I know that feeling. My horror of math explained. That was a
helpful way of putting it.
> If they see me actually
> solving a problem, they get very upset. "He was stumbling around, and
> he was the *teacher*. How can he teach us anything if he doesn't
> already know it all himself?" This usually isn't as overt among white
> students. My interpretation is that society has spent more effort
> training blacks to believe they're stupid.
Meanwhile they train whites to be afraid of their own bodies and
instincts and *no one* gets laid unless there's a very ostentatious
air of affected nonchalance, in which case it's okay to fuck because
then you're cool and everyone knows that the big perk of being cool
is that no one minds if you're promiscuous as hell.
You can have your own body or your own mind but not both at once or
you'll be dangerous to tHeM, the exception being if you make an
elaborate show of renouncing power and wealth and leaving the playing
field to the buzzards. Enjoying sex is therefore an act of rebellion
60's style *only* if you stay sharp - and avoid the other clever trap
that has been laid, which is the lie of romance: that after you have
achieved True Love you have -succeeded- and it's okay to relaaaaxx
just relaaaaxx and stop thinking. And conversely the lie of cynicism,
which is that love does not exist. (Those who do not love eventually
devour themselves, which gets them nicely out of the way.)
> >He does
> >adopt a rather patronizing air when discussing the many women who
> >swoon over him but do not have the intellect and magic that would make
> >them worthy of his love - but *lots* of men here think that way; they
> >just don't post about it so bluntly, perhaps in hopes that an
> >angst.goddess will look upon them more kindly if they spend their
> >energy sucking up. Who can say?
>
> You can, and did. Lots of women feel that way too. It's hard not to
> be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think they're
> good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
I'm probably over-sensitive because I'm almost always the swooner rather
than the swoonee. But you know the partonizing thing isn't so much
related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that that's a
safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you will.
> >Mainly this place is a great swarming
> >mass of hypocritical ill-temper, but hey, why should it not be if the
> >people here prefer that sort of thing.
>
> "But *nobody* likes it. Everybody hates it."
> "Well then, why not stop?"
>
> You prefer it, don't you? You encourage it. Or is that like poking at
> a bad tooth, hoping this time it won't hurt? Maybe the personal level
> gets trumped by the cultural level.
I like conflict when it leads to the bringing up of issues that
ordinarily stay buried. It gets old when care is not taken and it
degenerates into a group of cool kids kicking the shit out of the geek.
There's a difference between using hostility as a pretext for doing a bit
of surgery, possibly actually changing the way people look at things, and
letting the exchange degrade into a id-automated food fight. I'm not
saying that I always live up to that standard, but that is what I enjoy
about all hell breaking loose in a crowd like this.
> >On the other hand, such an
> >attitude doesn't usually lead to much in the way of illuminating
> >insight; defensiveness stifles novelty and all of that. Perhaps
> >despite the collective I.Q. insight is no more the point here than
> >beauty or freedom have been.
>
> Would you expect there to be a collective point?
There always is. New people interrupt this, which is why they are
objected to. Group culture is fragile to maintain when people can
join and shift the focus with the weight of their presence whenever
they want to. The traditional collective mentality here is quite
palpable (which makes it a tempting target for malcontents). Do you
notice that people constantly refer to this newsgroup as a whole,
as if it were its own entity? And that people who lurk here learn
to speak with its voice? I think it can be regarded as an organism
(which must be fed). You should know something about this, since you
say so many of your girlfriends belonged to cults; not to say that
a.a fits this category, but the people do participate in a distinct
reality here and that is what is similar.
I think that since you see your natural role as being to take apart
collective hallucinations and get people to break free of ingrained
automatic reactions the group sees you as a hacksaw. If you were
just a little sneakier about it watching you would be a lot of fun.
It's like this: first you win their trust, make them think you're one
of them. To do that you have to understand them. And to do that
you have to risk being swallowed by them. "As you look into the
abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
> It's hard for a bunch
> of angsters even to agree in favor of the status quo, much less
> anything else.
The old rules don't actually make a lot of sense anymore, and no one's
thought of anything better yet.
> Here the argument for the status quo involves pointing
> to the FAQ as if it was the rulebook for how people should behave. But
> that isn't the point either, it's just one of the squabbles. There
> isn't any point here.
The point would be more clear if the leadership was obvious. We've had
Bown and Slug make a bid, and things did get a little more cohesive
after that. I nominate DJF; he can throw flames but it doesn't seem
to be a personal problem for him the way it was for TD, the previous
king of the froup.
> >In which case Gil really should be pos(t)ing elsewhere, yes?
>
> When he finds a better place. "The First Rule of Wingwalking: Don't
> let go of whatever you're holding onto until you've got hold of
> something else."
You think a.a is his anchor? Hmm. Out of curiosity, is it yours?
Layo
Jonah Thomas
In <3341DE...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
>> It's a cultural thing. In a culture where wealth
>> comes to those who can accurately throw a harpoon from a wave-tossed
>> kayak, the ability to stand on a round rock and accurately throw a
>> dart might be feted.
>Ah, wealth. Just out of curiosity, was the Gemini date for you the
>correct one?
No.
>That would place your Mercury in Taurus square Pluto, which translates
>as 'intelligence is used in a concrete, deliberate, logical way to
>establish works of value and durability. The principle is challenged
>by abuse of power by the father and other people in authority, who
>constantly denigrate the worth of these intellectual contributions and
>attempt to block the ideas from being realized. The reaction is to
>regather power through the study of psychology, particularly the
>psychology of groups, and to apply this knowledge to deconstruct
>common unthinkingly-embraced assumptions that lower the individual's
>perceived value and replace them with new standards that put the
>individual in a position of manipulative influence. The aim is to
>transform the mentality and value structure of the entire culture in
>which he finds himself so that he will be able to make his ideas a
>reality, rather than continue to waste his talent under what he
>experiences as oppressive narrow-mindedness. His function in society
>is to excise what is dead and force a new beginning.'
If you can do _that_ with a wrong horoscope date, who cares whether the
dates are right or whether astrology works? I did think something like
that in high school. Then I found out that healthy cultures maintain
so much diversity that "transforming" them would be like "transforming"
rain forests. You might replant a tobacco field in corn or marijuana
and feel like you'd made a positive difference. Not a society.
>> But you can't tell what will produce a flash of insight, that's out
>> of your control. So if it's important to be smart, and it's
>> something that just happens out of control but never often enough,
>> there's a lot of room for anxiety.)
>And people who can have flashes of insight whenever they want look at
>the rest of society with open contempt, which I'm sure doesn't help
>matters any.
Open contempt doesn't. I can get the feeling of having flashes of
insight whenever I'm in the mood, but I don't get the insights that are
useful for a particular problem, whenever I want. If they come
immediately they don't seem like insights. If they don't come
immediately they might show up any time.
>Every person is born with vast potential, and is often cajoled into
>surrendering it by parents who are frightened by it. It's hard to
>control someone who's bigger than you, so attempts by the kid to
>stretch to his full height are crushed. As I recall, that's a major
>theme of children's literature. Cinderella for example. A lot of
>people who manage to struggle out of that have tragic lives anyway
>because the parent inside their heads won't shut up, and so they
>sabotage themselves to make that parent happy. And then there are the
>"gifted" kids who are hauled around like show ponies as an extension
>of someone else's ego, who think destroying themselves is the only way
>to find out who they are; most dramatic are the ones like David
>Helfgott who perform until they break and are then released into the
>oblivion and privacy they crave. But most folks just shut down from
>the start.
Sometimes it just gets focused. I've had students who put tremendous
effort into manipulation; so much that it looked like learning math
would have been a lot easier. But they tended to stick to what they
were good at.
>> At a cultural level, it's important for society that there be a lot
>> of stupid people.
>I can imagine a culture where that wouldn't be necessary. I can't
>really imagine such a culture being permitted to exist though,
>unfortunately.
it would take a bunch of people with radically different *habits*, and
I don't know where they'd come from.
>It'll be great when we can colonize space and the constant sucking
>drag of outworn ideas of what is possible won't be so strong.
I dunno. Small groups of people with limited resources sometimes seem
to clamp down harder than ever. Space has a whole lot of nothing, and
a lot of it doesn't even get as much sunlight as we do. Put people in
an environment where a single techie mistake can kill them all, and
they're likely to insist on quintuple backups and no design changes
without quintuple reviews and a couple years worth of simulations
first.
>> So society trains them to believe they're stupid (but
>> never quite admit it enough to look for something different), and
>> society trains them to stop each other when they try to think. This
>> is another cultural thing.
>Indeed. But if you're made an outcast young enough, no one bothers to
>stop you.
Yes, you get to serve as a object example. "Stop now or this could
happen to you."
>Then later you can return to WREAK VENGEANCE ON THEM ALL, which is a
>major theme of movies aimed at teens if I recall. I suppose the
>downside of that is that neglected freaks who've in the meantime
>gotten very smart but still have the rabid urge to join join join can
>become frighteningly powerful and unbalanced once they find a group to
>seize control of. If ya know what I mean.
I might know what you mean. I'm not sure who that's a downside for,
that the other is an upside for.
>> I've run into it hardest when teaching black
>> students (but not all black students, the smart ones have overcome
>> it and tend to be exceptionally smart). Teaching math or computer
>> science, it's important to get across the idea that it's OK to play
>> with problems until something clicks. But they hate to do that in
>> public or see anyone else do it. They hate to feel uncertain.
>> "Just tell me exactly what to do and I'll do it."
>Hey, I know that feeling. My horror of math explained. That was a
>helpful way of putting it.
If you can do it with psychology, the math is similar but easier. They
try to lay out all the pieces in plain sight where you can look at them
and fit them together. Any time it seems mysterious, that's a sign
there's something simple you've missed. It worked pretty consistently
for me, with students who had the courage to come in to discuss it
one-on-one. They'd explain how it didn't make any sense and they were
just stupid and what could they do, and when they started to run down
I'd explain they were suffering from something like a magic spell or
voodoo, and the most likely one to throw the spell was a previous math
teacher, one who told them they weren't good. At that point they'd
cry. When they mostly stopped crying I'd hand them a tissue and
explain there was a way out. Everybody can learn math if they learn a
few simple tricks to do it. The first thing is that math starts with a
small foundation and it builds up and out, like a pyramid on its point.
If you miss something simple at the bottom, none of the stuff that
would go on top of that will work. Missing a week of class in the
fifth grade can stop somebody cold until they go back and learn it. So
the second trick is to find out ways to zero in on what's missing.
Then I'd get out the book and point to a problem. The student couldn't
do it, of course, but that was OK, they'd already admitted they
couldn't do it and been told it wasn't their fault. So we'd flip back
in the book to an earlier problem and they wouldn't be able to do that
either. When we went back to something they could do, then we'd flip
forward to the first thing they couldn't. By that time I'd see
something obvious they were missing, and I'd explain it in 2 sentences
and one example. Then they could do that whole group of problems.
We'd go forward until we found another one, and do it again, and they'd
be 2 sections ahead in a few minutes. They'd start to get the idea
they didn't really need me. Once they could see where it broke down,
and knew it had to be something simple, they could look for it. If
they hadn't run into it in 2 examples I'd say the third trick --
sometimes the problem is a simple way to _do_ something they don't know
yet, and sometimes it's that mathematicians don't always _say_ things
in an obvious way, and the whole problem is to figure out the notation.
It can be easier to figure out what to do than to understand the way
they want to write about it. I wasn't as successful at getting that
one across unless they'd already run into it. It's doing it that
matters, not talking about it, just like the lecture the 2nd day of
class, ... It's like riding a bicycle, you have to *do it yourself*.
Somebody can tell you how, and after you've done it you see what they
mean but beforehand it just sounds like something mystical. You can't
learn it from watching somebody else do it or from getting lectured
at." (I don't think that lecture helped much either, but at least when
they insisted that I should lecture to them and I told it again they'd
already heard it.) I felt very close to the students who got it. I
was sure some of them came in with the intention of manipulating me
that way, but I didn't care because in the process they really did get
it.
>> If they see me actually solving a problem, they get very upset. "He
>> was stumbling around, and he was the *teacher*. How can he teach us
>> anything if he doesn't already know it all himself?" This usually
>> isn't as overt among white students. My interpretation is that
>> society has spent more effort training blacks to believe they're
>> stupid.
>Meanwhile they train whites to be afraid of their own bodies and
>instincts and *no one* gets laid unless there's a very ostentatious
>air of affected nonchalance, in which case it's okay to fuck because
>then you're cool and everyone knows that the big perk of being cool
>is that no one minds if you're promiscuous as hell.
>You can have your own body or your own mind but not both at once or
>you'll be dangerous to tHeM, the exception being if you make an
>elaborate show of renouncing power and wealth and leaving the playing
>field to the buzzards. Enjoying sex is therefore an act of rebellion
>60's style *only* if you stay sharp - and avoid the other clever trap
>that has been laid, which is the lie of romance: that after you have
>achieved True Love you have -succeeded- and it's okay to relaaaaxx
>just relaaaaxx and stop thinking. And conversely the lie of cynicism,
>which is that love does not exist. (Those who do not love eventually
>devour themselves, which gets them nicely out of the way.)
So who is tHeM? I spent some effort looking, and it always seemed to
just get lost in the fog. I found some people like me who were good at
moving the symbols around, who were using it for trivial purposes.
(Which is worse, mean or stupid?) It really looked like everybody was
going after their own short-term interests with no particular thought
for maintaining the system. It didn't seem very Durkheimian at all,
when I looked. Like this is what we _get_ by default. And maybe the
things that look like methods to hold people down, are just randomly
evolved. The better they are at keeping people from changing them, the
longer they last.
>> Lots of women feel that way too. It's hard not to
>> be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think
>> they're good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
>I'm probably over-sensitive because I'm almost always the swooner
>rather than the swoonee. But you know the partonizing thing isn't so
>much related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that
>that's a safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you
>will.
Yes. Still, it's a nonreciprocal relationship too. If you want a
close friendship and they don't, and that isn't OK with you, you've
opened yourself up for lots of bad stuff.
>I like conflict when it leads to the bringing up of issues that
>ordinarily stay buried. It gets old when care is not taken and it
>degenerates into a group of cool kids kicking the shit out of the
>geek.
"care is not taken and it degenerates"?
>There's a difference between using hostility as a pretext for doing a
>bit of surgery, possibly actually changing the way people look at
>things, and letting the exchange degrade into a id-automated food
>fight. I'm not saying that I always live up to that standard, but
>that is what I enjoy about all hell breaking loose in a crowd like
>this.
That's your intention. Some other people very strongly intend to be
among the cool kids and especially not to be the geek this time. It
looks to me like you enjoy it when the buried issues are ones that
affect other people and not so much yourself. But then, your own
issues are so idiosyncratic that when they get challenged it might not
look like hell breaking loose among the crowd. No blame.
>> >On the other hand, such an
>> >attitude doesn't usually lead to much in the way of illuminating
>> >insight; defensiveness stifles novelty and all of that. Perhaps
>> >despite the collective I.Q. insight is no more the point here than
>> >beauty or freedom have been.
>> Would you expect there to be a collective point?
>There always is. New people interrupt this, which is why they are
>objected to. Group culture is fragile to maintain when people can
>join and shift the focus with the weight of their presence whenever
>they want to. The traditional collective mentality here is quite
>palpable (which makes it a tempting target for malcontents). Do you
>notice that people constantly refer to this newsgroup as a whole,
>as if it were its own entity? And that people who lurk here learn
>to speak with its voice? I think it can be regarded as an organism
>(which must be fed). You should know something about this, since you
>say so many of your girlfriends belonged to cults;
Not so many, and mostly mild ones. 12-step programs, est, GS, KB, SWP
the yeshiba thing, tantra, a bit of covenry etc.
>not to say that
>a.a fits this category, but the people do participate in a distinct
>reality here and that is what is similar.
That's not uncommon at all. You might try a pentecostal church if you
want to see a rather wild drugfree distinct reality. Better to choose
one that doesn't have a phone. Don't wear makeup or jewelry, and at
least the first time you should have something on your head. I haven't
found much distinctive on a.a in terms of ideology or eschatology or
epistemology.
>I think that since you see your natural role as being to take apart
>collective hallucinations and get people to break free of ingrained
>automatic reactions
I do? No, I don't think so. I like to see how things work, and I'd
just as soon they aren't so fragile they break even with careful
handling. If somebody else is dissatisfied and wants to change their
own thinking around then I'll gladly point out joints and hinges, but
when they want to keep their thinking just the same then I don't need
to interfere and they mostly protect themselves quite well anyway.
>the group sees you as a hacksaw. If you were
>just a little sneakier about it watching you would be a lot of fun.
>It's like this: first you win their trust, make them think you're one
>of them. To do that you have to understand them. And to do that
>you have to risk being swallowed by them. "As you look into the
>abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
I enjoyed understanding David Perry. As fast as I understood he had to
shift to something else. I think he got tired of it after awhile, but
it was fun while it lasted.
>> It's hard for a bunch
>> of angsters even to agree in favor of the status quo, much less
>> anything else.
>The old rules don't actually make a lot of sense anymore, and no one's
>thought of anything better yet.
Were you around when they did? I think I can sort of imagine it.
>> Here the argument for the status quo involves pointing
>> to the FAQ as if it was the rulebook for how people should behave.
>> But that isn't the point either, it's just one of the squabbles.
>> There isn't any point here.
>The point would be more clear if the leadership was obvious. We've
>had Bown and Slug make a bid, and things did get a little more
>cohesive after that. I nominate DJF; he can throw flames but it
>doesn't seem to be a personal problem for him the way it was for TD,
>the previous king of the froup.
David? King? I guess I can sort of see that. The first post of his
that I read here hit me harder than anything else since. He was alone
in a barren apartment with no prospects of anything else, living off
the money the government gives crazy people in lieu of "treatment" or
support. A life that he regarded as utterly futile, and yet he
vibrated with the sense that it shouldn't be that way, that there
should be something different, something better. I started resonating
to it too. I could see my own life as essentially like his. And not
just me, everybody in the Washington area. Not to mention everybody in
Ireland and Israel. I couldn't run away from it or hide it, I had to
become him on purpose or I'd fall into it by accident. Later he lost
that; he turned into a parody of himself -- that made up in fun for
what it lost in power.
I haven't seen anything from Bown that could do that, he's managed some
occasional petulance but nothing really touching. Slug seems to have
the angst for real, and it stops him from organizing. Dirk could lead
if there was somewhere he wanted to go. I dunno.
>> >In which case Gil really should be pos(t)ing elsewhere, yes?
>> When he finds a better place. "The First Rule of Wingwalking:
>> Don't let go of whatever you're holding onto until you've got hold
>> of something else."
>You think a.a is his anchor? Hmm. Out of curiosity, is it yours?
Wingwalkers don't need anchors, they need handholds. For me, no, a.a
is my windvane.
Orion Auld
>> You can, and did. Lots of women feel that way too. It's hard not to
>> be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think they're
>> good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
>I'm probably over-sensitive because I'm almost always the swooner rather
>than the swoonee. But you know the partonizing thing isn't so much
>related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that that's a
>safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you will.
Yes. Imagine if you actually cared about those people that swooned
over you but which you were not impressed with! Imagine the burden if you
actually worried about hurting their feelings!
I think it's funny that we tend to find their behavior annoying and
embarassing, whereas if they were slightly more beautiful, or smarter,
it would be endearing. Such a fine line.
--
***** Orion Auld ***** *------------------------------------------------*
"We are only fabulous | If you're not part of the solution, |
beasts, after all." | you're part of the precipitate. |
-- John Ashbery *------------------------------------------------*
Orion Auld
>In <3341DE...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
>>Jonah Thomas wrote:
>So who is tHeM? I spent some effort looking, and it always seemed to
>just get lost in the fog. I found some people like me who were good at
>moving the symbols around, who were using it for trivial purposes.
>(Which is worse, mean or stupid?) It really looked like everybody was
>going after their own short-term interests with no particular thought
>for maintaining the system. It didn't seem very Durkheimian at all,
>when I looked. Like this is what we _get_ by default. And maybe the
>things that look like methods to hold people down, are just randomly
>evolved. The better they are at keeping people from changing them, the
>longer they last.
tHeM is an emergent phenomenon. We all spend some portions of our life
playing tHeM for someone. (Some of us spend more time than others, of
course.) Most interesting phenomena are at least partially emergent;
to say otherwise is to say that it is the product of a single intelligence,
and is therefore fully comprehensible by a single intelligence.
It's often useful to imagine such systems as if they *were* the product
of a single intelligence, as they appear to be, but it's necessary to
keep in mind that they're not, because at some point you start casting
specific people in the role of the villian ("It's the Jews' fault!",
"Blacks are taking over the neighborhood!").
These kinds of systems are self-maintaing in that they provide incentives
for people with short-term interests to maintain the system.
I'm rambling.
Layo
> >> be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think they're
> >> good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
>
> >related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that that's a
> >safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you will.
>
> over you but which you were not impressed with! Imagine the burden if you
> actually worried about hurting their feelings!
Ah, you'd probably just encourage them by trying to be "nice". I'm sure
it would work out badly for everyone. God forbid you should go along with
it out of compassion; *that* lasts about two months before you're suddenly
the Antichrist who's cruelly tormenting them with your icy impassivity on
purpose, doncha know.
Layo
Layo
Jonah Thomas wrote:
>
> In <3341DE...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
> >Jonah Thomas wrote:
>
> >Ah, wealth. Just out of curiosity, was the Gemini date for you the
> >correct one?
>
> No.
Dang. So are you gonna tell me the right one? I used to be good at
guessing ascendant signs correctly by sight but over the net I haven't
got the touch. Though David and Ilya's Leo risings would be hard to
miss.
> If you can do _that_ with a wrong horoscope date, who cares whether the
> dates are right or whether astrology works?
Oh, well, I'm good at taking info and inventing a plausible underlying
structure. What they call "bullshitting" in common parlance.
> I did think something like
> that in high school. Then I found out that healthy cultures maintain
> so much diversity that "transforming" them would be like "transforming"
> rain forests. You might replant a tobacco field in corn or marijuana
> and feel like you'd made a positive difference. Not a society.
Most attempts have done more harm than good. It's like playing around
with the human genome; once in a great while you hit upon an advantageous
mutation, but mostly you end up with invisible differences or disease.
However, when it comes to society there is a need for pressure to be put
on archaic structures that may be stifling healthy new growth. You could
compare this to pruning. Or, more at the scale I was thinking of, natural
disasters; thus did primordial squirrels get their chance to adaptively
radiate hither and yon. Sometimes what had been was perfectly nice, but
history is always puntuated by large-scale endings that lead to the
eventual development of something that has a broader reach than what had
gone before. What's important is that the previous structure had reached
an equilibrium so satisfactory that it would likely never need to grow
beyond it, or it had maxed out the potential of that particular line of
development; and, moreover, it was preventing the rise of something that
has the potential to go even higher. Whether rampant destruction, in the
rather weak hope that something better will arise once free of the
constraints of the past, is preferable to maintaining the safe status
quo is probably a matter of personal taste, as well as and which group
you happen to be part of.
> Open contempt doesn't. I can get the feeling of having flashes of
> insight whenever I'm in the mood, but I don't get the insights that are
> useful for a particular problem, whenever I want. If they come
> immediately they don't seem like insights. If they don't come
> immediately they might show up any time.
I go through periods when the world seems cracked open and obvious, and
periods when I feel like I'm crawling blindly on my belly groping for
basic information. And in either state I tend to forget about the
other. The most inconvenient thing about having multiple mindsets is
that you can set yourself up for a brilliant breakthrough, and then
when the time has ripened slip back into stupefaction and be unable
to take advantage of what you've done, or, worse, be lacerated by the
force of what you'd unleashed and laughed at soundly besides. (Dammit.)
> Sometimes it just gets focused. I've had students who put tremendous
> effort into manipulation; so much that it looked like learning math
> would have been a lot easier. But they tended to stick to what they
> were good at.
That's certainly a point. Having an ego to cater to gets mighty
inconvenient. (Fooling you wins more points than succeeding at the
problem, ridiclous but true I'm afraid.)
> >> At a cultural level, it's important for society that there be a lot
> >> of stupid people.
> >I can imagine a culture where that wouldn't be necessary. I can't
> >really imagine such a culture being permitted to exist though,
> >unfortunately.
> it would take a bunch of people with radically different *habits*, and
> I don't know where they'd come from.
I've seen folks try it, but keeping the habits at bay consistently
enough to make the new way work requires a concentration that can
harden into zealotry. So you can get something *different* from what
you had been acclimated to, but it may still be just as inflexible
in the end, and also may not turn out to work as well under varied
conditions which may not be admitted for fear of reversion. Thus
continuing to follow the new method might require a lot of stupid
people. (I'm thinking communism, basically, but that's not the
only example.)
> >It'll be great when we can colonize space and the constant sucking
> >drag of outworn ideas of what is possible won't be so strong.
>
> I dunno. Small groups of people with limited resources sometimes seem
> to clamp down harder than ever. Space has a whole lot of nothing, and
> a lot of it doesn't even get as much sunlight as we do. Put people in
> an environment where a single techie mistake can kill them all, and
> they're likely to insist on quintuple backups and no design changes
> without quintuple reviews and a couple years worth of simulations
> first.
I can see that. But socially it could get more flexible, or not. I'd
imagine we'd see a lot of new forms, and also that a lot of them wouldn't
make the cut. However, in such a new environment it would be pretty hard
to justify many of the planetary-based ways of doing things; think what
that would mean: our basic cultural instructions are thousands if not
tens of thousands of years old, and we'd be *starting over*.
> >> So society trains them to believe they're stupid (but
> >> never quite admit it enough to look for something different), and
> >> society trains them to stop each other when they try to think. This
> >> is another cultural thing.
>
> >Indeed. But if you're made an outcast young enough, no one bothers to
> >stop you.
>
> Yes, you get to serve as a object example. "Stop now or this could
> happen to you."
The only *real* fear is that you'll stay so low-status that you'll never
get a mate, which is the bottom line after all, perpetuation-of-this-
bullshitwise.
> >Then later you can return to WREAK VENGEANCE ON THEM ALL, which is a
> >major theme of movies aimed at teens if I recall. I suppose the
> >downside of that is that neglected freaks who've in the meantime
> >gotten very smart but still have the rabid urge to join join join can
> >become frighteningly powerful and unbalanced once they find a group to
> >seize control of. If ya know what I mean.
>
> I might know what you mean. I'm not sure who that's a downside for,
> that the other is an upside for.
The upside is that the freak gets to think as much as he likes, as long
as he remains outside the group. The downside is that if he *has* made
himself as intelligent and powerful as the group hypothetically would
have stopped him from becoming, he may return to them and squander his
advances on living out his frustrated teen-age fantasies. *Then* he
becomes an excellent object example, since the people outside his
domain see perfectly well how twisted what he's doing is. (Though
they usually express it with so much indignant clumsiness that no one
inside the group listens, and in fact having shriekers to laugh at
gives them better adhesion.) Though I'm not as offended by the fact
of his having seized control as by the fact that by compelling him
to join them and lower himself to player their games, even though he
has beat them it is still tHeY who have won.
> >Hey, I know that feeling. My horror of math explained. That was a
> >helpful way of putting it.
>
> If you can do it with psychology, the math is similar but easier. They
> try to lay out all the pieces in plain sight where you can look at them
> and fit them together. Any time it seems mysterious, that's a sign
> there's something simple you've missed. It worked pretty consistently
> for me, with students who had the courage to come in to discuss it
> one-on-one. They'd explain how it didn't make any sense and they were
> just stupid and what could they do, and when they started to run down
> I'd explain they were suffering from something like a magic spell or
> voodoo, and the most likely one to throw the spell was a previous math
> teacher, one who told them they weren't good. At that point they'd
> cry. When they mostly stopped crying I'd hand them a tissue and
> explain there was a way out. Everybody can learn math if they learn a
> few simple tricks to do it. <hints snipped>
I've just about got that down by learning chemistry, which has similar
problems to play with but not as intimidating a context.
> So who is tHeM? I spent some effort looking, and it always seemed to
> just get lost in the fog. I found some people like me who were good at
> moving the symbols around, who were using it for trivial purposes.
> (Which is worse, mean or stupid?) It really looked like everybody was
> going after their own short-term interests with no particular thought
> for maintaining the system. It didn't seem very Durkheimian at all,
> when I looked. Like this is what we _get_ by default. And maybe the
> things that look like methods to hold people down, are just randomly
> evolved. The better they are at keeping people from changing them, the
> longer they last.
You've got the right idea when you talk about random evolution. tHeM
is within all of us. There is a basic pattern called How To Live Your
Life that is passed down from parent to child and reinforced culturally.
It is thousands of years old. It used to work well enough for the
people who were competent at following its instructions, and the people
who didn't get indoctrinated often turned out to be criminals, so it
was considered essential that everybody have a copy. The problem is
that after awhile people started noticing that the pattern seemed a
bit old-fashioned in light of recent economic shifts and scientific
discoveries, and moreover that it was making certain people who
otherwise had lots to contribute miserable. So folks started
trying to figure out how not to get taken over by the pattern they
were born into, and checked out groovy foreign patterns that didn't
involve being shamed for doing whatever it was they happened to be
into. Now we've got mass cultural instability as people are being
raised with incomplete copies of their pattern because their parents
deviated from it. (This used to happen before, but back then it was
called "poor breeding" and everyone knew you were supposed to be
ashamed of it.) They end up not knowing how to do a lot of things
that people with the full copy take for granted. But, they can do a
lot of things that other people can't because they were never
instructed not to. tHeM is the inherited pattern for social behavior.
If you try to think about doing something counter to the pattern,
you'll feel a leash tugging you back. You really have to think it out
to continue following the novel behavior, and you might still feel
diminished by what you've done even though you worked it out and you
know it was the logical thing to do.
> >> Lots of women feel that way too. It's hard not to
> >> be patronizing when someone swoons over you but you don't think
> >> they're good enough for you. It's a nonreciprocal relationship.
> >I'm probably over-sensitive because I'm almost always the swooner
> >rather than the swoonee. But you know the partonizing thing isn't so
> >much related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that
> >that's a safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you
> >will.
> Yes. Still, it's a nonreciprocal relationship too. If you want a
> close friendship and they don't, and that isn't OK with you, you've
> opened yourself up for lots of bad stuff.
But some people do want to be swooned over, they just also want to
be in the position of disdainful lack of interest. It used to be a
woman's game but it's spreading, since it is rather fun. As far as
wanting a close friendship goes, that might not be as gamey, since
you don't get as many status points for rejecting a friend as you
do for rejecting a crowding of swooning morons.
> >I like conflict when it leads to the bringing up of issues that
> >ordinarily stay buried. It gets old when care is not taken and it
> >degenerates into a group of cool kids kicking the shit out of the
> >geek.
>
> "care is not taken and it degenerates"?
If you get taken over by the herd mentality, the outcome gets pretty
predictable. The stupid rabble take the place over, the artists get
their feelings hurt and write sensitive poems about it, the intellectuals
get bored and go back to their projects, and the psychos rack up yet
more confirmation that a killing spree is surely in order. But if
you're careful and think about why you feel like saying what you're
about to say, you might even say something illuminating.
> That's your intention. Some other people very strongly intend to be
> among the cool kids and especially not to be the geek this time. It
> looks to me like you enjoy it when the buried issues are ones that
> affect other people and not so much yourself. But then, your own
> issues are so idiosyncratic that when they get challenged it might not
> look like hell breaking loose among the crowd. No blame.
My issues are simultaneously strengths and weaknesses. I have to
protect the part that's growing something useful very carefully while
trimming around it or I might just end up lobotomizing myself. Pinnacles
are delicate and offer a broad view, but sometimes they're built
partially on garbage.
> >You should know something about this, since you
> >say so many of your girlfriends belonged to cults;
>
> Not so many, and mostly mild ones. 12-step programs, est, GS, KB, SWP
> the yeshiba thing, tantra, a bit of covenry etc.
There's four in there I haven't heard of. I've mainly dabbled in yoga
myself; you can make a cult out of that, or not, depending on how much
approval you require to motivate yourself to do something.
> >not to say that
> >a.a fits this category, but the people do participate in a distinct
> >reality here and that is what is similar.
>
> That's not uncommon at all. You might try a pentecostal church [...]
> I haven't found much distinctive on a.a in terms of ideology or
> eschatology or epistemology.
That's what's interesting about this place. The assumptions are stated
over and over but never codified. I think one commonality is that the
touted mass culture values can't satisfy the people here. Another is
that repressed bourgeois people have condemned something in either them
or their pasts that is essential to their character, and so hypocritical
smarminess in general is attacked. Another yet is that illusions that
are offered to folks as a panacea have been found to be false and often
a front for exploitation, and so hope and "truth" are rejected as well.
The pain leads deeper into the darkness but it also leads out of it.
Even lingering too long in the pain is attacked.
> >I think that since you see your natural role as being to take apart
> >collective hallucinations and get people to break free of ingrained
> >automatic reactions
>
> I do? No, I don't think so. I like to see how things work, and I'd
> just as soon they aren't so fragile they break even with careful
> handling. If somebody else is dissatisfied and wants to change their
> own thinking around then I'll gladly point out joints and hinges, but
> when they want to keep their thinking just the same then I don't need
> to interfere and they mostly protect themselves quite well anyway.
I think you like it when folks show some self-awareness though. Come on,
admit it, you like to see glaring errors repaired even when the subject
flops about a bit trying to keep you away from them. This meets with a
bit of hostility from people who were doing something different than
"participating in a mutually beneficial exchange".
> >the group sees you as a hacksaw. If you were
> >just a little sneakier about it watching you would be a lot of fun.
> >It's like this: first you win their trust, make them think you're one
> >of them. To do that you have to understand them. And to do that
> >you have to risk being swallowed by them. "As you look into the
> >abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
>
> I enjoyed understanding David Perry. As fast as I understood he had to
> shift to something else. I think he got tired of it after awhile, but
> it was fun while it lasted.
That was pretty cool. I dunno though, once you drive a guy like that
into his empty core *then* what's he supposed to do? It's interesting
that some of the people you try to understand are the ones who are the
most conscious of being on stage.
> >The old rules don't actually make a lot of sense anymore, and no one's
> >thought of anything better yet.
>
> Were you around when they did? I think I can sort of imagine it.
The people left here aren't quite crazy enough for that anymore. Except
maybe Loopy; what an amazing difference since she went off the pills.
> >The point would be more clear if the leadership was obvious. We've
> >had Bown and Slug make a bid, and things did get a little more
> >cohesive after that. I nominate DJF; he can throw flames but it
> >doesn't seem to be a personal problem for him the way it was for TD,
> >the previous king of the froup.
>
> David? King? I guess I can sort of see that.
He was the one in everyone's inbox; he was the one who could be counted
on to kick ass wittily and persistently enough to keep the weenies toeing
the line and thinking before they blurted out some nonsense or other. He
liked being God and he was good at it.
> The first post of his
> that I read here hit me harder than anything else since. He was alone
> in a barren apartment with no prospects of anything else, living off
> the money the government gives crazy people in lieu of "treatment" or
> support. A life that he regarded as utterly futile, and yet he
> vibrated with the sense that it shouldn't be that way, that there
> should be something different, something better. I started resonating
> to it too. I could see my own life as essentially like his. And not
> just me, everybody in the Washington area. Not to mention everybody in
> Ireland and Israel. I couldn't run away from it or hide it, I had to
> become him on purpose or I'd fall into it by accident. Later he lost
> that; he turned into a parody of himself -- that made up in fun for
> what it lost in power.
I liked him best when everybody else hated him. I'm funny that way.
> I haven't seen anything from Bown that could do that, he's managed some
> occasional petulance but nothing really touching.
He wants David back too. I can't say I do; it's too late for that, the
game's been played out. Bown started at first by posting more copiously,
as though to set the mood for the rest of 'em, and then tried to do the
ass-kicking thing which I think hurt his credibility more than helped
anything. Though I must say I admire the spacious abstraction of his
points when he makes them, though assuming that he's a lone voice in
the wilderness may be a mistake; he's supposed to be molding these folks,
not alienating them.
> Slug seems to have the angst for real, and it stops him from organizing.
Maybe so. He's also not the type to slug it out (heh heh).
> Dirk could lead if there was somewhere he wanted to go. I dunno.
I'm sure he'd prefer the cabal to reentrench themselves (and stay that
way) for his own pleasure if nothing else.
> >> When he finds a better place. "The First Rule of Wingwalking:
> >> Don't let go of whatever you're holding onto until you've got hold
> >> of something else."
>
> >You think a.a is his anchor? Hmm. Out of curiosity, is it yours?
>
> Wingwalkers don't need anchors, they need handholds. For me, no, a.a
> is my windvane.
For me it used to be a game of chess, but now it's the daily crossword.
Layo
Gil G Silberman
>Insecurity makes assholes of us all.
Preach, layo, preach.
>And people who can have flashes of insight whenever they want look at the
>rest of society with open contempt, which I'm sure doesn't help matters
>any.
People who look at the rest of society with open contempt have
regular flashes of resentment they mistake for insight.
People who look at other individuals with cynicism, bitterness,
defensiveness, and mistrust -- over a lifetime -- develop
rote behaviours that cause strangers to respond to them in
a way that confirms their fears.
These are the professionals in the game of bitterness. I
have learned not to challenge them at their own game because
they are sure to lose, and in so doing to win. They spend
a lifetime honing the useless skill. Why should
I match wits with the game masters?
>most dramatic are the ones like David Helfgott who perform until
>they break and are then released into the oblivion and privacy they
>crave. But most folks just shut down from the start.
The consensus among those who claim they know is that Helfgott
is a mediocre pianist at best. The Rachmoninoff is definitely
an over-the-top, sappy piece, popular mainly because it's so
obvious. Tasty yes, but unsubtle. It would be like making a
movie about cooking where the chef's greatness is based on how
well he does fettucini alfredo.
I've never heard Helfgott myself. All I know is that his
name doesn't get mentioned often in the same breath as
Rubinstein, Perahia, Ashkenazi, Pollini, Brendel. Who
knows. He could be some great genius.
"What do you think about Shine?" my cynical friend asked
me. "I'm suspicious," I said. "I hear it's a nice
movie, but the music isn't so good so it kind of nullifies
the point."
"How do you know?", she asked. "People are just jealous."
"I don't", I admitted, "and you're probably right again
as usual."
"See," she said. "That's why I can't trust your opinion on
anything. Everything that comes out of your mouth is just
what you wished were true, not what you actually know."
What could I say? She's a pro.
>Meanwhile they train whites to be afraid of their own bodies and
>instincts and *no one* gets laid unless there's a very ostentatious
>air of affected nonchalance, in which case it's okay to fuck because
>then you're cool and everyone knows that the big perk of being cool
>is that no one minds if you're promiscuous as hell.
I thought you were supposed to be nonchalant for a different
reason. If you get turned down, you can pretend that you
didn't really want it anyway. If you score, you can deny that
it meant anything, which allows you to be quite vicious without
the attendant guilt. It's all about self-protection and
denial.
>> >He does
>> >adopt a rather patronizing air when discussing the many women who
>> >swoon over him but do not have the intellect and magic that would make
>> >them worthy of his love - but *lots* of men here think that way; they
>> >just don't post about it so bluntly, perhaps in hopes that an
>> >angst.goddess will look upon them more kindly if they spend their
>> >energy sucking up. Who can say?
The following happened to me at the pro shop today, or was it
yesterday.
"I know you want me," said one of the many lower-than-me
women who swoons before my greatness.
"Yes," I said calmly. "You know I do."
"My pussy is so warm and soft." She reached into her pants.
"Do you want to make love tonight?"
"Sure," I said nonchalantly, imagining for a moment
that perhaps she did posess the magic and
intellect. "Why not?"
"Why not? Because I won't let you."
"Okay," I said nonchalantly, or was it with great earnestness?
I forget which. "But if you ever change your mind, you know
how much I desire you."
"Yes, I do."
"And I won't let it come between us. I'll still like you
just as much afterwards."
"That's what all the guys say."
"Maybe they're right," I said.
"I guess I'll never know."
"You already know," I said.
"Yes," she said. "But you won't."
I turned to leave.
"Gil?"
"Yes."
"You're in love with me, aren't you?"
I left.
>I'm probably over-sensitive because I'm almost always the swooner rather
>than the swoonee. But you know the partonizing thing isn't so much
>related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that that's a
>safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you will.
Yes.
>I like conflict when it leads to the bringing up of issues that
>ordinarily stay buried. It gets old when care is not taken and it
>degenerates into a group of cool kids kicking the shit out of the geek.
All groups turn into the lord of the flies. All.
>There's a difference between using hostility as a pretext for doing a bit
>of surgery, possibly actually changing the way people look at things, and
>letting the exchange degrade into a id-automated food fight.
The cynics cruise too much on automatic. It's like any other skill
I guess. The better you get, the more successful you are, the
more temptation to zone out and become soft.
Yesterday I played piano for a woman. It was Chopin's Fantasie-
Impromptu. Almost as sappy as the Rachmoninoff, but not nearly
as hard, and quite beautiful. I played passably well, nothing
special, but not bad. While I was playing she sighed. I thought
I heard her gasp.
"Well how do you like it?" a friend asked her.
"That was so good it made me wet."
At the time I thought she was kidding.
I'm sorry if that sounds like I'm bragging. But I am bragging.
That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said about my music.
>> When he finds a better place. "The First Rule of Wingwalking: Don't
>> let go of whatever you're holding onto until you've got hold of
>> something else."
>You think a.a is his anchor? Hmm. Out of curiosity, is it yours?
I take my anchor with me. I like this place. I would have
stayed away for longer, but there is something about Malcolm
and Roland that makes me want to come back for more, to prove
that no amount of meanness can drive me away.
>Layo
And there are always thoughtful people like you, Jonah, and
Elena -- and interesting/challenging people like Ilya,
Lawyerboy, Gary, etc, etc. It's a salad bar with many
odd ingredients. Sorry if I leave a few names off or play
favorites. I doubt that you, Jonah, or Elena are partial
to being buttered up.
-- gil the stinking pile of puss http://www.hooked.net/~bigbug
By the way, most of my stories are composites, embelishments,
or lies. I try to stick to the emotional but not the
actual truth, because I don't want to betray any more
secrets. The part about women having anything to do with
me, for instance, is untrue.
Orion Auld
In <3342C6...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
>Orion Auld wrote:
>> In <3341DE...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
>>
>> >But you know the partonizing thing isn't so much
>> >related to the person's lack of qualifications as the fact that that's a
>> >safer place to sit emotionally, cold and in control if you will.
>>
>> Yes. Imagine if you actually cared about those people that swooned
>> over you but which you were not impressed with! Imagine the burden if you
>> actually worried about hurting their feelings!
>Ah, you'd probably just encourage them by trying to be "nice". I'm sure
>it would work out badly for everyone.
I've found (not that I've been on that end of the deal just a whole hell of
a lot) that you do have to be a bit surreptitious about it. I just don't
think the typical pattern of derision and abuse is as necessary as it is
popular.
>God forbid you should go along with
>it out of compassion; *that* lasts about two months before you're suddenly
>the Antichrist who's cruelly tormenting them with your icy impassivity on
>purpose, doncha know.
Absolutely true. Two months is a long time.
David William Manley
Gil G Silberman <b...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>movie about cooking where the chef's greatness is based on how
>an over-the-top, sappy piece, popular
>Rubinstein, Perahia, Ashkenazi, Pollini, Brendel. Who
>knows. He could be some great genius.
When I was a child, I thought that Vanilla meant "the absence of
flavor." This disturbed me because I liked Vanilla better than
chocolate, and I thought it confirmed that I didn't have a "real soul,"
a suspicision that I already harbored.
Now I know better. Vanilla is, itself, a very full, and possibly even
rich, flavor.
-dave manley-
But it doesn't necessarily follow that I have a "real soul."
DJF
Layo <roc...@erols.com> wrote:
[alot..as did Jonah]
That was interesting. Somewhat.
It's conversations like the ones I used to have at 4am when all the
pillowing weed was gone & edges started getting vibratory again.
I missed Baycon & TheRucus[tm] on the MUSH. It is shit like that that I use
to justify my growing desire to remain at sea for the longest possible
time, returning only when utter necessity compels. Funny, but to me the
so-called never changing seascape holds greater detail than any cityscape
I've ever seen - and I've seen a shithouse full of 'em.
The froup is alright. Hey, it's just another point in space. Lead? Where
the fuck is there to go? There's one big sucking destination that no matter
what you do/feel/say is waiting to stamp yer visa. May as well
procrastinate with youse guys as any others. I think we entertain each
other passing well.
Well, I start a 3 year countdown this June. Another goal, oh goody. It's
not like I've followed through on all the others I've set...except quitting
smoking cigs - I did do that.
The standard pangs I feel for companionship are still poignant
(melodramatically so) in private. But soon pass. I search for a boat for
one. No fucking mirrors, either. OK, hank, maybe one mirror for the crash
bag. For show. Doubt I would ever use it.
Note to All & Sundry: if yer knowledgeable (johnj) or interested (hank)
email me if you can suggest/get me *real low airfare* Cleveland/SF or
Pittsburgh/SF in the time range July 27 to August 16. I've a hankering to
piss in the Pacific, cold as that may be. Can't make this dick any smaller.
It also behooves me to see my sister sometime again before I die & she
ain't ~ever~ coming East again.
ObAngst: former skills going to shit. Not as bad as Charlie who'll be dead
RealSoonNow[tm]. Could that have been somewhere in the back of my head as I
threw darts & helped contribute to our downfall? Funny...Charlie & I used
to go looking for games in Pittsburgh way back when. Everyone else thought
he was an arrogant asshole. He was. Never saw that as impediment to darts.
D "1st time not in finals" J "in" F "...fuck...8 years"
Angst: the feeling you get when you realize that no matter how horrid
your life is right now, you've reached your peak and now it's just
a long, slow ride on the Entropy Express
Jonah Thomas
In <5hu4as$7...@angst.rsn.hp.com> oa...@convex.hp.com (Orion Auld)
wrote:
>>So who is tHeM? I spent some effort looking, and it always seemed to
>>just get lost in the fog. I found some people like me who were good
>>at moving the symbols around, who were using it for trivial purposes.
>>(Which is worse, mean or stupid?) It really looked like everybody
>>was going after their own short-term interests with no particular
>>thought for maintaining the system. It didn't seem very Durkheimian
>>at all, when I looked. Like this is what we _get_ by default. And
>>maybe the things that look like methods to hold people down, are just
>>randomly evolved. The better they are at keeping people from
>>changing them, the longer they last.
>tHeM is an emergent phenomenon. We all spend some portions of our
>life playing tHeM for someone. (Some of us spend more time than
>others, of course.) Most interesting phenomena are at least partially
>emergent; to say otherwise is to say that it is the product of a
>single intelligence, and is therefore fully comprehensible by a single
>intelligence.
I haven't gotten a lot of use out of the "emergent" concept. It's
mostly a negative. Like, when Newton's laws first came out there was
the claim that somebody who know the location and mass of every
particle in the universe could then predict everything from then on.
This from people who could only solve the Three Body problem in special
cases. OK, so after we knock that silly idea down with emergent
properties, then what? There are things you can tell from lower order
concepts. If you're building a wall it makes a real difference whether
you're building it out of pebbles or rock candy. But there are things
you can't tell about the wall from knowing about the stones. OK, so
how DO you figure out about the wall?
>These kinds of systems are self-maintaing in that they provide
>incentives for people with short-term interests to maintain the
>system.
How do they do that? Is there a pattern to it or is it all ad hoc?
Jonah Thomas
In <33435D...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> wrote:
>Jonah Thomas wrote:
>> In <3341DE...@erols.com> Layo <roc...@erols.com> writes:
>> >Just out of curiosity, was the Gemini date for you the
>> >correct one?
>> No.
>Dang. So are you gonna tell me the right one? I used to be good at
>guessing ascendant signs correctly by sight but over the net I haven't
>got the touch. Though David and Ilya's Leo risings would be hard to
>miss.
You're welcome to guess again.
>> If you can do _that_ with a wrong horoscope date, who cares whether
>> the dates are right or whether astrology works?
>Oh, well, I'm good at taking info and inventing a plausible underlying
>structure. What they call "bullshitting" in common parlance.
It can be a useful technical skill. Apart from bullshitting.
>However, when it comes to society there is a need for pressure to be
>put on archaic structures that may be stifling healthy new growth.
>You could compare this to pruning. Or, more at the scale I was
>thinking of, natural disasters; thus did primordial squirrels get
>their chance to adaptively radiate hither and yon. Sometimes what had
>been was perfectly nice, but history is always puntuated by
>large-scale endings that lead to the eventual development of something
>that has a broader reach than what had gone before.
It depends. Things need to get shaken up every now and then or we'll
optimise too strongly on the existing patterns. In the chapparal
country around here, a few kinds of plants are really best at
outsurviving everything else -- for awhile. Then there's a dry year
and they all burn up. The ones that were waiting for a fire take over
for awhile and then the ones that can take over from those, and after
awhile it settles down to the same few plants again. Things that look
like disasters are maybe just part of the system. Oak forests don't
seem to have that pattern, you can get an oak forest that stays just an
oak forest for hundreds of years. Then humans come and cut it down
and build a subdivision and name it Hickory Estates. On the scale
where we can think about adaptive radiation we have too few examples
and too little data to be very clear. Something that may have
happened a few hundred times in 2 billion years. When things just get
shaken up they don't wind up with a broader reach, they just get a
temporary time for the transients to do something.
>What's important
>is that the previous structure had reached an equilibrium so
>satisfactory that it would likely never need to grow beyond it, or it
>had maxed out the potential of that particular line of development;
>and, moreover, it was preventing the rise of something that has the
>potential to go even higher.
Something different, anyway. So is the Kentucky bluegrass higher than
the cane that came before it? No, though it's more to our taste. But
losing the chestnuts looks to me like all loss.
>Whether rampant destruction, in the
>rather weak hope that something better will arise once free of the
>constraints of the past, is preferable to maintaining the safe status
>quo is probably a matter of personal taste, as well as and which group
>you happen to be part of.
You mostly don't get to choose. Try for rampant destruction and
you'll likely achieve only a few million dollars worth of property
damage. Whee. Try for maintenance and you might achieve rampant
destruction. We aren't in control. Nobody's in control.
>> it would take a bunch of people with radically different *habits*,
>> and I don't know where they'd come from.
>I've seen folks try it, but keeping the habits at bay consistently
>enough to make the new way work requires a concentration that can
>harden into zealotry.
We live by habit. Train new habits and they're still habits.
>So you can get something *different* from what
>you had been acclimated to, but it may still be just as inflexible
>in the end, and also may not turn out to work as well under varied
>conditions which may not be admitted for fear of reversion. Thus
>continuing to follow the new method might require a lot of stupid
>people.
It takes a lot of effort to intentionally get new habits in a lot of
people. Once it's done it doesn't matter whether they're stupid or
not, they'll continue by habit unless they focus hard on reasons to
change.
>> >It'll be great when we can colonize space and the constant sucking
>> >drag of outworn ideas of what is possible won't be so strong.
>>I dunno. Small groups of people with limited resources sometimes
>>seem to clamp down harder than ever. Space has a whole lot of
>>nothing, and a lot of it doesn't even get as much sunlight as we
>>do. Put people in an environment where a single techie mistake can
>>kill them all, and they're likely to insist on quintuple backups
>>and no design changes without quintuple reviews and a couple years
>>worth of simulations first.
>I can see that. But socially it could get more flexible, or not. I'd
>imagine we'd see a lot of new forms, and also that a lot of them
>wouldn't make the cut. However, in such a new environment it would be
>pretty hard to justify many of the planetary-based ways of doing
>things; think what that would mean: our basic cultural instructions
>are thousands if not tens of thousands of years old, and we'd be
>*starting over*.
If you could start with a very small group, and add to it a few people
at a time, and it was clear that the new people had to fit in or die,
then maybe. It probably wouldn't be starting over, though. People
would change what they had to, out of what they were used to.
I've been impressed by my first chance to watch a production
programming team at work. I've done a little hobby programming, never
anything larger than 20,000 lines. For a hobby it seemed like the
best approach involved not keeping any backups. Every now and then
I'd make a mistake which broke the whole thing, and I wouldn't know
where the mistake was. So I'd look at likely spots, and whenever I
saw something I didn't understand well enough to be sure it wasn't the
mistake, I'd simplify it until it was clear. After a couple of days
it would start working again, and it would be simpler. That simplicity
would remove bugs I hadn't found yet, and also the less there was and
the clearer it was, the easier I could keep track. I did better with a
lot of little 2-line subroutines than with big things; by the time a
subroutine was more than about 12 lines it got hard to understand and
easy to make mistakes. And yet when I was doing something new it was
easier to just do it and simplify it later than to figure it out
perfectly the first time.
Well, I watch this professional team, and they try hard to avoid any
changes. Every change has to be documented as a change, and they do at
least 20 times as much paper work as they do actually making the
change. One guy keeps the master copy, and when somebody else brings
in a correction, the top guy notes what's changed and copies the
changes into the backed-up master copy, line by line. He _hates_ to
see big changes. When there's a problem the ideal is to fix it with
as little change as possible. If necessary, they add completely new
stuff instead of changing old stuff. So the whole thing gets
continually more complicated with more room for bugs. They won't
really clean anything up until the customer pays for a brand new
version.
Once the system is too big to fit into one head, this is almost
inevitable. And never mind if there could be a way to make it small
enough to fit into one head -- you can't get there from here. So, can
we get into space with social and tech systems both small enough to
understand? I tend to doubt it, but it would be interesting to try.
>But some people do want to be swooned over, they just also want to
>be in the position of disdainful lack of interest. It used to be a
>woman's game but it's spreading, since it is rather fun. As far as
>wanting a close friendship goes, that might not be as gamey, since
>you don't get as many status points for rejecting a friend as you
>do for rejecting a crowding of swooning morons.
Ah, status.
>My issues are simultaneously strengths and weaknesses. I have to
>protect the part that's growing something useful very carefully while
>trimming around it or I might just end up lobotomizing myself.
>Pinnacles are delicate and offer a broad view, but sometimes they're
>built partially on garbage.
Yes. It's one thing to shake somebody's structures to see whether
they're strong enough. Better to do repair and redesign now than
during a real crisis. But if it's scaffolding that only needs to last
long enough to complete the real structure, there's no value in
knocking it down. And then there's the question of telling which is
which.... For awhile it looked like you were mad at me and didn't want
to talk. I figured maybe you were building something delicate and
didn't want your elbow jogged.
>> >You should know something about this, since you
>> >say so many of your girlfriends belonged to cults;
>> Not so many, and mostly mild ones. 12-step programs, est, GS, KB,
>> SWP the yeshiba thing, tantra, a bit of covenry etc.
>There's four in there I haven't heard of.
GS is General Semantics, which is one of the nicest cults I've ever
seen. Their doctrine is derived from neurophysiology and is almost
completely harmless unless you're deep into philosophy. They encourage
something called a "cortico-thalamic pause", where before reacting
automatically you're supposed to wait a second or two and notice what
else is going on, reminding yourself that you don't ever have the whole
picture and this situation isn't the same as any in your past.
Arica is a traditional cult, the members tend to form communes and do
communal exercises. They're led by a guy in south america who picked
up oriental martial arts and yoga and some other things there and put
them together into a nice package. I didn't hear any 2nd-hand
doctrines, they seem to be organized around activities and rituals and
exercises and people get whatever they get.
The Socialist Worker's Party is a communist cult. I didn't hear about
much party discipline and if there was a cell structure it was buried
pretty deep. People made no effort to keep the FBI infiltrators from
finding their names. (Those poor guys would show up with shined shoes
and crew cuts and red noses and hangovers. It was clearly a
punishment assignment.)
Yeshiba (Ueshiba etc) took a variety of traditional martial arts and
watered them down into aikido. People could do aikido for years
without ever getting a serious injury. They could also do it for
years without ever really getting the point. The ones who got good at
it seemed to get very good. In a way, the central point seemed to be
about taking the initiative. If you're in a fight and you have the
initiative, you can do anything. If you don't have the initiative you
need to get it. They told stories about winning. "I was on the subway
with my master, and these 4 big guys came and asked us for money. I
was the student so it was my job to deal with them. So I sympathised
with them, and noted that they didn't really want handouts, they wanted
to make a real contribution. I had a newspaper with want ads, and I
gave that to them and they thanked me. My master told me I did a good
job. If I'd hurt them he would have been disappointed."
>I've mainly dabbled in yoga
>myself; you can make a cult out of that, or not, depending on how much
>approval you require to motivate yourself to do something.
I knew a woman (not a girlfriend) who had done it as a cult. She
joined a commune and followed orders. She spent a lot of time teaching
yoga to bring in money for the group, and she didn't have much time to
herself, she said people prized assignments that would take them away
for a few hours when they could spend some time goofing off. She had
some spending money and she'd buy a milk shake every time she got the
chance. When I knew her she didn't like them anymore. The only
assignment she felt very uncomfortable with was to massage the
visiting accountant. He was from India but not particularly
spiritual, and he was mostly loose except for the psoas and something
in the inner thigh, which she said came from sitting crosslegged all
the time. There wasn't any sexual harrassment but she didn't like
being ordered to do it.
>> I haven't found much distinctive on a.a in terms of ideology or
>> eschatology or epistemology.
>That's what's interesting about this place. The assumptions are
>stated over and over but never codified. I think one commonality is
>that the touted mass culture values can't satisfy the people here.
Mass culture is a communication tool, not a satisfaction tool. It's
simple enough that immigrants can quickly learn enough to communicate.
Not profoundly, but enough to get by. I doubt they're satisfied by it
either.
>Another is that repressed bourgeois people have condemned something in
>either them or their pasts that is essential to their character, and
>so hypocritical smarminess in general is attacked. Another yet is
>that illusions that are offered to folks as a panacea have been found
>to be false and often a front for exploitation, and so hope and
>"truth" are rejected as well. The pain leads deeper into the darkness
>but it also leads out of it. Even lingering too long in the pain is
>attacked.
I haven't noticed much that isn't attacked. "Alt.angst is not a
support group." 8-)
>> I like to see how things work, and I'd
>> just as soon they aren't so fragile they break even with careful
>> handling. If somebody else is dissatisfied and wants to change
>> their own thinking around then I'll gladly point out joints and
>> hinges, but when they want to keep their thinking just the same
>> then I don't need to interfere and they mostly protect themselves
>> quite well anyway.
>I think you like it when folks show some self-awareness though. Come
>on, admit it, you like to see glaring errors repaired even when the
>subject flops about a bit trying to keep you away from them. This
>meets with a bit of hostility from people who were doing something
>different than "participating in a mutually beneficial exchange".
Well, sure. The problem is that people feel like they lose big if they
admit they've been wrong about anything, ever. If we could clean that
one up the rest would move a lot faster.
>> I enjoyed understanding David Perry. As fast as I understood he had
>> to shift to something else. I think he got tired of it after
>> awhile, but it was fun while it lasted.
>That was pretty cool. I dunno though, once you drive a guy like that
>into his empty core *then* what's he supposed to do? It's interesting
>that some of the people you try to understand are the ones who are the
>most conscious of being on stage.
He'll try something new. The people who see that they're playing a
role are usually the most receptive to picking up a better one. People
who think they _are_ their role get upset to see that it isn't perfect
as it is, since they don't think they can change it. After all, they
wouldn't be _them_ any more. And it seems like a kind of suicide to
become somebody else. Worse than suicide, because it isn't a grand
gesture and people don't even know you're gone. There's somebody kind
of like you walking around, cleaning up your life, and people don't
even miss you, they don't even understand that you're dead, they like
the new you better than the old one and even the new one hardly
remembers you or what you were like. Once people get past _that_
hangup they're ready to really get unstuck.
Jet
"What is new and different is always connected to old roots, the
truly vital roots that must be carefully selected from those that
have merely survived." Bela Bartok
STUART
sod that join the holly church of the MOOBAH......problems with
pixies, goblins etc.....we can deal with them!!!!!! thou shalt drink
beer (the holy blood) thou shall eat curry (the holy flesh).
join today... the first way to salvation is seeing the problem....
yes look closely you too can see the little devils....THEY GET
EVERYWHERE....the war has begun.....join your fellow man
in the war....together united the pixies be defeated!!!!
if you are christian, budist whatever join now...it's not to late!!!
atheists....this is the ideal org for you.....the holy sign is upon
us..... THE LEGEND GROWS!
DR. ROCKET
.. "We" are angsters ..
> Nobody's in control.
"It serves our purposes well when plebeians believe such a thing."
- Chief CEO, The Dow Chemical Corporation.
> Once the system is too big to fit into one head,
.. you get several and join them in a REID controller ..
> I was on the subway with my master, and these 4 big guys came and
> asked us for money.
"Send money," they read from their leaflets, advertising
themselves as representatives of TheDavidTrustFund.
> I was the student so it was my job to deal with them.
"I always do the dirty work," you said wearily, "That's why they
call me the Dirty Jonah."
> So I sympathised with them,
"Poor lazy bastards," you muttered, "y'all are pathetic indeed."
> and noted that they didn't really want handouts, they wanted
> to make a real contribution.
.. at which point you looked them over tip to toe and intoned,
"But for only 5 dollars in contributions, I can turn you all into
REAL men, like myself."
> Mass culture is a communication tool, not a satisfaction tool.
To be flashed subliminally on every ad, every flag, every
product and every Voice of America broadcast .. From this
day to eternity.
> It's simple enough that immigrants can quickly learn enough to
> communicate.
.. making them amenable for even more mass culture ..
> Not profoundly, but enough to get by.
"This is MY Brooklyn Bridge!"
> I doubt they're satisfied by it either.
Oh, they are. While they still HAVE the Brooklyn Bridge, that is.
> >Another is that repressed bourgeois people have condemned something
> >in either them or their pasts that is essential to their character, and
> >so hypocritical smarminess in general is attacked. Another yet is
> >that illusions that are offered to folks as a panacea have been found
> >to be false and often a front for exploitation, and so hope and
> >"truth" are rejected as well. The pain leads deeper into the darkness
> >but it also leads out of it. Even lingering too long in the pain is
> >attacked.
> I haven't noticed much that isn't attacked. "Alt.angst is not a
> support group." 8-)
Alt.angst = Oklahoma Enhanced. "You ain't worth shit, boy,
and here are a thousand intricate psychological reasons why."
> The problem is that people feel like they lose big if they admit they've
> been wrong about anything, ever.
To be precise, people feel like they will be EATEN ALIVE if
they've been wrong about anything, ever. There is a very good
reason for this, and it has something to do with sharks.
> The people who see that they're playing a role are usually the most
> receptive to picking up a better one.
And some can be very discriminating.
> People who think they _are_ their role get upset to see that it isn't
> perfect as it is, since they don't think they can change it.
"Just as I wuz getting cozy" ..
> After all, they wouldn't be _them_ any more
> And it seems like a kind of suicide to become somebody else.
Especially if that somebody else is.. JULIE PHEASANT-ALBRIGHT!
> There's somebody kind of like you walking around, cleaning up your life,
.. sipping Victory Gin and loving Big Brother ..
> and people don't even miss you,
"No, I don't feel the same"
> they don't even understand that you're dead,
.. they're too busy draining the remains of your energy ..
> they like the new you better than the old one
.. it being almost as dead as they are, hence soothing ..
> and even the new one hardly remembers you or what you were like.
The downside of doublethink.
> Once people get past _that_ hangup they're ready to really get
> unstuck.
And THEN Dr. Jonah teaches them how to become Brain
Vampyres.
Always ready with a professional commentary,
- DR. ROCKET
resident psychopath psychoanalyst.
Jonah Thomas
Hi, David!
In <5iaab0$p...@clarknet.clark.net> thed...@clark.net ('David O'
Bedlam') writes:
>Jonah Thomas (jeth...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>[...]
>: GS is General Semantics,
>Is that a corporation? Or "military English"?
it's a cult based loosely on the philosophical traditions of
"semantics" and "semiotics", given the name General Semantics maybe to
imply that it applies to a broader range of experience.
>: Their doctrine is derived from neurophysiology
>The way "Heaven's Gate" was influenced by Carl Sagan?
No, they took the neurophysiology of the early 1950's (when they were
getting established) and made some common-sense conclusions. Like,
your senses are limited and can't detect a lot of the things that
1950's physics says are going on. And what the senses can detect gets
filtered before it even reaches your brain. And various parts of your
brain filter it more before it reaches anything that could be called
your consciousness. And then when you try to fit the experience to
language the language doesn't fit particularly well -- but lots of
times it's the words you remember later. So just because you gave the
same name to different events doesn't mean they're "really" all that
much alike. There can be very different "loves" or very different
"betrayals".
>: and is almost completely harmless unless you're deep into
>philosophy.
>At which point it becomes an moronic annoyance, like $cientology.
Yes. By claiming that their doctrines derive from experimental science
they tend to want to claim that they're "true", that there's some
essential validity to them. They don't make that claim full-time, they
stress that it's all provisional and they'll replace it with something
better as soon as they find something better, but when they talk
doctrine they still get that ring of absolute belief. Some
philosophers have some other conflicting beliefs that leads them to
dismiss it like Scientology, while others point out the fundamental
philosophical flaw in believing there's any essential truth to ideas
that are based on experience or experimental data. Of course, this
level of philosophy doesn't have much practical application.
>: They encourage something called a "cortico-thalamic pause",
>A what? How is that different from a fibular-esophageal delay?
What's that? I can't say what the difference is when I've never heard
of the latter.
>: where before reacting automatically you're supposed to wait
>: a second or two
>So before you react automatically you should _automatically_ stop?
There's a training process. From what I saw of Janet I'd have to say
it works. I couldn't start arguments with her. She kept noticing what
she wanted to do instead of argue. It was infuriating, but then she'd
ask me what I wanted and I wouldn't be able to tell her. I wanted to
have a big argument and then go away and sulk and find a Dairy Queen
and get a dilly bar and spend some time alone and then come back and
make up. And I wanted it to be her fault. I wanted a woman who'd be
crazy for me when I wanted her to, not somebody who was saner than I
was.
>: and notice what else is going on,
>Such as whether the light's _really_ changed, I 'spose.
The doctrine was that it takes 1-2 seconds for your endocrine system to
catch up to your thoughts. So it takes that long to notice how you
really feel. That fits my experience.
>: reminding yourself that you don't ever have the whole
>: picture and this situation isn't the same as any in your past.
>WHOOEY. Sounds complicated. Don't try this at home, kids!
No harm from trying it, but it works best in the full context. If you
get the emotional impact that you really fundamentally don't know
what's going on, it affects all your reactions. You have to choose,
you can't just wait til all the information's in because it never will
be. So you have to choose without really knowing. And what you've
seen before doesn't really tell you about this experience, what it
reminds you of will have some similarities or it wouldn't remind you,
but still you just don't know. It isn't that complicated, but to sense
that by habit takes some discipline.
>P.S. Does Jonah remind anyone else of Eddie Murphy's prison skit?
I haven't seen it, what's it like?
Say, did you know you're coming across as slightly antagonistic?
What's that about? Are things going OK for you? How have things been,
you haven't been posting much. I'm glad to hear you're HIV-.
Are you opposed to the idea of joining a cult? I think if I was going
to join one, this is probably the nicest one I've seen. They actually
encourage their members to notice what they want and go out and get it.
That's probably why they don't have more members, people keep dropping
out to go get what they want, instead of devoting all their efforts to
spreading the cult.
Elena Barker
dfi...@alumni.ysu.edu (DJF) writes:
> Funny, but to me the
> so-called never changing seascape holds greater detail than any cityscape
> I've ever seen - and I've seen a shithouse full of 'em.
Seas are beautiful. The water changes with weather, time and season,
and each expanse of water has a character of its own - compare the
exuberant, icy North Sea with the placid, level Solent or the strong,
steady Atlantic.
A few people have eyes like the sea, changing dramatically from one
colour to another with light and circumstance, from chestnut brown to
gold, from olive green to tawny brown or from a light, lucid green to
a clouded grey-blue, and I am invatiably attracted to them.
Yet, pretty eyes are not a sign of a pleasant person, just as a
beautiful sea is not necessarily a kind one.
-El-
--
Elena, Lorelei of Strathbogie
----elena....@zetnet.co.uk
Jonah Thomas
In <01bc438b$c33cfb40$a8c5...@sputnik.hyperioninc.com> "DR. ROCKET"
<no...@your.head> writes:
>Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> The problem is that people feel like they lose big if they admit >>
they've been wrong about anything, ever.
> To be precise, people feel like they will be EATEN ALIVE if
> they've been wrong about anything, ever. There is a very good
> reason for this, and it has something to do with sharks.
No. Try it. Some time when you've made a whopping mistake and people
are ready to eat you alive over it, say "Sorry, I was wrong" and watch
the results. Unlike sea sharks, they need a thrashing, bleeding
victim.
DAL
Jonah Thomas (jeth...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: In <01bc438b$c33cfb40$a8c5...@sputnik.hyperioninc.com> "DR. ROCKET":
: >> The problem is that people feel like they lose big if they admit >>
: they've been wrong about anything, ever.
: > To be precise, people feel like they will be EATEN ALIVE if
: > they've been wrong about anything, ever. There is a very good
: > reason for this, and it has something to do with sharks.
:
: No. Try it. Some time when you've made a whopping mistake and people
: are ready to eat you alive over it, say "Sorry, I was wrong" and watch
: the results. Unlike sea sharks, they need a thrashing, bleeding
: victim.
No matter how predatory the surroundings you're the person advancing
when an error is openly announced, though that doesn't mean to run
through the streets screaming at the top of ones lungs. Lowlife soulsucking
scumbags are evidently at your heels and gibbering with glee at your
error. Let them enjoy their momentary pleasure, they have very little
hope of progressing beyond the confines of misery. Do you notice the
freedom a simple act of being honest can provide?
Being truthful can free a person from many demons, but there are those held
captive without truly knowing how bound they've become.
The scene of Beethoven's "Fidelio" with an imprisioned wretch chained to
the floor, reminds me of the darkness that covers such people. Perhaps they
hold their demons all too close, and reject happiness out of abject terror.
--
Doktor Faustus
"I see the meaning of life, All things that I know now, I wish I didn't,
I know too much truth, It makes me see the futility, Sometimes I think,
My heart was broken before I was born, And I spent all this time,
Staggering around, Vainly trying to mend what cannot be mended..."
-- Henry Rollins
Orion Auld
>In <5hu4as$7...@angst.rsn.hp.com> oa...@convex.hp.com (Orion Auld)
>wrote:
>>In <5hspe2$k...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com> jeth...@ix.netcom.com(Jonah
>Thomas) writes:
>>tHeM is an emergent phenomenon. We all spend some portions of our
>>life playing tHeM for someone. (Some of us spend more time than
>>others, of course.) Most interesting phenomena are at least partially
>>emergent; to say otherwise is to say that it is the product of a
>>single intelligence, and is therefore fully comprehensible by a single
>>intelligence.
>I haven't gotten a lot of use out of the "emergent" concept. It's
>mostly a negative.
I think its most common use is to expose the "lie of intent", but
I think it has other uses.
>>These kinds of systems are self-maintaing in that they provide
>>incentives for people with short-term interests to maintain the
>>system.
>How do they do that? Is there a pattern to it or is it all ad hoc?
This is what you've been discussing in other parts of the thread:
how the system lends power to people that obey certain rules. It
follows that exposing and rule violations enhances one's own power
by removing someone else's. Coalitions therefore grow and decline,
and change, based on this phenomenon. And there are many other
subsidiary phenomena which contribute, e.g. the desire for gossip.
The only people who can stand above this are those who have other
sources of power: those who are physically beautiful and/or popular
for other reasons, those who are sufficiently introverted (read that
"internally driven"), those with strong philosophical or religious
convictions, those who are also members of other societies with different
rules. None of these things guarantee immunity, of course.
The upshot is that, for the most part, we're all tHeM, though some
of us less so than others. Whether it's through gossip, berating
people whose convictions are different than our own, or explicitly
deconstructing worldviews we believe to be incomplete or harmful,
we all play a role in some kind of coalition whose agenda (I am
purposefully personifying the phenomenon here though I know it is
emergent) is to levy social pressure to force conformance. This
does not deny our responsibility to choose when and where to be
tHeM, though.
DCraig
>dfi...@alumni.ysu.edu (DJF) writes:
>> Funny, but to me the
>> so-called never changing seascape holds greater detail than any cityscape
>> I've ever seen - and I've seen a shithouse full of 'em.
Elena Barker <elena....@zetnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Seas are beautiful. The water changes with weather, time and season,
>and each expanse of water has a character of its own - compare the
>exuberant, icy North Sea with the placid, level Solent or the strong,
>steady Atlantic.
>
I've spent most of my life close to the pacific and the color is
infinitely, subtley variable. At times it's deep blue grey green with
whitecaps dancing off shore. At other times it can be placid and
calm, blue green coolness on a bright sunburned summer day. On winter
nights the noise of storm surf booming on the beach carried on the
winds makes you realize it also rages, the faint white lines of
whitewater in the dark shimmering in the blackness as the first few
drops of rain splat hard in the wind as if running to shore afraid of
the noise.
>A few people have eyes like the sea, changing dramatically from one
>colour to another with light and circumstance, from chestnut brown to
>gold, from olive green to tawny brown or from a light, lucid green to
>a clouded grey-blue, and I am invatiably attracted to them.
>
>Yet, pretty eyes are not a sign of a pleasant person, just as a
>beautiful sea is not necessarily a kind one.
>
Of course.
DCraig.
Jonah Thomas
In <5idp19$7...@angst.rsn.hp.com> oa...@convex.hp.com (Orion Auld)
wrote:
>In <5i9mm1$2...@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com> jeth...@ix.netcom.com(Jonah
Thomas) writes:
>>In <5hu4as$7...@angst.rsn.hp.com> oa...@convex.hp.com (Orion Auld)
>>wrote:
>>>life playing tHeM for someone. (Some of us spend more time than
>>>others, of course.) Most interesting phenomena are at least
>>>partially emergent; to say otherwise is to say that it is the
>>>product of a single intelligence, and is therefore fully
>>>comprehensible by a single intelligence.
>>I haven't gotten a lot of use out of the "emergent" concept. It's
>>mostly a negative.
>I think its most common use is to expose the "lie of intent", but
>I think it has other uses.
That's a negative use. Somebody says "If we just understand the
fundamental rules then we'll understand it all" and you can plausibly
refute them. Somebody says "There are things that no set of simple
rules can explain, therefore it was all made by God" and you can
plausibly refute him too. I've gotten tired of refuting silly claims.
There are so many of them, and they don't get fewer for being refuted.
>>>These kinds of systems are self-maintaing in that they provide
>>>incentives for people with short-term interests to maintain the
>>>system.
>>How do they do that? Is there a pattern to it or is it all ad hoc?
>This is what you've been discussing in other parts of the thread:
>how the system lends power to people that obey certain rules. It
>follows that exposing and rule violations enhances one's own power
>by removing someone else's. Coalitions therefore grow and decline,
>and change, based on this phenomenon. And there are many other
>subsidiary phenomena which contribute, e.g. the desire for gossip.
There are "rules" for getting "power". Do the right things and it
might follow as a result. There are _perceived_ rules. Follow them
and people generally tend to believe that good things should happen as
a result. Exposing other people's violation of perceived rules will
affect how third parties think of them. When somebody breaks the
_real_ rules it may or may not help to point it out. It's a puzzle.
And people mostly don't get "power". What they get is the right to be
the ones that play roles that are considered to have power. But
they're even more tightly constrained in what they do than the rest,
and if they don't toe the line just right they lose their power and get
replaced by somebody who's better at the role. It's only the illusion
of power, if the question is independent action. But being generally
seen as powerful is fun.
>The only people who can stand above this are those who have other
>sources of power: those who are physically beautiful and/or popular
>for other reasons, those who are sufficiently introverted (read that
>"internally driven"), those with strong philosophical or religious
>convictions, those who are also members of other societies with
>different rules. None of these things guarantee immunity, of course.
If power means taking initiative, then you've pointed out people who're
less likely to look to the system for their cues. If power means
taking the initiative and influencing the course of things, it's
harder. Popular people who do unexpected things tend to become
unpopular. Shy people tend to succeed in being ignored. Members of
other societies have their own rules and may receive the suggestion to
go back where they came from. Philosophical and religious convictions
tend to get misunderstood, but when the society is ready for a change a
new philosophy can get attached to the change. I dunno.
>The upshot is that, for the most part, we're all tHeM, though some
>of us less so than others. Whether it's through gossip, berating
>people whose convictions are different than our own, or explicitly
>deconstructing worldviews we believe to be incomplete or harmful,
>we all play a role in some kind of coalition whose agenda (I am
>purposefully personifying the phenomenon here though I know it is
>emergent) is to levy social pressure to force conformance. This
>does not deny our responsibility to choose when and where to be
>tHeM, though.
Oh! By looking for an amorphous social controller, we of course find
it. And then we interpret anything that happens in those terms. But
it's only an interpretation. If we assume that there's something that
forces conformance, everything that leads to conformance is part of
that something. But let's flip it around. Suppose that it's hard to
get the same idea into two heads. Almost impossible. And all our
cultural things are mostly appearance, people mimicking each other
mostly without knowing what they're doing, and it mostly doesn't have
any great significance. Something that people do in their loneliness,
to encourage the illusion that they're communicating. And all the
controls are superficial controls, like a sort of social immune
reaction. If it sort of looks wrong it gets a response. Lots of
mistakes get made, of no particular significance except to the people
they happen to. Each of us is alone, trying to make sense of things
that just sort of accidentally evolved. And we imagine a tHeM that
made it happen -- sort of a comforting idea, given the alternative.
Orion Auld
>>>I haven't gotten a lot of use out of the "emergent" concept. It's
>>>mostly a negative.
>>I think its most common use is to expose the "lie of intent", but
>>I think it has other uses.
>That's a negative use.
Yes, I was agreeing that that was its most common use, especially in
casual conversation.
>Somebody says "If we just understand the
>fundamental rules then we'll understand it all" and you can plausibly
>refute them. Somebody says "There are things that no set of simple
>rules can explain, therefore it was all made by God" and you can
>plausibly refute him too. I've gotten tired of refuting silly claims.
>There are so many of them, and they don't get fewer for being refuted.
Not all arguments which incorrectly use personification or anthropomorphism are
this obvious or silly, though.
>>>>These kinds of systems are self-maintaing in that they provide
>>>>incentives for people with short-term interests to maintain the
>>>>system.
>There are "rules" for getting "power". Do the right things and it
>might follow as a result. There are _perceived_ rules. Follow them
>and people generally tend to believe that good things should happen as
>a result. Exposing other people's violation of perceived rules will
>affect how third parties think of them. When somebody breaks the
>_real_ rules it may or may not help to point it out.
Well, that's true for "percieved" rules, too. I don't think there's
much of a difference, actually, in the context that we've been discussing.
>It's a puzzle.
>And people mostly don't get "power". What they get is the right to be
>the ones that play roles that are considered to have power.
I'm not sure that there is a difference. The difference is especially
minimal when we talk about "social power". In fact, that's probably what
power in the context of societies means: the filling of certain social
roles. It's true that this kind of power evaporates once the shared
illusion dissipates, but that's true for most kinds of power.
>But
>they're even more tightly constrained in what they do than the rest,
>and if they don't toe the line just right they lose their power and get
>replaced by somebody who's better at the role. It's only the illusion
>of power, if the question is independent action. But being generally
>seen as powerful is fun.
I don't think that independent action *is* the question. (See below.)
You're right that social power can constrain, and that people who don't
have it have more ability to go their own way (in some senses). This is
absolutely true.
In any case, even if there is some sort of distinction, my point is that
there are some obvious short-term incentives for people to follow social
rules, whether "actual" or "percieved". Even if the power that's lent is
illusory, it's a shared illusion, and that's all that matters. Even if
it's just because being seen as powerful is "fun", it's a strong enough
incentive to modify people's behavior, which was the original point.
>Oh! By looking for an amorphous social controller, we of course find
>it. And then we interpret anything that happens in those terms. But
>it's only an interpretation. If we assume that there's something that
>forces conformance, everything that leads to conformance is part of
>that something. But let's flip it around. Suppose that it's hard to
>get the same idea into two heads. Almost impossible. And all our
>cultural things are mostly appearance, people mimicking each other
>mostly without knowing what they're doing, and it mostly doesn't have
>any great significance. Something that people do in their loneliness,
>to encourage the illusion that they're communicating. And all the
>controls are superficial controls, like a sort of social immune
>reaction. If it sort of looks wrong it gets a response. Lots of
>mistakes get made, of no particular significance except to the people
>they happen to. Each of us is alone, trying to make sense of things
>that just sort of accidentally evolved.
Perhaps you are distracted by my own deliberate anthropomorphizations and
personifications. Once you've removed all of the judgements about
what's "superficial" and "significant" here -- ideas that are really
not applicable -- you have a pretty good description of an emergent
phenomenon.
David O' Bedlam
Jonah Thomas (jeth...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: I've gotten tired of refuting silly claims. There are so many of
: them, and they don't get fewer for being refuted.
Which is exactly my take on Jonah's statements ostensibly about me.
TheD.
--
"Spare the tire iron, | This Post Copyright (C) 1997 TheDavid, UnLtd.
spoil the people." | http://www.clark.net/pub/thedavid/trythis.html