One thing that I want to know, for my own purposes, is how you and your wife kept it going through all of that? For real! It's (no-irony) heroic. My girlfriend & I have been through all sorts of ups and downs. It's hard to love a person through all of those tectonic shifts (especially when you think, deep down, they might deserve something better) — csalisbury

Yeah...well.....no. Not ready for that. For goodness sake, I told you about Full House. What more do you want from me. :meh:

I think you're on to something real and less than ideal, but maybe you're missing what is also the implied respect for men in the way they are picked on. They are implied to be strong enough to take it. So there's a respect to refuses to pity or excuse in that same meanness. Hearing what people really think of you is (within limits) a privilege. — syntax

That's certainly not how it feels to me. We can talk about it more later. I have to go to bed now.

it's very simple. I want the tclark book of

Five Tips For Being Married To Someone ( Its Ok Even Though Its Been a Long Time, We Love Each Other But Sometimes Still..)

I used to watch "Full House." Not the one that's on now, the original. I guess 25 years ago. It was the story about a widowed father, his three daughters, their uncle, and a good male friend. The opening credits showed all of them in the park; the baby and two young girls and the three men, having a picnic. Playing with each other. Laughing. It used to bring a tear to my eye to see men portrayed that way. I wish I could say it was a wonderful show, but it wasn't. It was dumb, poorly written, and poorly acted. Terrible. — T Clark

Hey, I've seen that show. I even watched one of the new seasons on Netflix. I love when stuff like that brings tears to my eyes. Oh what a sweet pleasure. (I never cry for myself. I suffer now and then in the frozen shit where Dante planted the devil, too damned mean to cry. :cry: ) But yeah that tenderness you mention is a beautiful thing. And I've had that at times, especially where drugs and music helped dissolve the usual hangups.

I acknowledge my social experience is pretty limited to my middle class town and friends. That's one of the reasons I want this discussion. I want to test my understanding with a broader scope. Other communities, other countries. — T Clark

The background is great, and I think it matters. I grew up in a small conservative town. Working class.
Lots of stupid meanness at my school. Orphans for the local orphanage were mocked (once) by literally hundreds of people at the same time. Total mob mentality. And lots of fights. Everyone loved a fight. I was in some of them, and I wasn't always the 'innocent' party. The worst insults (the fight or lose face insults) were homophobic. At some point I started to think that this homophobia was a fundamental block or enemy of ideal male consciousness. A truly 'manly' consciousness wouldn't deny itself anything. Dare to know, etc. But I only wanted to love other men as equals , very rare and mostly theoretical sexually asymmetrical thrillseeking aside.

I feel a strong 'male' identity. On a gut level I believe in the Marlboro man, nevermind Brokeback Mountain. I'm not superstitious about body parts. These body parts were just dominant symbols for that small town culture, so I wove them in to my negative theology. And I love the idea of women sharing this kind of consciousness with me. Camille Paglia gets it, in my book.

Playing with each other. Laughing. It used to bring a tear to my eye to see men portrayed that way. — T Clark

It definitely wasn't true of you, obviously, but many men and women absorbed images of gender roles where men were central to society, but peripheral in the home (emotionally anyway). Women were peripheral in society, central in the home.

Confusion followed the disintegration of those images. You don't realize the point of rigid social roles unless you've lived without them. Everything is trial and error.

What are you saying? I legitimately don't understand. You're talking about your posts, and how your posts, but I feel like --- it just feels like a platonic..post. I feel like I'm lacking nutrients. — csalisbury

It is not like we are talking about a groundbreaking theory here or getting nitty gritty about Kantian transcendental idealism or some such subject. I just like jokes, yo.

Nevertheless! To work in unity with ya'll speaking all personal, well my dad was a violent man because he was raised in a culture that afforded men such privileges to act out against women and even promoted violence as being parallel to 'masculinity' and my mother was reared to accept that as a cultural reality and a lifestyle that women cannot escape. She developed mental health issues but survived his ordeal - as we did - because of this 'normality' to such behaviour, something that perhaps works in contrast to your experience where your familial situation stood outside of community expectations, but I was a sensitive child and profoundly intelligent and aware so much so that though I was afraid of men and had trouble forming relationships with them even till this day, I was conscious enough to see that the paternalism was wrong, something no one else could see. I essentially had no mother or father because of his behaviour but I was successful in learning to become independent. I was very poor and worked with my family as a child so my problems aren't really first-world bullshit daddy didn't care stuff were rather difficult, but I see the problem beyond me, something cultural and social.

I found relief in high school with my friends where we would make videos or mockumentaries about the shit we were going through and this helped us because I was from a very low socio-economic background and all my friends pretty much had the same problems as me. This enabled me to articulate the seriousness of our experiences without the emotional pain that comes with it, on the contrary it promoted a sense of understanding or relief that worked as a conduit to make the experiences superfluous; the violence at home was a joke and it no longer hurt. Der Witz in Freudian terms, a release of those suppressed feelings that causes anxiety and depression that we instead paint our experiences in an easier way to swallow and digest, just like writing fiction or painting. It is a conscious strategy to access the unconscious, the emotional and turn it on its head. Humour also violates that aggressive seriousness of the ego or that absurdity where our expectations - such as this puffed up alpha male expectation that he will beat his opponent to the ground - suddenly appears pointless, silly even and makes you recognise a part of you that is, well, laughable.

Whenever you tell a person that they are 'wrong' or 'bad' they immediately go on the defence and within that lies the hostility; they will find excuses, they will attempt to make you look bad and therefore incapable of accuracy in your judgement of them, claim your arguments are bullshit and all because they do not want to appear inferior. Humour can free you from this defensive mechanism, a type of abstract thinking. While there is nothing intelligent about the joke itself per se - although there is strong correlations between humour and IQ which in contrast probably makes sense for why ass-holes tend to be idiots - but rather the purpose of joking is to challenge the rigidity of our ideas and make you see points of view that you would otherwise not see.

Well, a showcase of how NOT to play would be better, I think. I try not to play. I can't say I'm a big success, but I hope I'm not a total failure. — Πετροκότσυφας

To me the disappointing play is maybe the rule. When things get real (good play), wheels start to spin in this old heart. Working all of this out feels like an extremely deep kind of play. The play becomes conscious of itself. The play includes an attempt to unveil itself, or many such attempts. Intoxicating. I find it hard to turn it off once the wheels start spinning. I want the forum to be good, but I'm neglecting my responsibilities to write this.

Well, a showcase of how NOT to play would be better, I think. I try not to play. I can't say I'm a big success, but I hope I'm not a total failure. — Πετροκότσυφας

I still have your dolmades recipe, pal. Those hairy arms are burnt into my memory. So, nah, not a total failure.

It feels this way, indeed. But I think that after a certain point you can't really tell, so, even if only methodologically, the idea that it's play all the way down, should be abandoned — Πετροκότσυφας

Yeah, and just for clarification: I don't think it's play all the way the down. I 'believe' in something like final vocabularies. Our empathy and understanding have their limits. All play analysis can hope to do is maybe to knock down some fake limits. Or just help one develop style and charisma. Roughly speaking, I have a fantasy of the philosopher as a type of person who intentionally lives willingly and greedily in a tangled mess of ideologies and even enjoys surfing on the cognitive dissonance (endless 'foundationless' enrichment, aesthetically justified). But even here I think a fundamental faith in that fantasy has to be fixed. I have to unironically believe in being an ironist (which is also tied up for me with a notion of 'being a man' [freedom, godlessness]). So there is a foundation, but it is understood to live largely in the dark.

Well, I have a friend who sings to magpies, at least you're not that bad. — T Clark

Yeah, awkward moment. :meh:

This is really the first time I've sat down and tried to articulate my own feelings on the matter, so I'm not sure how to express it. That's one of the reasons I want this conversation. In your writing, I think you are more articulate on the subject than I am. Although you have a focus on the way women are treated with disrespect in your own life and your work, I've always liked that you recognize that the weight of society falls on men as well as women. You have always been very evenhanded. — T Clark

I am glad you see that I believe in men. Because I do. I believe women also have problems and it is entirely unfair to claim either of the sexes to be more wrong, but you also know that I studied international human rights law and that global numbers verify the exponential differences between the suffering of women at the hands of men, from rape to sexual slavery to domestic violence. There are a lot of bad men that act out against the vulnerable. This is therefore a cultural, socioeconomic and even a political problem much bigger than we would like to admit. The concept of masculinity and gender stereotypes that people act on enables a continuity of such aggression, because much of what we are is conditioned and only education and self-reflective practice can really allow us to transcend these prejudices.

In saying that, men are under a tremendous amount of pressure because of this concept of masculinity and many men do not really understand how to form that independence and a separateness from the emotional impact such expectations can have. Concepts of masculinity allow some such men appear weak and inferior providing people with the very opportunity to bully them; as I said earlier, you can bully women as being intellectually inferior by default of being a woman, but a man who does not present himself with such a rigorous, intellectual confidence and aggression is 'feminine' or 'like a woman'. It becomes a tool for Othering, bullying and controlling.

So men end up believing that in order to be a 'man' they must display such masculinity through either violence physically, verbally or even intellectually; as I said about when I was studying political science, intellectual 'masculinity' was a tool and my supervisor attempted to coerce me to Marxism because the latter was the masculine approach, when my methodology was too 'feminine' (human rights is apparently feminine). Their interpretation of what a 'man' is and what a 'woman' is becomes textbook artificial stereotypes just as much as what 'masculinity' and 'femininity' implies; as a woman, I am not supposed to speak back to a man, but be all gentle and fluffy and say you are amazing ( :roll: ) and ultimately these men form an identity that believes such faux "ideology" stereotypes to be accurate representations of themselves and others, their perceptions of the external world are given to them rather than formed independently.

What hurts me about this is that there are so many good men out there that become trapped because of the threat of being different. I respect men as equals and admire them for their qualities, but these concepts don't allow people to see men for who they really are but compare them to these stereotypes. It is sad, actually.

I have no idea what it said, but I am so full-blasting it while making Horiatiki. :lol:

The background is great, and I think it matters. I grew up in a small conservative town. Working class.
Lots of stupid meanness at my school. Orphans for the local orphanage were mocked (once) by literally hundreds of people at the same time. Total mob mentality. And lots of fights. Everyone loved a fight. I was in some of them, and I wasn't always the 'innocent' party. The worst insults (the fight or lose face insults) were homophobic. At some point I started to think that this homophobia was a fundamental block or enemy of ideal male consciousness. A truly 'manly' consciousness wouldn't deny itself anything. Dare to know, etc. But I only wanted to love other men as equals , very rare and mostly theoretical sexually asymmetrical thrillseeking aside. — syntax

Tried to sleep. Couldn't.

As I intimated, I recognize my life has been pretty protected and my experience limited. I've been wanting to test my understanding of the women/men thing for a while with people who've had significantly different experiences.

To me the disappointing play is maybe the rule. When things get real (good play), wheels start to spin in this old heart. Working all of this out feels like an extremely deep kind of play. The play becomes conscious of itself. The play includes an attempt to unveil itself, or many such attempts. Intoxicating. I find it hard to turn it off once the wheels start spinning. I want the forum to be good, but I'm neglecting my responsibilities to write this. — syntax

Thanks for the opportunity to quote on of my favorite poems. As always, Robert Frost. "Two Tramps in Mud Time."

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Beautiful poem. Frost is great. And that's how I feel. Doing philosophy good conversation just feels like really living to me (the deed being truly done.)

*This isn't a very direct response to your post, though I did read it. I guess I'm steering things back to the intellectual forum situation, to a specific kind of humiliation. Also would have responded sooner, but missed your reply at first.

I have had men do it with me on a number of occasions, because I have a strong presence but I am actually very gentle inside so it was difficult for me to tolerate without getting hurt. — TimeLine

I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. Fixed ideas get shredded. The new part of the self is born from the death of an old part of self.

I think that you are maybe like me in having little fear of ideas as long a basic human respect is in play.

The tricky part (and I think you know all this and will agree) is that identities are intimately tied up with fixed ideas. Moreover, the language of 'private' thought is always potentially public. That means that as I brew up the death of one of my own sub-selves, I am also brewing up what others could experience as the deepest kind of poison to their currently sanity-sustaining word-sense of self. Anyway, I find myself loving a kind of fierceness of thought in myself that also scares some people away. I tend to stay loyal to that fierceness though, with occasional flashes of guilt (?) just for having personality. I think guilt of having personality is related to but different from the guilt of being a man. Men are the scary gender, the violent gender. Women are no angels, but I know the eerie possibilities of the male soul more intimately. (I do know a particular woman very well, and her meanness potential is cute by comparison. An exaggeration? A fantasy? ) I also know or just believe that personality is a city built on a sleeping volcano. Sometimes that volcano will sleep through an entire life, but one eruption is enough to change or erase everything.

It's all pretty twisted, because this 'fierceness' of thought is trying to strip away false personality in one sense (get to simple mammalian love and joyful embodiment as 'true' Christianity and Tao) and attain a kind of ('masculine') statue-like invulnerably. And also crank out memes, be a successful poet-comedian-philosopher, even if all the ideas are old. A civilized version of this is basic recognition of sharing the 'big' secret with others (that there is none, maybe, or that it's sub-intellectual) and engaging in a generous competition on the creative level (the creation and exchange of little secrets.) But (dark thought) I don't think it's automatic that one feels that another person is a full-fledged peer. We arrive at a party and look around for the people that we really like. We have our favorites, and the best one can do (?) is be gentle and minimize the 'guilt of having a personality.' I mention this because I don't want to be mistaken as more sentimental or unrealistic than I think I am.

All hail the eternal psychological triangle.

Two horses and a charioteer - Plato.
Id, superego and ego - Freud.
Child, parent, adult - Berne.

Identity is division, as what I am and what I am not. And to reflect upon that is to externalise it again, creating the third as analyst/observer.

I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. — syntax

If I point out that this is the primary characterisation of Cancerians in astrology, it is with the intent to disrupt the relation - as being too comfortable, too universal. Rather as "a good sense of humour" is. But that is an aside; I want more to draw attention to the triple nature - "I" relates to "my outside" and "my inside".

The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. — syntax

Hang on, I thought you were gentle inside? But no...

It's all pretty twisted, because this 'fierceness' of thought is trying to strip away false personality in one sense (get to simple mammalian love and joyful embodiment as 'true' Christianity and Tao) and attain a kind of ('masculine') statue-like invulnerably. — syntax

What you relate is the opposite of what you relate to; you relate being hard on the inside but perform it gently on the outside.

I'm sorry to pick on you, it's only that you were conveniently at the end of the thread when I came to it -nothing personal. What I want to get to through this triple nature of psychology is something that has been both demonstrated and expressed in the thread, that a psychological theory is always itself analysable psychologically through a meta-theory, or through itself. The transactions of a a thread on transactional analysis are being analysed. Curiously, or not, this does not require a fourth element, but merely takes the superior position of adult/analyst/observer/ charioteer, to comment on the interactions of the participants, just as I am doing here. Personally, I don't much like Berne, his theory is just an emasculated version of Freud, with the gloss of capitalist universalism as rational, or perhaps irrational self-interest.

There is no end, and thus no real progress to analysis, and by analysis, I mean to include neuro-behaviourisms etc as much as the psychoanalytic tradition. There is a continuous stepping out of oneself to look at the division created by stepping out of oneself. I prefer to stay with this gentle violence overflowing from inside to outside.

So wrong, and yet... no. Just wrong.

I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. Fixed ideas get shredded. The new part of the self is born from the death of an old part of self. — syntax

I find it very exciting - I could even call it pleasurable - when someone destroys my argument and I realise that I was thinking the wrong thing. Similar to the time I thought I first fell in love, it was the first time I became conscious of myself, my body and my place in the world and that overwhelmed me because at the same time I realised just how oblivious I was to a number of intellectual and sexual feelings that I never actually knew was possible. :fire:

What I fear is not intellectual, on the contrary I try my best to make it intellectual and I am aware of my limitations as there are some outstanding minds on this forum that I am no match with but who I wholeheartedly respect, StreetlightX standing out like a quasar here. And being aware of my limitations, I ensure - to the best of my ability - not to believe that everyone is out there to get me and I am rationally capable of ascertaining my faults and accepting criticism where it is due.

I strongly believe in my values because it is important to me; sometimes my values are not aligned to others and they see that as a threat to their beliefs whereas I am just simply articulating what I believe without judgement or hostility. My fear is the "mind games" that people play with me and it hurts - both in a sad way but also in an angry way - when people use stereotypes and categories as a way to shut me down and silence me, to say that I am a woman immediately makes me incapable and the worst part about it is that it is believable, deliberate because it is largely acceptable. I am a normal person who desires learning and seeks to improve and it is not possible to achieve this if I am afraid to speak about topics that generate hostility and if I am too busy deflecting insults. Its exhausting and its hurtful.

The tricky part (and I think you know all this and will agree) is that identities are intimately tied up with fixed ideas. Moreover, the language of 'private' thought is always potentially public. That means that as I brew up the death of one of my own sub-selves, I am also brewing up what others could experience as the deepest kind of poison to their currently sanity-sustaining word-sense of self. — syntax

Intellectual development is linear as it is intimately connected to the arrow of time and as such evolutionary where we are constantly developing and improving; even memories are consistently changing since our interpretations are, but those that remain 'fixed' or stuck are really those that are delusional where their belief-system is ideological. Neo-nazis represent this madness clearly with holocaust denial. You cannot ever have an argument with such a person, it is impossible, so immovable in their position that they resort to delusional answers to resolve any inconsistencies in their beliefs.

Men are the scary gender, the violent gender. Women are no angels, but I know the eerie possibilities of the male soul more intimately. (I do know a particular woman very well, and her meanness potential is cute by comparison. An exaggeration? A fantasy? ) I also know or just believe that personality is a city built on a sleeping volcano. Sometimes that volcano will sleep through an entire life, but one eruption is enough to change or erase everything. — syntax

Some women are very bad, indeed they can be very manipulative to a point of turning good men into very bad men and still come off appearing to be a caring and innocent woman. They have mastered appearances but underlying that is nothing but a vicious creature tricking people to think otherwise. Sorry, both men and women are scary and violence need not only be physical. It can be psychological too. The scales are tipped when we look at the outcomes of the aggression, however, and that is largely a result of our cultural and sociological attitudes to masculinity and the fact that men are physically the stronger sex making them more capable to act out aggressively.

I'm down with that, so long as the roles are kept as transitory states which are adopted and not permanent mental archetypes. Someone can be an 'adult' at one point and a 'child' at another.

Since people are sharing games, I'll share a few little ones.

From the book 'Why Don't You Yes But'. People are trying to help someone and are suggesting things for them to do (why don't you...) and the person who is being helped refuses every proposed solution (yes but), and seeks no novel solutions themselves. The purpose of doing this is because remaining in the problem gives them an emotional payoff - perhaps they're 'the responsible one' and good at dealing with problems, perhaps its a means of expressing frustration with their partner (who is the problem), perhaps they're trying to show that they're beyond help while asking for it. How to avert the game is by asking them what they're going to do.

@TimeLine

Let's not forget humour (what counteracts depression) and positive relationships between people either, otherwise culture deteriorates and we would live within a mechanistic environment where responses are without quality of character. You breed weakness on both ends of the spectrum, so it is about achieving the balance between the two.

Humour has another pathological use as a coping mechanism. It's like Zizek's laugh track, it laughs so you don't have to engage. Only it is you. It downplays all problems and stops resolutions by posturing yourself as already not needing help. Particularly cunning depressions seem to be able to use humour as a means of self alienation, which behaves like the former, only humour is used to fill the hole flattened affect (generalised low intensity of feeling) leaves. I laugh so that I don't have to feel.

Edit: I forgot to include a personal example, 'Why don't you just' - this crops up between people who live together, partners and at the work place. Someone makes a demand and downplays the effort required to satisfy it by saying 'Why don't you just' - refusal to 'just do it' paints you as a bad worker since you can't 'just do' a simple task. If you do do it, you take on a rather annoying or circuitous task which has been downplayed. (and perhaps the fucker who 'suggested how to do it to you' will take the credit).

Between cohabitants, it crops up through chore allocation and responsibility disavowal of it. Living communally with n people means (just for demonstration) (n-1)/n of the rubbish is not yours, so everyone appears messy. 'Why don't you justs' usually allocate extra cleaning duties to housemates, asking them to clean up more than their share.

Between partners, it can crop up a lot of times. It's usually used in some kind of posturing where the person who says it has an emotional attachment to a particular way of doing something - 'why don't you just... do it this way'-, and not doing it that way would be stressful for them.

How to avoid the game 'why don't you just' depends on the context, as that tells you how you can affirm the difficulty of the thing you're being asked to do. Between cohabitants, 'why don't you just' for household task responsibilities; ask if the person would like to help you do more than your fair share, as the mess is mostly everyone else's anyway.

At work, 'why don't you just' can be resolved by simultaneously affirming that you want to do the task, but that you are already busy and would need to sacrifice X Y Z to do the task, or if you're not already working overtime, you could work some overtime you demand compensation for.

With a partner, I don't have any general advice for avoiding it. Still working on that one. ;)

Holy shit. :worry:

Zizek is speaking of an artificial laughter done in a way where - if humour is used as a tool to play this game - then laughter is given to us. So, in the instance where a woman is insulted, if there is an underlying and generally accepted misogyny, laughter is given to the audience where the woman is instantly the joke. This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful.

Humour can also be used to make the difficulty of reality or a very real experience easier to face; just as the unconscious or 'repressed' part of the psyche exists to put away experiences that we are unable to confront, as a method of gently interacting with the experience - just like drawing/painting, or writing, or even psychotherapy - jokes lighten the emotive as one begins to see that the experience is not as serious as it feels. I laugh because I don't need to feel.

This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful.

Do you think humour is necessarily part of mutual amusement and play? I'm not sure this is right, it seems broader to me. Mockery and rebuking are humorous but neither are reciprocal play.

I've seen someone be very playful with how much they like to cut themselves and how worthless they think they are. It was something like 'hey it doesn't matter if I cut myself if I'm worthless right? At least it's something I get to enjoy now and then!'. Structurally, a joke. It was sort of funny in the 'man hanging himself by his own belt and then his trousers fall down' way. Also coming home to an ex mid suicide attempt (vodka + pills) 'What are you doing?' 'I'm thirsty'.

I mean, humour isn't just this generator of positive feelings, it can easily be repurposed for all kinds of dark shit.

Edit:

I laugh because I don't need to feel.

Yeah, I think this is good. If someone really is beyond feeding a compulsion or depressive circular thinking, most of the time anyway, laughing about it might be a signal that they're doing ok and a way of ensuring that they're doing ok.

Do you think humour is necessarily part of mutual amusement and play? I'm not sure this is right, it seems broader to me. Mockery and rebuking are humorous but neither are reciprocal play. — fdrake

The laughter evoked by non-humorous jokes underlined by a passive-aggressive hostility or Othering can be amusing to bullies; when I think of this young girl who was taunted by several men, they found it funny and it evoked laughter, yet it is clearly not humour. Humour is ambiguous because it can reflect several different conditions and even then to categorise can be an oversimplification. So, I look at humour from a functional angle rather than attempting to ascertain why we find some things humorous and see that playfulness is an important part of human cognition and can bring us joy.

It might be silly being chased by your partner as you avoid his kisses, but it is pleasurable and makes you laugh because underlying that experience is a sexual playfulness. Chasing to tickle a child makes them laugh because of playfulness. This humour lacks the seriousness or underlying hostility or mock aggression you get in mockery and one needn't even laugh, it could simply just bring joy or positive feelings and the benefits are well known both physically and cognitively.

II mean, humour isn't just this generator of positive feelings, it can easily be repurposed for all kinds of dark shit. — fdrake

I would not call that humour. If it does not generate positive stimuli then it is something else. Being incongruous characterises some form of amusement because it challenges and shocks a person, like shit jokes, but the function is not to demean or dissolve significant concerns but to draw insight and improve.

The interesting question T-Clark raised was whether the violence we associate with men (I suppose from violent outbursts to wars) is reason to ridicule men in general. I believe his angle was that ridiculing a whole group of people is unacceptable if the group in question is women, but if it's men, it's ok?

The deeper question I'm seeing is about the naturalness of competitive behavior that sometimes spills over into violence. Is it natural and so to love men is to accept that aggression? Or should we see violent behavior as always pathological and so prime stuff of ridicule (when despair is maybe bottomless?)

Yeah, and just for clarification: I don't think it's play all the way the down. I 'believe' in something like final vocabularies. Our empathy and understanding have their limits. All play analysis can hope to do is maybe to knock down some fake limits. Or just help one develop style and charisma. Roughly speaking, I have a fantasy of the philosopher as a type of person who intentionally lives willingly and greedily in a tangled mess of ideologies and even enjoys surfing on the cognitive dissonance (endless 'foundationless' enrichment, aesthetically justified). But even here I think a fundamental faith in that fantasy has to be fixed. I have to unironically believe in being an ironist (which is also tied up for me with a notion of 'being a man' [freedom, godlessness]). So there is a foundation, but it is understood to live largely in the dark. — syntax

Are we talking about "play" with two different meanings? Three if we include Frost:

[1} Playing games - bad
[2] Playing - good
[3] Play for mortal stakes - all there is. Authenticity, integrity, humanity.

As for #2, yes, it is play all the way down. Or turtles. Or playing turtles. "Final vocabularies," if I understand what you're saying, are play. The Tao is play. We, in our nobodiness, are playing. Good playing. I guess playing for mortal stakes, so 2 and 3 are the same.

Sorry, I just flagged your post by mistake.

I really like what you've written. Flexible, searching, playful, serious, dedicated, honorable. Hey, wait. This is one of them metanarratives, isn't it!!!? In some ways really different from my experience of myself. You'll be someone fun to talk to.

Some women are very bad, indeed they can be very manipulative to a point of turning good men into very bad men and still come off appearing to be a caring and innocent woman. They have mastered appearances but underlying that is nothing but a vicious creature tricking people to think otherwise. Sorry, both men and women are scary and violence need not only be physical. It can be psychological too. The scales are tipped when we look at the outcomes of the aggression, however, and that is largely a result of our cultural and sociological attitudes to masculinity and the fact that men are physically the stronger sex making them more capable to act out aggressively. — TimeLine

As I said previously, this is the first time I'm trying to articulate these issues, so I haven't got myself together. I think this paragraph summarizes some of what I'm thinking about. Although I'm a very aggressive person, I don't intentionally hurt people - physically or emotionally. I'd say "never" but that's not really true. I've tried, but it doesn't work. I can't do it. I have almost never used violence to try to get what I want from someone. I've never threatened, implied, intimated, violence. But women are afraid of me. And I don't mean women on the street. I mean my wife, who's known me for almost 50 years. That's not unique. I know other women in long-term, non-violent relationships who feel the same way toward their husband, boyfriend.

On the other hand, women can be very violent emotionally. I think women underestimate how much men are afraid of them, of their scorn.

Zizek is speaking of an artificial laughter done in a way where - if humour is used as a tool to play this game - then laughter is given to us. So, in the instance where a woman is insulted, if there is an underlying and generally accepted misogyny, laughter is given to the audience where the woman is instantly the joke. This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful. — TimeLine

With some trepidation, I propose an in-class exercise. Here's a joke. I think it's very funny. I laugh every time I tell it. Every man I've ever told it to thinks it's funny. Women I've told it to, all of them, think it is not funny. They're not really offended. The women I hang around with are not easily offended. They just think it's very, very not funny.

Q: What food makes women lose interest in sex.



Discuss.

I've seen someone be very playful with how much they like to cut themselves and how worthless they think they are. It was something like 'hey it doesn't matter if I cut myself if I'm worthless right? At least it's something I get to enjoy now and then!'. Structurally, a joke. It was sort of funny in the 'man hanging himself by his own belt and then his trousers fall down' way. Also coming home to an ex mid suicide attempt (vodka + pills) 'What are you doing?' 'I'm thirsty'. — fdrake

One way of looking at it is that our strengths are our weaknesses. Humor can be a very useful and valid way of dealing with your life. We use the tools we have, so it can be self-destructive too. It's certainly true of me.

I would not call that humour. If it does not generate positive stimuli then it is something else. Being incongruous characterises some form of amusement because it challenges and shocks a person, like shit jokes, but the function is not to demean or dissolve significant concerns but to draw insight and improve. — TimeLine

Humor, ridicule, can be a very powerful, aggressive, valid tool. Weapon. I think of political humor. I always think of Steven Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents dinner in 2006 or 2007. George Bush was at the dinner and Colbert's speech was brutal and very funny - all at Bush's expense. He did not think it was funny at all, as you could see when the camera panned to him.

You can probably still find it on the web if you're interested.