The OP is kind of formally phrased because that's the way I like to write about this kind of stuff, but the purpose is as much to get general ideas/feedback on an issue that I think is important and bothers me personally as it is to stimulate a conversation on theory.

(I don't remember most of the theoretical background. I'd have to look it up and pretend I did. :smile: But as mentioned there's Frankfurt School there for sure.)

That is one of the things I am definitely saying, yes. I think @unenlightened said something similar in a recent thread that may partly be responsible for me thinking about this.

Is lack of purpose something you were trying to address? — Shawn

The proliferation of identities within a self equates to a proliferation of often conflicting purposes that can negate each other. So, yes, effectively.

I haven't read Fromm in years so I'm not sure but it's a Frankfurt-School type point, so quite possibly. I'll look into the logotherapy connection. Thanks.

Kind of. It's compatible with what I'm saying but it doesn't quite capture my thesis and I gave a better tl:dr in the second sentence. It would have been nice if you'd read that far. :lol:

I mean feel free to skip a few paragraphs but man...

One way of approaching the concept of person is to follow a thread from personality to self to person, interweaving notions of narrative (language), society, and physical individuality.

Personality:

A set of dispositions, behaviours, and impressions to which a coherent and distinguishable narrative can be attached (this is not to suggest a requirement of integrity or consistency as the notion of a scattered or incoherent personality is itself a coherent narrative, i.e. a stable and clear judgement).

Personality is not exclusively human. It can be applied to other animate beings and even inanimate objects. It presumes the aforementioned narrative, the type we use when assessing/predicting the state of others onto which we can project characteristics we note in ourselves during the process of self-awareness (in order to understand others in some relation to ourselves and therefore formulate ways to react to or control them) but it doesn’t presume self-awareness.

We can correctly talk of cats and dogs and even places or things as having personalities because we can derive from them a consistency of disposition, behaviour, and impression that equates to the same basic standard of narrative we apply to persons. A human, animal, thing or place may equally (though in different ways) be referred to as, e.g. creepy, unpredictable, and untrustworthy or bright, friendly and happy.

Self:

A self is a personality + conceptual self-awareness. That is, a narrative that continuously refreshes itself through self-observation, a self-sustaining, self-referential narrative, a story that writes itself on the basis of itself. Being a narrative, it is fundamentally linguistic (conceptual) and being linguistic it is fundamentally social. And in order to be the particular narrative we refer to as a “self”, it requires a limit so that it may relate to that which allows its expression. Its social aspect is dependent then on that limit, which is the body. So a self is a self-creating abstraction fuelled by the interaction of the linguistic layered over the social and sustained by the concrete differentiation of bodies. And analagous to words' status as meaningful abstractions being sustained by their differentiation from each other in linguistic systems, we selves are meaningful self-referential abstractions sustained by our concrete differentiation in bodies in social systems. The only selves we know of are located in human bodies.

Person:

A person is a socially named self (self-aware set of behaviours, dispositions, and impressions located in a body). Or how society refers to selves. Recognized formally/legally under the concept of personhood and informally as one of the concept “people”. Another way to put it is "person" is how society conceptualizes its social atoms of meaning, just as words are conceptualized as linguistic atoms of meaning.

Lost my big boy pants. :sad:



:up:

Was it deleted because I wrote so little, just drawing your attention to it? — petrichor

Yes, there's nothing wrong with the subject, but your "OP" was just a short question. Something like, "What do you think of Chat GPT?". If that's all the effort you're going to put in, you can ask in the Shoutbox. If you want to write an OP, you should really have a couple of paragraphs and a thesis. You can repost again if you write a longer OP.

Maybe take a look at this: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op

It doesn't have to be that in-depth, but it does need to have some substance.

Kind of, but I think ideological control is more complicated and deeper than you paint it, which seems to be progressive/PC = bad vs libertarian (or who?) = good. It encompasses this dichotomy and more. It's structured in the very way we express ourselves regardless of our surface ideologies and forms the basis on which we can coherently fight battles we think are important but hardly ever get us anywhere. Maybe for another thread...

We're probably drifting off topic, so I won't say much more on this except to advise if you set your sights a little lower, you might hit something. The overwrought rhetoric shouldn't be necessary.

Another way to put this is you are not arguing against totalitarianism at all, you are arguing against other stuff and using the concept of totalitarianism as a rhetorical device to try to get people more interested/excited.

E.g. again:

Totalitarianism refers to the belief that one ideology possesses the complete truth - this being by definition wrong makes every totalitarian system revolve around lies to keep the ideology intact. Propaganda, censorship, withholding of information, etc. are all instrumental to protecting the government ideology - we call them 'narratives' these days. And that's exactly what we're seeing today. — Tzeentch

You make some comparisons and suddenly magic happens and you've transformed regular government malpractice and corruption into totalitarianism:

"a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state."

https://www.google.com/search?q=totalitarianism&oq=totalitarianism&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l2.3808j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

But the magic doesn't work because no matter how many times you repeat the word, the U.S. (for example) is still not N. Korea, Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia.

You can stop avoiding the point now, namely that a little bit of shit in your pie ruins your pie, and a little bit of totalitarianism in your state ruins your state. — Tzeentch

Censorship etc is not uniquely totalitarian. Therefore, e.g., having a little bit of censorship in a state does not equate to having a little bit of totalitarianism in a state. And even if you get over that, you'd have much work to do demonstrating your thesis. A shit pie analogy won't do it. You're skipping a bunch of steps and elevating rhetoric over analysis. Keep in mind that the operative part of the term totalitarianism is "total" not "little bit". Littlebitarianism is not the bogey man here. Start from that realisation and work your way up.

As I said, according to your own analogy you are eating little bits of shit then. 'Cos that's all there is to eat and it beats total shit. Else, move to N. Korea, right?

Because otherwise you are eating that fruit pie with little bits of shit in it and presumably being thankful it's not 100% shit.

Ah, I see, so you've left your lying/censoring state behind and are now living... where?

I'd say when it's instrumentalized for political gain we are well within the realm of totalitarianism. — Tzeentch

When a food contains vitamin C, we are well within the realm of an orange. But the food might also be a kiwi or even a potato. Yes, there are some negatives that almost all forms of governments share but they can for all that be very different, even categorically so, because their categorisation is not as simple a process as identifying a common instance of a negative behavior.

When political entities spread lies, censor and withhold information they're mimicing totalitarian regimes — Tzeentch

Not really. There's no regime that ever existed that hasn't censored something or withheld some information or lied sometimes or produced some sort of propaganda. What defines a totalitarian regime is not that these things are done but the extent they are done.

True.

I note on Twitter the term "Jewlon Musk" now being applied because Elon banned Ye. Most likely from the same crowd that cheered Trump's return. Maybe at some point he'll realize these sorts are not worth pandering to.

Yep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

"The ruling represented a turning point on campaign finance, allowing unlimited election spending by corporations"

So, if corporations are people re free speech, again it seems to give them a right to say "no" to free speech absolutism through censorship and create an odd paradox for American free speech advocates.

That is not free speech. That's the free market speaking. — Hanover

I suppose I disagree on the interpretation here by taking the free market speaking freely to be a form of free speech. But, yes, Musk is a hypocrite and a grifter and will take full advantage of his celebrity status and those enamoured by it to slip all sorts of contradictory BS past.

Yes, but the doctrine "more free speech!" is itself an ideological injunction that is bound to be challenged under its own terms. The market can exercise its free speech through censorship. It says "Nazis and racists are bad for business". It can only be prevented from enacting this stance by restricting its free speech under the dictat of free speech absolutism.

Are you suggesting they've grown a conscience and are acting against their interests now? — Isaac

No, I was referring to unrestricted political donations being protected as a form of free speech in the US.

As long as you have political careers relying on political donations from corporations, you'll have said 'unholy alliance'. Ironically, such corrupt mutual backscratching is excused as an exercise in free speech.

:up: :100:

Disclaimer: I am not a financial adviser. :wink:

But, yes, if anyone's ever going to buy, it should be in a deep bear market or the start of a bull. Best of luck anyhow. :victory: I bought some ETH recently so I'm with ya.

There are several technical measurements that say now is a relatively good time to buy. But generally it's a matter of common sense. If you believe in the technology, you buy fear and sell greed and be prepared to wait for the market cycle to work its way out. And we are currently well into fear mode. But if you don't understand the tech enough to believe in it, I'd stay out of this market altogether because yes, everything could go down significantly more. e.g. Since its inception, ETH has gone from $10>>1400>>80>>4500>>1100 now. And that's the second least volatile coin. For the vast majority of the others , it's more like 1>>1000>>0.1.

Is it a trend that some the Super Bowl adds are for some new upstart companies a canary in the coal mine indicator (just notice what companies Super Bowl add is from my last comment above)? — ssu

The Super Bowl would have been a pretty good time to sell. But crypto as a whole is these days mostly just higher beta on U.S. stocks, which as you know follow rates/Fed balance sheet/liquidity. When the S and P bottoms that's likely crypto's bottom too. The tech isn't going anywhere.

Trump — 180 Proof

Perhaps they believe letting a criminal run the country is a greater risk. — NOS4A2

:rofl:

Your faith in the moral sensitivities of politicians is touching. Excuse me if I pass.

De Santis will be a big favourite over Biden but may not beat a better Dem.

They will be doing the Dems a huge favor if they can get enough mud to stick for Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. — Baden

Seems a bit self-destructive. They will be doing the Dems a huge favor if they can get enough mud to stick for Biden to drop out of the 2024 race. And if they can't, they'll look like idiots

Karl Marx's Irish Grandson. Not sure about football but he can belt a sliotar from one end of the pitch to the other.

I've said all I'm going to say on this anyhow. Please get back on topic.

People can get annoyed by others just for them being a certain race... letting that, knowingly or unknowingly, drive to a certain action against that person or group, should be considered racism, no? — Christoffer

Yes.

People can get annoyed by others just for... speaking a certain way, or presumably not being as fluent in a certain language, but letting that, knowingly or unknowingly, drive to a certain action against that person or group, should be considered racism, no? — Christoffer

No.

Again, there's no necessary connection between being annoyed at someone for speaking a certain way or not being fluent in a certain language and racism. Can't you think of a million non-racist examples of someone being annoyed at someone's speech?

(A presumption that non-native speakers have got something wrong just because they're a non-native speaker would be a prejudice, yes. I'm not saying there's no issue there. But there's no necessary connection to racism whatsoever any more than in the above example. )

So if someone punches you in the face because they don't like your race, that's a racist act. If they punch you in the face just because you are really annoying them, it's not. In this case, that is the relevant analogy.

You mean this guy on the right.

The reason for the act makes the racist in this case. There are lots of acts like that.

Funny enough, even as a native speaker I had to edit that because I somewhat misphrased it the first time. There you go, ain't none of us perfect!

Sounds like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

"Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark"), and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken"), even though that statement may not be true. This arises when a consequent ("the room would be dark") has other possible antecedents (for example, "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off" or "there is no lamp in the room")."

The consequent here "pointing out someone is wrong because they're a non-native speaker" has more than the one antecedent given in your example. i.e. A racist could make that comment and a non-racist could make it too.

I'm not getting involved in that. Maybe his claim is ridiculous or not. Maybe you and Chris understand Zelensky better or not. I'm just commenting on the complaint. Carry on.