patterns — wonderer1

What is a pattern?

Lines drawn distinguishing this from that, as this repeats and in a repeatable pattern.

What links this to that to reveal some repetition?

A pattern is multiple different instances of some one sameness, some essence. Otherwise you wouldn’t notice the repetition and call it a pattern.

So something essential to any “pattern” is repetition of something fixed.

This doesn't suggest that you are willing to consider — wonderer1

It doesn’t suggest anything regarding what I am willing to consider. I’ve considered many things and will do so again. I am considering your post now.

The recognition you have, of the patterns you recognize is a characteristic of your mind rather than a recognition of something essential to things — wonderer1

Not now that I am reading your words. I am considering characteristics of your mind, not mine, or else we are speaking different languages. I am looking for what is essential to your meaning. You sound physicalist. I guess essences sound spiritualist to you, so they need to be refuted as “something to things.”

I haven’t really discussed how essences exist, just what they are, and pointed out that they are. How? Maybe magic, or neural patterns and brain functioning. That’s an essentially different conversation.

definition of essence — MoK

Come on people. We all know what essence is.

It is hard to say, I’ll give you that. But come on.

A definition points to an essence.
A definition is an essence.
Essences point to definitions, to language, to intelligibility.

Essence is a difference.
A difference points toward essences.
“This is different than that” says the same thing as “the essence of this is different than the essence of that.” There is an essential difference where there is any difference.

But we all deal in essence, basically, in every unique individual dealing. When we distinguish, or identify, a thing, we invoke an essence.

It is “what”.
It is the “what” in whatever you say, or what you are speaking about, or what you are speaking for.

It is what you just said. You asked “what” is the definition of essence.

What is essence?
Essence is whatness. This complete answer also, literally, begs the question, so I get the 2500 year old conundrum with “essence”. This is why above I said “it is difficult to say” - words presume, essence, so the essence of essence assumes itself exists. Words fail, but we can’t avoid them, when it come to what is essence.

Essence is intimately connected to speaking, the object spoken about, and the speaker; but more simply, essence is the intimate connection between the spoken (the language) and the object spoken about (the world or the “what”ever). (The speaker is presumed in the language.)

Essence is able to be demonstrated in physical experiment, or shown in words, in a form of logic. So there are two different directions in the world to seek essence - the object, and the speaking subject’s words.

We turn this in on itself when we make the object language itself. What is the essence of “language”?
What is the language that defines “essence”?
Same question.

“What” is essence completed, the “what it is to be.”

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence.

Please read that again @Banno.

Definition is the linguistic representation of the essence of some thing.
So a definition is like an essence when it is accurate and complete (extremely rare).

Essence is the idea, that is or can be put into words. Or it reflects an idea like it reflects a substance/object. It can be an idea of something in the world, or an idea of some other idea; both the word and ideas contain essences. (I’ve already said this in other words above.)

Essence happens, as you predicate subjects.

It is essentially easier to use “essence” in a sentence, than it to simply define “what is essence”, because each word in any definition has its own essence, and its own definition…..because words are intimately connected with essences…. like we can link essences to things in the world. It’s all a moving, intertwining target from which we seek to sort out the essence.

It’s impossible to sum up “essence” as it is tied to “is” and existence. ‘What is?’ is as essential to the conversation as ‘What is?’. Both necessitate the other; both ‘what’ and ‘is’ rely on each other as cause, and cause each other as effect. Like a Yin Yang.

What is is what. Essence is the ‘what’ part, if one is seeking to try to dissect this with precision.

(@Astorre, this is the other side of your discussion of being/becoming. The fixed thing part of the process that is being/becoming - and this is just as difficult to speak clearly about, because it is so pre-Supra-non-all-linguistic.)

But we use ‘essence’ expressly everyday, if not impliedly, all of the time. Like right now, as I demonstrate both how difficult it is to get to the essence of something like “essence”, and how easily some of you are reading right through this.

Essence, as it might be said to exist in an individual subject, is able to be universalized as a category, if there are multiple similar subjects and a desire to categorize them. For example, I am a speaking thing, you are a speaking thing, speaking is part of the essence of what it is to be me, and what it is to be you, so if we want to create a universal category such as “person”, we can say “part of the essence of all persons is they are things that can speak.” So essence relates to the individual things and to the words about things - it is found in things and in categories of things.

Essence is in categorization, as it is in particularized identification.

Sets have an essence; members have an essence.
What makes two penguins each count as individual penguins, is what makes both penguins count as members of the set of all penguins.

Essences put into words, are practical, and natural, and make it easier to speak and communicate about things. Like a proper name. If we called everything “this” and “that” and “it”, we would easily get confused about which one we were talking about. So we use names like “computer screen” or “English” to point out deferent things in front of us, and “what” “it” is we are speaking about in particular. Essences fill in more details about what is named - essences are like really long names - “man” is a name, whereas “man the rational, speaking, thinking, willing, absurd, loving animal” is a longer name, providing something of the essence of a man, universalizable as the essence of all men. (This risks Nominalism, so sample it, put it aside and we can revisit later.)

A definition conveys something of the essence of a word. It is extremely difficult to outline all the elements of the essence or definition of some particular thing, for many reasons.
So “necessary and sufficient” in all possible worlds is like an aspirational goal when capturing an essence in language.
We can admit we do not know all of the necessary and sufficient conditions about some essence while also admitting that we know some conditions of some essence. Gold is essentially different than H2O. I may have a long way to go to outline the full essence of gold or h2o, but we can easily enumerate some essential differences between buckets of gold and buckets of h2o. Therefore, we see something of the essence of gold and the essence of h2o by seeing they are clearly not the same thing.

Essence is the intelligible aspect of an individual thing.

Essence is for mind what texture is for touch.

To get to the essence of what an essence is, there is much, much more to say. It is important to first recognize, before we say anything more, that with each sentence we utter that has a subject and predicate, we invoke reference to some essential distinction. For instance, my last sentence made “each sentence” the subject; this subject must have some particular essence such as “subject and predicate we utter.” That is what I am referring to as the essence of a sentence (there is more to say to capture the complete essence of a sentence, and perhaps something to be removed from what I have said, but with each step, we grapple with essential distinctions…)

We don’t move through language without grappling with essences, like traversing a jungle of differences. Always dangerous.

We cannot escape a conversation, or the jungle, without defining the essential, and tracking our now fixed progress.

To dream essences exist in the world of the forms (Plato) - ok, why, how does that help explain what it is you are explaining?
To intuit they exist inside a substance (Aristotle) - ok, why, how does that give account?
To admit they only exist in mind, and language - ok, why, do they still serve their purpose of facilitating an exchange of information about a world (intelligibility of some other thing)?

But to deny essences exist? Doesn’t seem possible to say. Or think.

We might even go a step further and ask if the idea of essences is worth keeping. — Banno

What practical difference between an idea and an essence is there?

So this suggestion is incoherent.

Essences are only a kind of idea. Ideas are of the ideal, the essential. If we abandon the idea of essences, what will be left of our ideas at all? What do we think about? What do we think with? What does mind deal in, if not essential form? Isn’t there an essence of “idea” that distinguishes idea from the brain it sits with? How are there any essential differences between different ideas without essence?

So how is the notion of asking whether the idea of essences is worth keeping even possible of consideration? It sounds incoherent to wonder about ideas without essences.

And I didn’t even get into is-ness. So much more that is essential to essence and not worth losing sight of.

@Leontiskos @Count Timothy von Icarus

The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies. — Neils Bohr

Spot on Neils.

Maybe a little harsh on the “pointless” comment.

But that’s what I am often saying to @Banno about how analytics is unconcerned with the world. Analytics is essential to science and knowing truth. But the points it makes are not about the world; it is about talking about the world. It points out what cannot be said about the world, but nothing that CAN be said. It does not talk about the world itself. It supports statements about the world, but it need not, and can use Clark Kent and Lois Lane to make its most salient points. A truth found in the world, and not just in an analytic proof, requires having another point besides the truth-table of it all.

In other words, sometimes it is wisdom to say things that sound contradictory or that cannot be born out in formal logic. We can aim for the world first and ask analytic questions later - treacherous, but so is learning all formal logic and not using it to say anything about life.

Well if you

What is humility?
— Fire Ologist

No idea. — Tom Storm

How could you say that?

You know what humility is.

You said above that you “support diversity”.

But as a supporter of diversity and inclusion in general terms, — Tom Storm

Diversity and tolerance and acceptance of those who are different are made possible by humility.

Humility is being grateful. And thankful. It is thanking someone else for what they do for you. It is acknowledging others, before yourself, above yourself at times. It is not taking credit for the good you might do, and even giving credit to others for the good you do.

We all do these things. That is humility.

If you value inclusion, humility helps there too. We include others, the diverse, just as our own differences are included and accepted by others. You cannot demand inclusion (like you cannot demand others love you); you can only accept inclusion from others, or grant it to others. So you humbly are grateful when others do in fact include you, and that is why you include all others, so that all of us, equally, form an accepting community.

Does that sound good and right? Does it sound woke? It certainly is utopian, because most people don’t really want to be humble and respect diversity.

that people do the best with what they have or with what that can understand — Tom Storm

That sounds like humility to me - you see a best effort in people, and are not putting yourself above them.

all we can do is have a conversation with those who think differently — Tom Storm

And that takes respect, to patiently let others speak, and you speak to them in a conversation, instead of a fight over differences.

So we seem to agree, even though you said you don’t know what humility is.

the stumbling block to me seems to be tribalism and binary thinking. — Tom Storm

Here is where we have to be careful. We just said we value conversation with people who think differently. So isn’t binary thinking just another different way of thinking that we should humbly respect (at least once in a while)? Is binary thinking nothing but a stumbling block? What is really wrong with a little binary simplification, once in a while? We should tolerate that too, at times.

Tribalism seems counterproductive to real conversation. You can love your own tribe, but that is a positive feeling, and a love of what is diverse from other tribes. We have to remember that a tribe is just another unique culture and we should be accepting of diversity too, so tribes themselves are not a bad thing. But it does no one any good to hate some other tribe, so if tribalism involves hating the deplorable, and hating the maga, or hating the woke, of hating that race, then it is certainly a stumbling block. Hate is the weakness. Lack of humility about one’s own tribe is the weakness. Lack of respect for humanity as a whole is the weakness. Nothing wrong with loving your trib; everything wrong with hating someone else’s tribe just because it’s not your own.

And when it comes to public discourse, the inflammatory approach of media tends to promote extreme, black and white. — Tom Storm

Binary thinking is a tool, a process. It’s not good or bad in right measures, I think. But when this tool is used to pit good guys versus bad guys, instead of brothers with sisters, well than I have to agree with you.


——-

I’d say it’s as much a question of values as anything else, values that are informed by our affective and aesthetic dispositions. — Tom Storm

ultimately comes down to values. People prioritize their values differently, shaped by cultural influences and, perhaps, innate personal traits. — praxis

Are you both equating the values we happen to choose with our feelings, or saying we make our choices out of gut feelings, and random “cultural influences” and “innate traits” that we don’t choose?

See, to my way of thinking, that is a completely different conversation. That also defeats DEI. If people’s opinions are a bundle of randomly developed value choices not even really in their control (influenced and innate) then a real, open conversation Tom mentioned above is hardly ever going to happen. Only by shaping society first can we even open people up to those conversations. And to want to reshape society we can’t be tolerant, we can’t respect diversity, we can’t humbly include those who think things that should not be valued. We have to reshape the diverse to conform.

It’s like you are saying rednecks can’t help being MAGA, too many cultural influences and innate traits. So we don’t need a conversation with them, and because of bias, a real conversation isn’t possible. So we should remake the culture so maybe the next generation will truly get it.

That all sounds anti-DEI to me. Although it’s the arguments the woke make. That’s why they create such strong but negative identities - patriarchy, white privilege, dumb redneck maga - there is no conversation with these types, and no way for a father not to be patriarchal, or for a white man to not have privilege - so there is no reason for a conversation with them and no true tolerance or support of diversity.

So I think raising “we all have different values” in this way sort of removes autonomy and contradicts values like “diversity, equity, inclusion” or “humility and respect” and contradicts someone who truly thinks:

that people do the best with what they have or with what they can understand and all we can do is have a conversation with those who think differently. — Tom Storm

Values discussions are important. But if you think we each get to prioritize our own value lists, then we will never see equity and inclusion, just diversity.

Can you square tolerance, acceptance, support for diversity, with people who don’t share our values? I think the conversation we want to have is about what are the values we ALL must share. Yes “must” share. If we are to make a better world, we have to find value in every person in it, or decide if we don’t find value in everyone, how best to remove them or change their minds (but that’s not tolerance or supporting diversity). Why does the “it’s all about personal values and priorities” make a better case for wokeism, because I don’t see it. I see it as about maga and woke and whites and blacks sharing something, consciously, and it getting into all of their DNA for future generations. Nothing bad to root out of others, but something good to nurture in ourselves first and everyone we interact with. True tolerance out of respect. True diversity, out of humility.

@Joshs what do you think of the above? I am anti-woke. Am I just asleep, or just diverse? If diverse, don’t I need to be accepted too? Or do I need to be changes, awoken, made aware of my implicit biases? This is why I charge wokeism as being incoherent, self-contradictory, and woke people with being less tolerant, hateful of those who are the wrong kind of diverse and elitist when it comes to value choices. The slogans don’t all hang together, and the actions speak louder than words.

The woke do not know how to value diversity, just conformity. The woke do not understand where we all are equal, and where we all are unique. The woke do not include those who don’t conform to their values. And the woke are not self-reflective enough to see all of the contradiction.

I think progressives need to understand that being conservative doesn’t mean having no heart or empathy or feelings.
And conservatives need to understand that being liberal doesn’t mean having no common sense.

These are both simply not true. Generalizations are not helpful.

Diversity and tolerance go in all directions and are about unique particulars, not generalizations. We think to low of those we disagree with. And we think too highly of what we think about ourselves.

True humility about oneself, and true respect for all others regardless of the flaws - these need to be our personal goals, or we should talk about why not.

I don’t see those as the goals of woke people. Maybe they align with the goals of wokeism on paper, but that’s not the message that the woke put out. Neither do conservatives. If humility and respect really were our personal goals, there wouldn’t be so much outrage involved. People don’t seem to really want to be tolerant or appreciate true diversity, or think of themselves as all equal - people would rather hate the deplorables, hate maga, hate liberal elites, hate wokeist whiners. Right? Who hates me for saying it? Who thinks I must be willfully blind, or heartless for being anti-woke.

We are having the wrong conversations.

What is humility? Why is it good for the individual and for the community. Is it good (Nietzsche thought not.). Does humility mean thinking we are bad, or just no better than anyone else? Is there any reason to rank others, and can you do so while being humble?

What does it mean to respect diversity and be truly tolerant? Does it require forgiveness and sacrifice? How can we push back against what no one should tolerate and still respect diversity and be tolerant?

I cleverly avoided this fate by never growing up.
— praxis

:lol: Nice. All too telling (not about you, to be clear).. — AmadeusD

That would be great if we stayed innocent too. But we are far from innocent anymore.

Let me ask an honest question: if you (meaning anyone) think your ideas are the good ones, and that your ideas reflect the fact that you are awake and enlightened, don’t you think that sounds vain and self-important to the person who disagrees with you, the one who is not awake and not enlightened? The word “woke” as a class of people is itself a bit anti-woke, elitist, oppressive, hurtful. Is there any self-reflection to be had surrounding the word “woke”?

God is on my side. — Banno

Three persons, on one side?

Talk of the properties had by some individual in every possible world is much clearer than… — Banno

No it’s not. We need all of the different ways to talk about this shit we can get. They are all insufficient.

Talk of the properties had by some individual in every possible world is much clearer than… — Banno

What does “properties had by” mean?
What does “properties had by some individual” mean?
How does some individual “have” properties?

Can you answer any of these without any reference to essence? You already mentioned “properties had by some individual…..” so you’ve as good as shown something participating in the forms, just with a new element of “possible worlds”. A new context, or, muddle, for the same phenomena of what it is to be whatever it is.

Nothing about “essence” is much clearer once you’ve used “some individual” to fix “properties” across all possible worlds…..

Plenty of room to insert some muddle, at least possibly. Might as well give @Count Timothy von Icarus and @Wayfarer the same benefit of the doubtful muddle. Like I said “is-ness” helps complete the picture as much as statements like “some individual in every possible”.

——

Camus is only existentialist because what else would he be. He’s a way better read than Heidegger. But Being and Nothingness is existentialism defined if you ask me. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard sort of built the house and opened the door, Satre moved in and set up all the furniture, Camus is hanging out back on the porch. ADDED (He’s sort of a stranger to his own genre.) Heidegger lives next door but never really visits. Dostoyevsky lives in the basement and scares everyone.

knowing where to draw the line — Tom Storm

Always.

having children usually changes this bent from Left to Right — AmadeusD

Interesting. Makes some sense.

recent convert is Whitney Cummings — AmadeusD

Interesting. She’s funny.

I suspect it all provides more content for people to apply their well-developed or undeveloped judgment. There is no resolution better than the present moment’s resolution, and people get these present things wrong often, so with more and more content to sift through and learn from, I agree there is an opportunity for broader and just better thinking, but who among us will learn how to take advantage of that? We have to think well at all to think better with more content to think about. Will we just spend more time looking for that cat video?

ask if the idea of essences is worth keeping — Banno

Do you mean like you and Frank “asked” for an explanation of the Christian narrative?

If that is intended to trivialise people’s position, then not exactly. — Tom Storm

Not to trivialize. I literally typed out the “if not liberal when you are young you have no heart, and not conservative when older you have no brain” but took it back because I didn’t think people knew that phrase.

everything is about feelings, isn’t it? — Tom Storm

Maybe, many things involve feelings. But don’t we need to scrutinize and dissect feelings from logic from biases, from theories and propositions - everything isn’t about feelings. Although I think there is a case to made that wokeness is all about feelings - it is for the sake of feelings and driven by emotions.

I'm curious what you mean by the younger being more values led. — praxis

I’d take this to mean more led by feelings, much in line with @Number2018 thesis of the OP.

a large part of the country that would have had no inkling the ad was offensive (me, for example) — Hanover

Right. So people like you (and me) are either racist due to our biases and we don’t know it (so, asleep), or we are way above the fray and just color blind to race. (But that is probably a dream I’m having because I’m actually sleeping. Like Martin Luther King Jr apparently was.)

@praxis

trying to get you to see your biases, and pointing out that AE's plan, if there was one, was to get you to do exactly what you're doing. — AmadeusD

Yes, exactly. You need to come to the ad with certain biases to find it outrageous. Maybe those biases serve a beneficial purpose. But outrage? If one thinks outrage over racism is justified because of that ad then one is sleeping on their own biases.

People and especially cultures cannot do a 180° reversal in a day, — Leontiskos

Yes.

I see Nietzsche as providing one of these pivotal moments - he trashed everything. Made it fun to trash all that was supposed to be good. And it changed many things (philosophy, ethics, culture, influenced politics). It still wasn’t “a day” of course.

We need to course correct again.

It's almost as if the rationalistic context must be abandoned for a time — Leontiskos

Yes. For sake of reasonableness. For sake of truth and wisdom. And good. And happiness and peace. The forgotten pursuits of philosophy.

I completely agree. I think we have much to learn from mystics and novelists regarding the best way to clarify “what it is” and “how it is” and why it matters, and, here is something people today overlook, what doesn’t matter.

We need the anti-Nietzsche. A prophet of the “under-man”, who always, all-along understands truth, eyes fixed on light, delivered as eternal gift, not merely constructed as temporary will.

We don’t need to clarify what Lois was really saying about Superman anymore. That’s all grave digging work. Necessary, but completely turned away from the dynamic and the living.

But you could be right. And if so, i don't see the issue. That is what advertising does. And it worked. — AmadeusD

I agree - the intent behind the ad campaign and predictive measures of its success is a whole discussion. And facts from that would be helpful to understand how people and society are grappling with wokeism - but who really knows? Those are facts, and our assumptions may be wrong.

Part of the issue the woke should reflect on here is the fact that unless you assume the AE marketing team had some sort of malicious intent, the ad is perfectly normal. You have to bring your own assumptions to the table to read into the ad how unwoke is is. Good genes might refer to her hot figure. Good genes may refer to her success as an actress/model/person. We have to say “bullshit, they meant her blond whiteness.” AND we have to bring to the table that blonde whiteness America is a nod to Nazis and racists, because in another century and another land, there is nothing inherently supremacist about white genes.

Point being, the woke have to bring their own facts to the table, and they don’t seem to care about or need real proof.

I’m not trying to be naive or blind myself, I’m just saying that often woke people make something that seems to come out of thin air, and then the thing they make is all that matters and they forget about the thin air (which includes the facts).

If wokeism wants to survive better, it needs to improve its choices of hills to die on. Good genes ads ain’t and should not have hit Colbert’s radar.

that AE manipulated the right into promoting the campaign, — praxis

No that’s backwards. That would mean AE manipulated the appearance of woke outrage in order to then cause their real target audience, the right wing to be interested in news stories about woke propel flipping out. That is too far fetched.
The point about the media still being in the pocket of the left is that, the woke people who flipped out are being protected by the mainstream media - there are now news articles about how the ad was never really a thing for the woke, and that the right media and Trump are making it seem like the woke care about the ad just so they can brag about how woke is dead and they get to talk about white genes now with white pride I guess. I’m sure there is a little of that because people are pigs, but that is also the woke failing to take responsibility for screaming about spilled white milk, which they often do and fail to learn from.

How does 1+1+1=1? By misunderstanding either "1" or "+" or "=", or using at least one of them in a way that is not in accord with their usual use. — Banno

Right, so 1+1+1=1 can’t possibly be right, and/or, if it is forced to be right, there is a misuse of "1" or "+" or "=".

So we have to get back to that, because that is a huge pickle.

Forget the Trinity pickle for a second. You have to, in order to re-approach the life inside God and ask about the math of it. You need to start over because those are the wrong starting questions.

Let’s just say there is one God. And let’s just say this one God is called the Father, and he created all things.

There is nothing heretical about that being full stop who and what Catholics believe in.

God the Father is all 4 year old kids think of when they say they know God. Those kids are right, and in full alignment with the Catholic Church, and full agreement with the life and example of Jesus, who taught people to pray the Our Father, which makes no plain reference to the Son or Holy Spirit. You can refer to the whole and to all of the one God by simply saying “Father.” That is not heresy.

Period. End of Catholic narrative.

Also sounds like the Jewish narrative, but they didn’t use the name “Father.”

We have a long way to go to get back to asking “so what is the math of it?” So far, the math is simple. We can get there, but you don’t really participate in my posts…

Do you want to grow into the fourteen year old God, the Son? Ask, why did he call God “Father” in the first place, and not just something like “Lord” or some name, like Elijah?

I’m not exactly sure what you are saying to me.

you're right where we all are. None of us have final answers. — frank

I agree, I think?

Final answers.

When it comes to the Trinity, like most meaningful things, knowledge increases (for fools like me), but is never final.

So did we just become best friends or something?

End of discussion.
— Fire Ologist
Unfortunately not. — Banno

Hmmm.

Is this a reluctant way of saying you are still mildly interested?

You haven’t given any new effort to show me some pretenses.

Isn’t life in general full of muddle to be sorted out? Then we try to communicate what’s been sorted tk some other person, who adds their own muddling influences.

Muddle doesn’t raise any new critique.

I think there is plenty unaddressed in the above pages directed to you by me - pick something if interested in proceeding.

This is now the bit where you pretend that you and Leon pretend to have answered the problems raised. You haven't. — Banno

Ok. To make one of the issues real clear (as it did for Claud), let’s put the issue as follows.

Trinity lovers think they can say this:
“One plus one plus one equals one.”
And/Or maybe it should be said, “one equals three.”

But that makes zero sense, is contradictory and incoherent.

You want an answer to the above math problems.

Well that answer will never come. So if the above two statements are each a key important (dare I say essential) facet of the Trinity, and there is no answer coming, then you are done. Trinity is incoherent. All you see is people papering over this basic math inconsistency with pretense.

Right? End of discussion.

Trinity means one plus one plus one equals one, and that’s impossible to even conceive as a coherent thought so discussion never really started. Right?

Michael, Amadeus, me, Mijin, others - all totally different people who take radically different approaches on other issues, and who are all able to articulate complex ideas - all of us have said the same things in response to you.

There is something wrong with your position. You may still be right. None of us can see it. (Has anyone? It’s kind of stoic in a sense, is that what you are trying to say?). But nothing you are saying makes sense to anyone else.

That should give you some pause.

How can you be so obstinate and unreflective?

You are trying integrate:
1 personal autonomy
2 causally determined necessity
3 speech

You can’t have autonomy without both your own mind (which is where words live and breathe and are understood) and a world to be autonomous over, to have causal effect in.

Me slapping my hand across your face. That is not an effect in the world until your face resists my hand and your brain makes that slapping sound and sensation for you to enjoy as your own experience.

You are saying my slapping you across your face did not cause you to feel and hear a slap. You are saying your own brain caused these things and it is fully up to your free self to feel the slap, and/ or slap me back. Me, I am utterly not responsible for what happens in your experience.

That is what you are saying. Whether you like it or not.

To you words are just another slap in the face.

That is actually more coherent than what you are saying but is basically the best light Incan give your argument.

But none of this explains human behavior towards each other, because we seek to cause specific effects in others with words and slaps everyday, and so it makes no sense to try to figure out how we are NOT doing what we seek to do, and what is done to us, all of the time, namely cause various effects in others’ minds and actions.

The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable).

See, I disagree. I think this is basically treating adults like they are irresponsible children. It doesn’t require “extended forestructure” - it simply requires you make the case.

Basically, the highest elites have to realize they are proportionately not that far from the basest deplorables. People need to start with that humility. From there require of themselves that they respect different people’s dignity as fellow people, and THEN hash out the arguments as humble respecting adults.

The preoccupation with bias and forestructure creates a diminishing return. Forestructure building and bias recognition are important. But I’ll grant they represent 20% of a fruitful conflict resolution.

I… am arguing that the intellectual ideas which both wokism and postmodern approaches draw from need to be assimilated in order to get to a politics beyond the wokist practices which you reject. — Joshs

This sounds positive. Can you put some real flesh on this as a for example?
1. A sample woke specific intellectual idea
2. What do you mean by “assimilated to get beyond”
3. Why beyond a wokeist practice?

If the woke idea was so good, why do want to end up beyond a wokeist practice?

Is this like desegregation?
1. Diversity is good.
2. Force diverse people together from segregated areas.
3. Have a new society that loves diversity and there is no need to look for segregated groups anymore because they are all integrated now, thanks to woke ideas and woke solutions (that we now no longer use as no longer needed).

Is that an example? I’d rather hear yours. I think there is a massive gap between 2 and 3 here.

The math according to you is:
1. Ad shows white girl saying “my genes” meaning AE jeans.
2. Woke folks will blow up in rage and thunder.
3. Because the tide has turned against them, anti-woke will blow up in a fit of ecstasy.
3.a. Woke folks sublate the whole dust-up as the right wing making something bigger than it really was, so woke needs take no blame or responsibility for 2, when they….made something bigger than it really was. (this is still possible because the woke still own the major media).
4. The words “AE jeans” will be a household name for years.
5. We will get rich.

New 3.a. Points to lack of self-reflection.

I can’t name even one wokeist or liberal that helped to promote it. — praxis

So you are saying the woke’s reaction to the ad had nothing to do with the extra mileage the ad achieved for AE.

No self-reflection.

The math according to you is:
1. Ad shows white girl saying “my genes” meaning AE jeans.
2. Woke folks will blow up in rage and thunder.
3. Because the tide has turned against them, anti-woke will blow up in a fit of ecstasy.
4. The words “AE jeans” will be a household name for years.
5. We will get rich.

That’s your math. Thought the woke being played like a fiddle (2) was obvious part of it.

No self-reflection.

I think this campaign shows how much the tide has turned against the woke. — praxis

You aren’t looking at the right thing. It’s not the campaign that teaches the lesson (so you don’t get the lesson). It is how the woke reaction to the campaign has been so soundly mocked and done zero to promote woke agenda that shows how much the tide has turned. Woke needs to turn inward and reflect on how it is often full of unsound, incoherent , contradictory bullshit baby feelings. The substance of wokeness is no longer being ignored and thoughtlessly forced upon culture at large.

They don't deserve all the credit. — praxis

You literally quantified the credit in dollar amounts.

Just admit it, wokeness can be easily played like fiddle.

Don’t know how you think it’s so obvious that some marketing team could predict a positive return playing that fiddle. I’m sure there are white people who will purposely not buy AE jeans now - woke won’t support them, and anti-woke won’t want to look like they are making a political statement by wearing them (like driving a Tesla) inviting retaliation from woke kooks).

But you do think that they predicted a positive return from looking racist. You seem to have the sleepers all figured out just like the accounting..

Don't shoot the messenger.

4. When one is offended by another person, whose fault is that feeling of offense? The hurling of insults is certainly the fault of the one hurling insults, but the feeling of offense, who is responsible for that?
— Fire Ologist — Banno

Do you think I am offended?

Or were you offended by me?

Heated rhetoric need have no relationship to any offense or insult.

No insult intended, and all due respect but, it may actually be the case that you might be slightly full of shit sometimes. If you really think the God who is a trinity of persons is like the person who is suffering from DID, then I take it back and apologize if any offense was taken.

So were you full of shit? Or was your DID observation meant to advance the discussion. I hope so, because I think a discussion about how any human person (DID or not) relates to the Trinity could be instructive towards the Christian narrative, which you seem interested in to some playful extent. (I’m guessing you were just shitting me. Good one. Me and myself - we both saw the humor in it, although one of us was also a little disappointed. But haha.).

Let's just leave it at this: on it's face, the Catholic Trinity appears to be contradictory. Catholics are aware of this, but deny that it's a contradiction, because the truth is beyond human comprehension. If we were enlightened, we would see that it's not a contradiction. — frank

Trinity “appears” to include specific contradiction. Yes.

The rest of the quote is muddled but may be accurate. It is better restated:
Catholics see the apparent contradiction, and we see that the depths of the Trinity will proceed beyond full human understanding, but we also believe we will forever understand more and more about the Trinity because it is not a contradiction - we will learn more about God, like God knows himself.

So you could say “if we were enlightened we would see that it’s not a contraction” because though it appears contradictory to simple logic, it still appears, so it must have some accounting, and this will take further “enlightenment”.

I wouldn’t really say “the truth is beyond human comprehension” but if all you mean by that is the fullness of all there is to know about the Trinity is infinite and so never finite as we humans like to make things, then sure, I can leave it at that.

The "sensus fidelium" could not exist if what is agreed upon were truly incoherent. — Leontiskos

That should be a huge flag for those who say things like “Trinity is a contradiction” that is beyond comprehension. It can’t possibly be the case where two people independently come to the same conclusions that there is nothing coherent to the Trinity in itself for us the determine for ourselves. (Unless maybe we are both saints! :lol: )

a "slave to sin," beset by the "civil war in the soul" of Romans 7 and The Republic is to be less a person, more a mere jumble of external causes. Indeed, to be irrational is to be less fully anything at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good stuff. This is about the old relationship between change/becoming (irrational) and permanence/substanc (fully thing). The problem of how particulars actually participate in the forms; and the ontology of these.

——

Some people think it is rigorous to leave personhood undefined but analyze what persons do. When, somehow, what we do IS who/what we are, and it is impossible to analyze either one without the other. We, as persons, are more like a “Trinity” than they will allow themselves to admit. (Resorting to psychosis without realizing that is again, more apt to describing the human condition than they would like to admit. The analysis of it is too confounding and preposterous. (Like so many other things about experience and being a person, although they are less fun to mock than God and those who say they believe such things.)

Will you now admit — praxis

Will you admit you are theorizing about AE marketing folks’ intentions and predictions? This whole admission doesn’t matter - you are asking the wrong person. There is no point to your question or me answering it ( :lol: which I did!).

Here is what happened. The AE marketing team totally botched their intent, thinking they were ushering in a new era of “Beyond Good woke and Evil Woke” - a utopia where genes are now “blue” and can cover over all races and colors of skin.

But they botched their post divisiveness delusions, by picking a white girl for the ad campaign - the world was not ready for their equitable vision…..

Who the hell really knows. The wokesters have made it into a whole new thing completely unconnected with denim clothing marketing anyway.

I know, admit it: you pissed AE played progressives like a fiddle. :lol: They got all this free publicity by having a great looking white girl say “genes”, because the woke are so predictably shallow and loud the words “AE jeans” would surely take on a life of their own. They probably seeded the outrage by planting some comments on the right twitter feeds.

As usual, the woke focus on non-issues, the unimportant. And self-contradict. If woke thinks AE was evil whitey, then ignore it and be silent so that it goes nowhere. Don’t seek validation of your feeling by asking for others to make admissions for you.

What is interesting about the ad for woke culture is that it was so clearly wrong to them to highlight the word “genes” with a white woman. If they used a white man instead of Sweeney, the ad should cause even more outrage right? AE at least checked the woke “empowered woman” box - but then there is the extra cleavage, just another patriarchal male gaze opportunity setting women’s empowerment back (because Sydney is incapable of making her own decisions and showing her own cleavage because she wants to - she only wants to because men have made her that way….)

So many unanswerable, contradictory, layers of bullshit comprise much of the woke picture of reality.

Where are the positives? Where are the achievements specifically tied to woke?

You aren’t advancing any arguments.

Why, what color/race is Beyonce and why do you notice that first and foremost?

Seems to me the goal of wokeness should be that absolutely anyone on earth could replace Sydney Sweeney and the ad should be viewed with equity and inclusiveness.

But wokeness can’t help creating exclusive categories for privileged or victim members, and seeing things skin deep to form those categories. And imputing ill-intent behind anything “white” with “genes” in it.

I know you don’t see the contradiction. You just see that I don’t see all of the ill-intent that is so obvious to you because you are not asleep. Or because you are careless and shallow in your reasoning on this issue.

[Deleted]

See, here it is again. This should be intriguing to an analytics first philosopher.

When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category the Father belongs to. It's an identity statement. The Father is not a section of God. The Father is fully God. Whatever God is, the Father is equal to that.
— frank

No, this is not right. I would go back to my posts where I quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We can say that the Father is God (in the Triune sense), but by that we include the Son and the Spirit with the Father, for they are never apart — Leontiskos

I said this:

When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category ….
— frank

No. Actually they are both predicating and identifying. That’s part of the uniqueness of God being three persons.

The father is a god. Predicate.
It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is father son and spirit. Identity.

Or, the son is a god. True statement. Predicate.
It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is three persons. True statement of identity.

Etc……… — Fire Ologist

Here is the question for the analytic mind who thinks the Trinity is just an incoherent idea, and contains too many contradictions:

How are me and Leon identifying the same flaws in @frank reasoning about the Trinity, and able to put into totally different explanations, different words, our reasoning and logic as to why and how Frank blew it? How are our separately developed explanations reflective of the same reasoning and conclusions? How did we both see franks flaw?

That must mean there is something objective and particular about the concept of the Trinity (besides dogma and what someone else says about it.). Leon and I each separately worked out and expressed the same conclusion in our own ways. That requires logic and facts, sorted from franks illogic and wrong facts. About the Trinity.

So @Banno and frank, how is that possible?

The OP asked for an explanation of the Christian Narrative.
Then Frank admitted (by his actions) he didn’t think such explanation was even possible.
What Leon and I just did is evidence that there is a logic and reasoning going on that therefore might allow for an explanation of the Christian narrative.

So @frank, was your OP in earnest?

Good to see you back.

They’re in business to make money. — praxis

:up:

in a sense, we are all “mental patients” so long as we identify with the ego and remain ignorant of the Self. — Wayfarer

Sure, we are the metal patients maybe because of our disassociation between Atman and Brahmin.

metaphor for the relationship between individual minds and what he calls “mind at large.” Just as each dissociated identity experiences itself as a separate person, we experience ourselves as separate individuals—when, in his view, we are all expressions of the same underlying mind manifesting in different ways. — Wayfarer

Good stuff.

Are they also full of shit? — Banno

Im talking about you comparing God to a mental patient. And you, totally incurious about personhood and its disorders and explanations.

When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category the Father belongs to. It's an identity statement. The Father is not a section of God. The Father is fully God. Whatever God is, the Father is equal to that. If this sounds like a mystical multiplicity, that's because it is. — frank

No. Actually they are both predicating and identifying. That’s part of the uniqueness of God being three persons.

I know you don’t understand.

The father is a god. Predicate.
It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is father son and spirit. Identity.

Or, the son is a god. True statement. Predicate.
It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is three persons. True statement of identity.

Etc………

You almost have it now? It’s actually easy to show you you are wrong about it, once you have it. It’s a “mystery” to me how you can’t see it sometimes.

Banno is one of the things that is a man, so is Bob and so is Frank. Three different things that are all men.

So Jesus is one of the things that is god, and the holy spirit is another, and the father, another. Three different things that are all god. — Banno

Men is plural. God isn’t.

You must do better.

Sounds not unlike Dissociative identity disorder. — Banno

How is something like “disassocistive identity disorder” even possible to imagine as a coherent thing? What creature can make that category and what creature might live it!?

You are so full of shit sometimes.

And sounds about right.

Can’t help yourselves.

Now you annoyed @Wayfarer enough to want out.

That's not how the Trinity works. — frank

How does the Trinity work? :lol: