"Thought police are very bad. This is why we must actually rigorously police gender and bodies in real life. I will be very Opppreseddddd if I can't do this". — Streetlight

Bears repeating.

a simple question of 'what is a woman? — M777

It's only a simple question if you have no concern at all for persons with gender dysphoria (et al) trying to make sense of their complicated feelings.

In short, if you're a fucking asshole - it's a simple question.

I blame The Algorithm. — Streetlight

The Algorithm exacerbated - inflamed - a pre-existing condition.

The arousal of defensive aggression via propaganda and social circumstances conducive to propagandistic coercion:

The arousal of defensive aggression by means of brain-washing can occur only in humans. In order to persuade people that they are threatened, one needs, above all, the medium of language; without this, most suggestion would be impossible. In addition, one needs a social structure that provides a sufficient basis for brainwashing. — Ibid

From Fromm's thesis statement (quoted in full above):

The main error of [the] instinctivists is to have confused the two kinds of drives, those rooted in instinct, and those rooted in character. — Ibid

So the question of character has become central. How does Fromm define character and why do some human beings have a destructive character?

(If I recall correctly, Fromm deploys the phrase "unlived life" as an explanation for the existence of a destructive character in man. But all in due time.)

The first sign of an answer to this question:

The sadistic person is sadistic because he is suffering from an impotence of the heart, from the incapacity to move the other, to make him respond, to make oneself a loved person. He compensates for that impotence with the passion to have power over others. — Ibid

But...

But the fact remains that man often acts cruelly and destructively even in situations that do not include crowding. Destructiveness and cruelty can cause him to feel intense satisfaction; masses of men can suddenly be seized by lust for blood. Individuals and groups may have a character structure that makes them eagerly wait for— or create— situations that permit the expression of destructiveness. — Ibid

Aggression-producing circumstances - for example, crowding - are more prevalent in human than in animal habitats.

...animals, too, exhibit extreme and vicious destructiveness when the environmental and social balance is disturbed, although this occurs only as an exception— for instance, under conditions of crowding. It could be concluded that man is so much more destructive because he has created conditions like crowding or other aggression-producing constellations that have become normal rather than exceptional in his history. Hence, man’s hyperaggression is not due to a greater aggressive potential but to the fact that aggression-producing conditions are much more frequent for humans than for animals living in their natural habitat. This argument is valid— as far as it goes... — Ibid

.

An aside on Freud's transition from a libido-centered theory to a theory centered on eros and thanatos:

Freud himself never claimed that the libido theory was a scientific certainty. He called it “our mythology,” and replaced it with the theory of the Eros and death “instincts.” It is equally significant that he defined psychoanalysis as a theory based on resistance and transference—and by omission, not on the libido theory...Freud’s revolution was to make us recognize the unconscious aspect of man’s mind and the energy which he uses to repress the awareness of undesirable desires. — Ibid

Fromm links the spirit of capitalism to instinctivist accounts of human destructiveness:

The instinctivist movement based on Darwin’s teaching reflects the basic assumption of nineteenth-century capitalism. Capitalism as a system in which harmony is created by ruthless competition between all individuals would appear to be a natural order if one could prove that the most complex and remarkable phenomenon, man, is a product of the ruthless competition among all living beings since the emergence of life. — Ibid

Fromm's thesis statement:

My thesis—to be demonstrated in the following chapters—is that destructiveness and cruelty are not instinctual drives, but passions rooted in the total existence of man. They are one of the ways to make sense of life; they are not and could not be present in the animal, because they are by their very nature rooted in the “human condition.” The main error of Lorenz and other instinctivists is to have confused the two kinds of drives, those rooted in instinct, and those rooted in character. — Ibid

:smile: It's a good feeling. As long as it lasts. :smile:

"does a metaphysical propositions's truth/falsity matter to us in any real, tangible way?" The answer was "no, it doesn't!" — Rocco Rosano

Could we not rid ourselves of the bulk of philosophy in this way?

For me, the Tao Te Ching is primarily, not incidentally, a metaphysical document. I — Clarky

I get that. Doing my best here to ferret out a locus of concurrence. Next we'll pick pistols for the partially-primarily gage. I call it progress. :smile:

We should start a petition to get it redefined into a more useful term. — universeness

The US congress, doing emphatically not shit, I'm thinking could squeeze it in between summer and fall, or Thanksgiving and Christmas, hiati.

I still say that it's mistaken to present the Tao Te Ching as an exemplar of metaphysics, — Wayfarer

Not, as a whole, an "exemplar," if you like. But it's defensible to hold that the Tao Te Ching has ontological, and therefore metaphysical, content.

As I said, I think this is too big a disagreement to be addressed here. — Clarky

True enough.

It easy to accept there's a kind of ontological thrust to the assertion of the Tao as prior to the creation of the ten thousand things. If ontology, then metaphysics.

At any rate, an argument can be made....

As the Tao Te Ching is amenable to vastly divergent interpretations, it makes sense that some folks call it metaphysics, others not so much.

Good policy :smile:

Got it. You trust a story published in The Wrap.

Nothing ulterior to see here.

From your source:

(Update: Amber Heard’s attorney says the claim that Heard is blackmailing Johnny Depp is “unequivocally false.”)

Johnny Depp Is Being Blackmailed by Amber Heard – Here’s How I Know (Guest Column)
Actor’s friend, comic Doug Stanhope, says that Heard was ”threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms“

DOUG STANHOPE Guest Writer | May 29, 2016 3:41 PM — karl stone

The Wrap? Nice source.

Only proves Baden's point, trusting a source like that.

Mark Twain who said "you cannot use rational argument to disabuse a man of a notion that was never arrived at rationally in the first place". — Isaac

Swift.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.


From memory so check it. :smile:


Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.

But I should learn not to waste time and energy where it will be ill-spent. Casting pearls before swine and all that... — Janus

It's good exercise but not a lot of meat on those bones.

Others find it filling.

No. Is it her view that "feelings are narratives"? That doesn't have the ring of precision to me, no matter how you parse it.

I'll leave that to Janus. I can see an a-priori-a-posteriori-esque tack surfacing. Or a (likely idiosyncratic) codification of degrees of certainty. All of it seems fine to me, but not my cup of tea. We'll continue to believe and to be and/or feel certain, regardless.



Headed back to the coliseum roar.

Fromm contra instinctivism - Lorenz's and others'.

Paleontology, anthropology, and history offer ample evidence against the instinctivistic thesis: (1) human groups differ so fundamentally in the respective degree of destructiveness that the facts could hardly be explained by the assumption that destructiveness and cruelty are innate; (2) various degrees of destructiveness can be correlated to other psychical factors and to differences in respective social structures, and (3) the degree of destructiveness increases with the increased development of civilization, rather than the opposite. Indeed, the picture of innate destructiveness fits history much better than prehistory. — Fromm, Ibid (bolds mine)

Fromm spends a good deal of time and space dressing down On Aggression by Conrad Lorenz:

Perhaps Lorenz’s neoinstinctivism was so successful not because his arguments are so strong, but because people are so susceptible to them, What could be more welcome to people who are frightened and feel impotent to change the course leading to destruction than a theory that assures us that violence stems from our animal nature, from an ungovernable drive for aggression, and that the best we can do, as Lorenz asserts, is to understand the law of evolution that accounts for the power of this drive? This theory of an innate aggressiveness easily becomes an ideology that helps to soothe the fear of what is to happen and to rationalize the sense of impotence. — Fromm, Ibid

Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression (K. Lorenz, 1966) became within a short time of its publication one of the most widely read books in the field of social psychology...[On Aggression] appeals to the thinking of many people today who prefer to believe that our drift toward violence and nuclear war is due to biological factors beyond our control, rather than to open their eyes and see that it is due to social, political, and economic circumstances of our own making. — Ibid

Lorenz’s assumption of forty thousand years of organized warfare is nothing but the old Hobbesian cliché of war as the natural state of man, presented as an argument to prove the innateness of human aggressiveness. — Ibid

Fromm's thesis: Malignant aggression..."is due to social, political, and economic circumstances of our own making."

If you could be wrong, then you are not certain. — Banno

This definition or rule is fine - it's the beginning and end of your argument.

@Janus's view is fine too.

I can feel certain 2+2=4.
I can be certain the sun will rise in the morning — Banno

You're ignoring Janus's view in favor of your own. Only natural.

But both are fine.

Not really interested in continuing this. Just passing through.

So....

I can be certain 2+2=4.
I can feel certain the sun will rise in the morning.


Is that what you had in mind?

Do you agree that there is a problem with the second sentence, but not with the first? Am I wrong here, and if so, how? — Banno

Yes, you're wrong. Here's how:

I am certain the sun will rise in the morning. But I could be wrong.

Feelings are all post hoc narratives — Isaac

Feelings are narratives? That doesn't seem right.

You might say feelings play a role in the construction of narratives...

if you're an idiot, you can't be cruel! — Agent Smith

So we might say: Thank god there's so many idiots about. :smile:

‘Miracles are not against nature, but against what we know of nature’ ~ St Augustine — Wayfarer

Filing away.

O sane and sacred death.

I'm not surprised. — Banno

You shouldn't be surprised as it's a fact-based assessment. Like when you started a thread called The Idiot's Argument and called all comers who didn't agree with you an idiot. The past isn't finished with you.





I forget who said it: You might be finished with the past but the past isn't finished with you.


Edit: turns out it's from the movie Magnolia where they try to claim it's from the Bible.


"And the book says, 'We may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.'"

You are not very good at reading or at presenting arguments without resorting to trying to belittle your opponents. — Janus

Completely agree with Janus here.

I don't think it apt to link self-contradiction and inspiration. Something not right there.

But all of us, I think, should envy Whitman's rubust tenacious inspiration.

Oh, oh: we're off script. — Bitter Crank

Thank god.

Whitman probably felt "full" -- not full of himself, but full of life, of people. Multitudes. — Bitter Crank

Absolutely that. Full of inspiration.