I've been a bully before, one of the things I remember most acutely about it - or rather remember as conspicuous in its absence - is that cruel actions aren't seen as cruel to the target. Their humanity is suspended in the decision to belittle them. The target becomes part of the narrative of jokes surrounding them. Their needs were silenced and the dissatisfaction of those needs is their only voice, spoken in my terms; as hilarious weakness. Formally, they were not excluded by my (and friends') actions because they were already excluded from any empathy as a prerequisite to bully them without cognitive dissonance or bad faith. Truly authentic cruelty. If it wasn't so funny we wouldn't have all laughed.

We were absolutely playing and infinitely playful - the target had no recourse, anything they did was interpreted as part of the game we made of them. It was play all the way down, only it was indifferent to them all the way down. Really - how funny, to suffer. — fdrake

I appreciate this, fdrake. I have been bullied. I am quiet and small in stature and he was a very big man and profoundly aggressive and because I did not respond to his sexual advances he resorted to true authentic cruelty. It was horrible being a joke to them because my humanity was taken away from me and those who followed him and believed in him appeared as though they were allowed to treat me that way. That laughter at the so-called 'weakness' is pretty shocking. The worst part about it was that I thought he was a good person, I really wanted to believe it.

I think we could give examples for both the bad and the good to humour, so I am unsure how to proceed. Are you suggesting that perhaps humour is too ambiguous because it is an oversimplification?

As I said previously, this is the first time I'm trying to articulate these issues, so I haven't got myself together. — T Clark

Take your time, I am just on a train ride travelling between locations for work but I will say that I am proud you are making an effort to peer into the dark and I look forward to reading your posts tonight.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I do feel the weight of my wife's and society's expectations of me in terms of how I act as a man and husband. Sometimes its very hard for me to deal with. I'm sure she feels the weight also, although I think she buys it more than I do. I do not always fit the ideal vision of what a man is supposed to be. — T Clark

Can you explain this difficulty a bit further, in what way for instance? I have much to say on the subject, but I thought I would do you the respect to first explain this difficulty.

I can't separate the humor from the seriousness. My serious philosophy is playful just as much as my joking. My joking is just as serious as my philosophy. I think if you look at the substance of my ideas, you can see that. I can't say what I believe without humor, even when I am being deeply philosophical and passionate. — T Clark

I am like this at home and those who live with me or who come and visit me always feels comfort and warmth because my personality is playful as much as it is inquisitive and serious. I got busted by my housemate the other day in kitchen acting like Elvis and I sing the weirdest songs in the shower, like Michael Bolton or some other weirdo I heard on the radio. My home is my happy place. But, that is my home, my world where I get to be who I am and who I am is someone that loves life.

I need to understand, however, that everyone is not like me and I need to be relativistic and respect that how they think and perceive the world could be vastly different to me. I haven't always been successful in doing this because I have a lot of trouble finding any common ground with people who are aggressive, but this is the point about eliminating ego and analysing the content just as much as it is about seeing the humanity or the person behind the post.

But humor is a double-edged thing. — csalisbury

I hope to see that your discussions with TC is enough to understand why I responded accordingly; I have been frustrated on many occasions with people where it can be hard to tell if they are genuinely being unpleasant or being humorous, but my relationship with TC over the last several months has enabled me to understand that he has a good nature and is insightful with a sense of humour. We built on that, it took time and communication for that to form. It also took trust and that sometimes we need to have faith that adequate dialogue can be achieved and that we can manoeuvre that dialogue into the right direction if we take the responsibility with maturity.

I use humour as a balancing act, to build on culture and strengthen friendships so that when we have discussions, we learn to overcome the rigidity of impressions that causes unnecessary tension. My humour serves as a reminder that we are just people and there is no need for egos to interact aggressively, that I am just a girl who travels, works in a great job and bakes cakes. Dialogue is not pure logic, it is about recognising the humanity behind the content and I softened this aggression in others - including people that hated me - when they realised I was not a sword-yielding Amazonian with massive breasts that I use to suffocate men.

That being said, there is a time and place for it and sometimes my fellow jokers post humorous repertoires on posts that I take very seriously. Bad timing. Is that the fault of being humorous where people no longer take what you say seriously, or is it a nasty way of shutting you down? I smile and laugh and have fun, but it is not all the time. I can be serious, and dedicated or committed to a project, deeply philosophical and passionate about justice or righteousness too. Sometimes jokes are used as an underlying passive-aggressive nastiness, but you can always tell.

As far as women backing away, this is something I've discussed with my girlfriend. As I understand it, she can just feel that the tone is bogus, that it's not real conversation. I think she finds a kind of small-hearted meanness in it, and I think she's right. Of course I don't want to fall into the trap of seeming self-righteous here. I continue to wrestle with and make sense of this stuff. — syntax

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. It is easy for them to just use the platitude 'what would you know?' or project their own irrelevant assumptions often of an indirectly misogynistic nature by claiming that I simply do not understand the subject at all, even if I say that 1+1=2. It is commonplace in philosophical and scientific circles to have that behaviour forced on you as a way to silence your voice. 'This is what you are' rather than listening to what is actually being said. It is not pleasant neither is it welcomed and when I was studying political science, the faculty was overrun by such a dominant masculine presence that consisted of constant ridicule, meaning that only a few women managed to survive before the faculty realised that it was actually discriminating and even violent behaviour and began a process of changing the culture.

This is the same in the workplace and such 'masculine' behaviour is a tool to push bad men up the chain by force despite having no talent in the workplace and no capacity for leadership. Sexism is merely one such method or a tool to achieve this, as is other methods of bullying like insulting appearances (height, weight, age). This is often done by underachievers with little talent who use force as a tool to hide that fact and as a way to remove competition.

I know the process and I can participate, but I find it exhausting. I would rather develop a respectful culture of equals and I am actually changing this in my workplace; I have successfully discussed the possibility of removing bureaucracy from the chain of command because we each have our own separate skills and capacity and being 'higher up the chain' does not suddenly permit authority without respect. We are all in this together, basically, and it is about the result that the business is seeking and not about individual egos.

You're so conflicted. Fitting, considering the subject. How about this, in the absence of Susan, you can be his replacement as the emoji king?

Calm yourself. :snicker:

What are some books recommended for people with depression? Books on life advice, motivation, discipline. Ive read all the stoic philosophers, the Tao te ching, and zhunagzi. — nazgul

Hey Nazgul, I would highly recommend Martha Nussbaum' The Fragility of Goodness and since you like the Stoics, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. She really expresses great commonsense on the subject of our vulnerability as people. In addition, I would recommend Erich Fromm' The Art of Loving. I too have a love for Eastern philosophy because I have a strict desire to adhere to my values, but it is also good to look at opposing viewpoints. Sun Tzu' The Art of War is great for that reason. For fiction, I would highly recommend Herman Hesse' Steppenwolf which is an excellent bildungsroman, as well as Albert Camus.

I'm especially interested in this kind of head-butting or patriarchal posturing. I put on my labcoat before I grab the popcorn. Sometimes in real life, I find myself being the opinionated ideology-critquing A-hole among other A-holes. The women vanish as if by magic. They don't give a queef, in my experience, about what they perhaps perceive as some kind of constipatedly homoerotic ritual. — syntax

I remember once watching two men 'battle it out' at work in a way where one tried to prove to the other that they knew better about a subject and yet both didn't actually know what they are talking about. What astonished me in the experience was the tone, the body language, the attitude of confidence as though such behaviour represented 'truth' over the very content itself. I said nothing, but in my head I thought both of them were idiots because I knew the answer to the problem and was watching them fumble around with irrelevant dialogue but speak with an aura of professionalism. This same agitation I experienced can be paralleled to those types of people who talk and talk and talk but they are not really saying anything, that whole 'what the fook is your point?'

It happened on here too between Agu and someone else, I think it was Vagabond and they both looked just as stupid as the other, writing massive essays without contributing intellectually at all. When I said that they should stop and actually talk about the problem in the OP, I got 'no, we have to do this.' Women back away because we know we get brushed aside during this weird Alpha display. There is no problem in condescension as you may genuinely disagree with the content of the response you receive, but it should be as a critique and with adequate solutions the problem.

Constipatedly homoerotic ritual? :lol: :lol:

I literally cannot turn my back to shut the door while rotating them from location to location before he is attempting fornication. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Have compassion. Give him a leg. My dog liked crawling over bushes. You could see it in his face how much he enjoyed it. :lol:

So, I am on the hunt for a new dog! I probably wont move into a new place until I get back from overseas because life is just to hectic right now, but I hope to get a place with a backyard. I'm thinking Golden Retriever. They are my favourite. :hearts:

I am a deep thinker and cannot understand why love is so important. I keep shipwrecking relationships because I cannot seem to show or express love or my true self. How do you love? I have struggled my whole life with this. Why is it (love) so important if you never grew up with the sincerity and genuineness of it in the household. Please explain. Thank you — Danny

Love is the essence our being, what enables us to become conscious of ourselves and our place in the world, to become engaged with reality and responsible for our motivations. It is applied moral consciousness that 'wakes us up' as we escape from the mental narrowness of our narcissism to feel an understanding of the world external to us, giving us meaning because we produce, create, improve rather than abuse, destroy or live in an otherwise artificial nothingness, an existence filled with vain repetitions.

The pleasure that it evokes is something given and not received and while much of how we interpret the world around us is conditioned, that how we perceive and understand people is taught to us by our family and environment, one is not bound to this in any absolute way since consciousness can transcend our conditioned mind and we can reflect in self-awareness. This takes practice, courage even where you challenge yourself regularly. You say you never grew up with sincerity and genuineness, now that you are conscious of that, apply sincerity and genuineness because authenticity is a state of mind, it is it a way of thinking honestly, an attitude of being honest to yourself even if you are completely out of your comfort zone.

You should only love someone you admire, someone you respect and who enables you to become a better person. Relationships take work, let that work be easy by loving your friend, otherwise you will be miserable in an artificial nothingness until suddenly your life passes you by as you form the same lack of sincerity and genuineness you grew up in.

I highly recommend you read The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.

To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.

@Lone Wolf - Ok girl, I went crazy with this. You need you to embrace your lone... wolfyness! Strip down to your knickers (those extra-large, parachute style ones you wear at home :rofl: ) and sing this song with handbrush as your microphone as you dance around your place! POWER TO WOMEN!!!

I'm disappointed. I thought you and I could reach an understanding if not agreement. From my side, it feels as though I am trying to find common ground while you are resisting. — T Clark

I was thinking about you today. Do you remember how you once said to me that I am someone who has her hand over a flame just to see how long I can keep it there? When you said that to me, I don't think you realised just how taken aback I was, so profound was the impact of those words because it explained so much about what I was doing up until that moment and I was able to acknowledge more about my character than you can imagine.

I am moving house, but I never explained why I am in this area first place; I came because it had a lot of bad memories for me and there were people - family members and others - who have wronged me who also live in the area. I needed to be here. I used to have nightmares that I was being chased by leopards; it was like I stopped and faced them instead. My presence was my way of saying that I am strong and that I have no fear. I was never allowed to verbally express myself to these people because they never listened or never heard me, but I made them listen through my presence. I never knew, though, that was the reason that I was here, not until you said that to me.

I had feelings for this man, I really liked him but in a very gentle way, a very kind and affectionate one and from a distance. I just wanted to impress him a little but his response was vicious and he bit me for no good reason. I hid away in pain and covered the wound. Years passed and the dressing I had over the wound was still on until Hanover ripped it off and reminded me that the man never liked me at all and he was just along for the ride. I imagined that I was still wounded only to see that I had actually healed but I wasn't aware until it was taken off; I healed myself unknowingly until it was made known.

This man is in a relationship with a 'Kardashian' kind of girl, a girl who gets plastic surgery and is all into cosmetics and everyone around him applauds and congratulates him for being with such an empty person. I realised that I already knew he was not the right person for me, because I would never like a man who would be that way, a man who has no courage to follow his heart and is a crowd pleaser. I can only love someone I admire and though I wanted him to be that man, he wasn't. I unknowingly did all those things to him because I knew that he was not right for me, but I was not aware of why I was doing that.

So we're on the same page, I understand why you think that intuition precedes reason, but I believe that the language here becomes embedded within that we form as we grow up, as we experience and as we are conditioned and while we think it is independent or separate from all of that as it is the very language of 'you' or 'I' or the language of the real self, intuition does have a language but it requires some self-reflective practice, as though a delay exists before we can acknowledge why we did it.

How about a simple chrome frame to round out the stark, uncomfortable Scandinavian look you're going for? As long as you stack all your junk at right angles on open shelves, you can convince yourself that it doesn't look cluttered. Keep the little chair, though. It creates a warmth and thoughts of little feet pitter patting around on the uncovered wooden slats around the hard angular tables and chairs. — Hanover

:angry:

Not sure about the mirror. The shape fits, but the wood looks too traditional. The little chair definitely doesn't fit, but it creates a storyline, redefines the room, so I'd leave it. — Hanover

Perhaps if the mirror had a detailed baroque gold leaf frame instead to bring out the colour. You need to check your teeth after dinner, surely.

Congratulations! The commute is amazing! :wink: — ArguingWAristotleTiff

From the bed to the office. About 10 steps. :yawn:

I got an email today from my manager allowing me to work from home two days a week, so now I can finally fill my days "working" designing objects around the house. I love sanding down wood and painting and making things look pretty, and despite not having my own place, i'm currently searching for rental properties just for me and far far away from where I am now so I can start fresh and fill it up with my handmade stuff.

Love the Scandinavian Farmhouse look ever since living in Denmark, but adding hints of Bohemian and Modern elements. I love quirky but within the boundaries of sophistication, as in, it need to be breathable and open, but I am not shy of colours. I'm not at home to take some pics, but this is what I am. Everyone that sees my style always thinks it is beautiful.

If only I had my own house!!!! :cry:

Oh, Sapientia, you little dickens. You're so cute. I just want to pinch your cheek. — T Clark

Tad bit awkward. :brow:

I'd say the same for everything, including rocks and sticks. Everything is a representation. The distinction between the rock that you see and the word "rock" is arbitrary. Both are knowable only as symbols. — Hanover

Is not that distinction still dependent on a linguistic structure? Indeed, these connections are learned because what is communicated is always a learning process over time but the problem is not the signifier but the signified, what is understood. Using arbitrary icons misses the point, basically.

For me, the experience, what we are calling intuition, comes first. Much of the experience never gets put into words. There's no need. Lao Tzu writes about "action without action." — T Clark

My interpretation of reason is an acknowledgement of what you already know because your intuition is a form of communication and how that intuition manifests without words does not make it without meaning formed by prior experiences, symbolic in nature. How you reach that acknowledgement appears blurred to you, as though you just "blinked" and there you are. A martial artist practices, learns through trial and error until they reach that point where what they learn is forgotten and it becomes a part of them, embedded to an almost instinctual level. You are ignoring everything about that process, as though suddenly he just has that skill. Language and how you speak is the same. That is what action without action is and it is telling that you speak of Lao Tzu and yet speak of a schism between reason and intuition, the very philosophy of unity.

My only point is that it's not the only way. It's not my way. I called it blindness because you don't seem to be able to see that. — T Clark

You have produced zero arguments, quite literally, nothing at all other than "this is my way and you are blind" and while I am trying to have a conversation where I have already mentioned that this communication between reason and intuition involves a number of factors, you are still fluffing on about something you failed to understand. You haven't and I highly doubt can even explain what "your way" is and I have read over your posts wondering whether you are even talking to me.

I don't really disagree with this description of the process - re-experiencing feelings from a position of strength rather than weakness so I can deal with them. For me, that's an act of surrender, acceptance. Facing the emotion without protection, justification. Opening myself to whatever damage it can do. It seems to me that for you it's different. Why would I expect that it wouldn't be? — T Clark

?

While difficult to get past the bias that there needs to be something, it turns out there is no difference. — noAxioms

There is a difference, since you exist.

The universe is a mathematical structure and things within it are real to each other. It is not platonic realsim. Numbers are abstract (not real) to us, but relate (are real) to each other. 7 exists in relation to 9, or to the set of integers, but our universe is not existent in relation to them any more than numbers are real to us. 13 is prime, and doesn’t require objective existence to be prime. Similarly, we don’t require objective existence to relate to other parts of the structure. This is a key concept, demonstrating why objective ontology (or lack of it) makes no difference in the relations between different parts of the same structure. — noAxioms

I am having trouble distinguishing this 'clear line' between epistemology and ontology vis-a-vis this mathematical structure and you would need to explain this further. The problem I am having is that mathematics is our way of interpreting the world and not that mathematics itself exists outside of us. It is a useful heuristic we created to translate the patterns of physics and nature using numbers. This physical reality exists independent of you and I, but for you to claim this physical reality is a mathematical structure imposes the very invention of describing the universe you seek to avoid and thus quasi-empirical, particularly since mathematics is limited in articulating all possible realities in a cohesive formal system. Is realism and constructivism mutually exclusive? I have my reservations with mathematical realism and you would need to do somewhat better, however alluring Tegmark or Plato are.

My experience is exactly the opposite. For me, the internal voice examining and reexamining everything used to cut off any connection to, awareness of, internal life. The process of healing has involved learning self-awareness without the intercession of words. — T Clark

I understand this and I admire this, but surely there are limitations to it, perhaps even your awareness of the fact that something you read, something you heard or spoke about helped articulate it without being conscious that in fact it was this improvement in your thought or opinion that helped shape that self-awareness. You can paint a picture and it may have no words, but it could symbolise something that interconnects or pieces together the puzzle.

What is unreasonable, irrational, about my statement? I'm not being sarcastic. I think this issue highlights a weakness in your philosophy, one you don't see. I don't think I'll convince you of that, but I'd like to give you what I got from that previous discussion - an accurate understanding of where I stand. Of an alternate way of seeing things. — T Clark

My issue is that I believe you failed to understand my argument and have simply injected your personal experiences on the subject - which I respect - without consideration to what is exactly being discussed, and that makes me doubt the integrity of your position. I need more than that.

I'm the one who used the word "veneer." Thinking about it, maybe "armor" or "shield" is better. The "intuitive experience" does not need to be "interpreted." It is perfectly capable of speaking for itself, without words of course. The idea that intention and action must be mediated by conscious thought is an illusion. In my experience, most of the things I do go from wherever they come from straight to action without passing through words. And I'm not just talking about reflexive actions like breathing or repetitive, physical actions like riding a bike. I include complex social activities like interacting with people or groups of people. — T Clark

When you look at an image, say for instance the swastika, it does not have words but it explains something evil, bad, and thus it is actually speaking but without having to say anything. We create meaning and we communicate this or understand this and incorporate it into our subjective interpretations; we see an object, we interpret it and give it meaning. We have experienced, we have been taught, we understand that it is evil and nothing else needs to be explained. If someone wears the swastika on their arm, they are telling you something. It is communication, that is point.

Your intuition is there to tell you something you already understand but sometimes the capacity to interpret is not there, it is blurred and we're unable to understand or make a relation, the discourse is missing. What you have in your mind is completely different to what you feel. If you grow up in an environment, for instance, where your parents taught you very racist things, and when grown up you encounter the object of this disdain, you will feel hatred or fear for that person and not know why and you can try and articulate justifications (look at holocaust deniers), but there is a broken narrative between the two.

That is clearly an extreme case, but it explains the dynamic that leaves one experiencing the emotions without adequately understanding why at a rational level. One needs to go back, the reflective practice that takes those emotions to try and link it with the past experience and that means talking about the past, reflecting, being honest with yourself. This is how you challenge and change yourself and start articulating rationally with yourself in order to transcend those experiences, familiarise yourself with a past that has become embedded into your psyche without you knowing why.

It is not to say that my experience is not as you say, it is. But only partially. The dynamics is much more complex than that, hence the relationship.

What you have identified is not a distinction between intuition and carefully thought out decisions, but you have only identified how it is that bad information results in bad decisions. That will be the case whether the decision is knee jerk or whether you write out the pros and cons in your unicorn adorned journal and deliberate upon the reasons for days. If I believe that people are prone to cheat because I am a cheating dog, then I will necessary allow that bias to impact my conclusion that you too are a cheating dog despite the scant other evidence supporting it. My conclusion is rational in its own right, considering my data points are derived from my own experience, which is that I have cheated much in the past.. — Hanover

First of all, using a Winnie the Pooh pen with fluffy yellow feathers at a national conference with senior executives does not make me unprofessional.

Secondly, you have not actually answered the problem here, which is that reason disordered leaves any authentic understanding of our subjective emotional experiences false. The moral dimensions of criminals and their denial of any wrongdoing or remorse is an example of our capacity to violate reason and it is not that these criminals themselves are lacking in anaclitic dependence or empathy, but that they genuinely believe that they have done no wrong.

That guy who broke my heart several years ago is in a Jezebel/Ahab relationship, and while he has such a profound intelligence and capacity to be so much more - all that I thought I saw in him - he has instead deteriorated into this cruel man because he quite literally follows and copies her, someone so empty who is nothing but a public performer. Kardashians, for instance, offer nothing to this world other than teaching people to get plastic surgery and be sexual objects and overdose on makeup, use the concept of 'normal' as a tool to justify what is actually fucked up behaviour. It is not normal. But, when everyone thinks that she is normal, he thinks she is normal too, but deep within we know the truth, we know that behaving that way is fucked up and if he is someone who doubts himself enough to follow others, he simply does not have the rational capacity to articulate that inner feeling telling him that she is fucked up.

So he goes on thinking something is wrong with him or doubts himself since everyone else is saying she is normal, so much so that he is building a life with her while taking drugs, drinking steroids and just looks like a male version of a Kardashian, no ambitions in life other than pretending - like she does - that he has a career, all about the physical, about the show and nothing about the inner, no substance. So, it is not like his behaviour toward me is sociopathic, but rather he has such low self-esteem that the games that he played with me, he is really playing with himself. It takes a level of courage to not only see that self-deceit, but to say 'no' to the people and follow this intuitive feeling, to become the King of Nineveh so to speak who listens to the voice of reason despite what everyone else does.

So you don't actually get - as clearly showcased above - the dynamics of this intuitive/rational relationship.

What I mean here is that if you have a past that is filled with all sorts of unhealthy events, those events will drive many of your decisions, and you will think them rational whether the decision is well thought out or not. — Hanover

Exactly, but when you are a child, you don't have the cognitive capacity to understand many of the experiences that you have and so as a child, how you interpret those experiences remains or is stored away as you continue grow and evolve, a kind of habitus that becomes embedded into your psyche that despite the fact rationality is actually an evolving and continuous thing, your responses and attitude to your experiences remain 'stuck' and why you think, clearly and honestly, that your responses are actually ok or normal. That feeling it gives to you makes sense, even if everyone around you is like what the fuck. If my dad is violent, someone I love and admire as a child, then what is wrong with violence? Beating nine colours of shit out of someone suddenly doesn't feel immoral. Whether we would like to admit this or not, we are conditioned by our experiences as children and our environment, but the point about cognition and about rationality is that we have the capacity to stand outside of those conditioned responses and start to analyse them... rationally.

It is true that you will never entirely be free of such conditioning as it stands to be a part of our being, our learning and language and therefore our identification with the external world, but we can access them piece by piece, we can become receptive to our reactions and understanding of ourselves and others.

And as an aside, I really do believe in the ineffability of thought and ideas. In fact, so much so, that I find those philosophies that deny it completely incomprehensible. — Hanover

I hope you mean some thoughts and ideas.

Over the months we have known each other, we've clashed once or twice about this reason vs. intuition thing. Sometimes you've been mean to me and I went off with my tail between my legs like a frightened puppy. Poor T Clark. Now I'm ready to take you on like a man!!! :strong: Well... — T Clark

Who are you talking to? It kind of reminds me of those office gossips that start rambling broad concepts and themes in meetings as though they are indirectly trying to say something to others to justify the whispers they did near the xerox machine with Stacey.

Anyway. In a normal situation on the forum, with someone reasonable like, say, Sapientia — T Clark

Yes, yes, we get you want to act like some father of moderation. *Pats on the head

You're wrong, and you're blind. :grimace: — T Clark

The voice of reason.

To believe that reason is anything except a veneer we paste over what our hearts tell us is self-deception. I have always seen that reason is something we add later to justify what we already believe. Over the past year, I've also come to see that some people can use it as a tool to guide them to a place where they can be free of the shackles our feelings put on us. I have a lot of respect for that. — T Clark

Who said anything about a 'veneer'? Reason is there to interpret, to explain, to understand and if reason is disordered or in chaos - i.e. irrational - translating that intuitive experience is impossible. It is reliant on your reason and rationality and they are not mutually exclusive, separate where one precedes the other, but bound together.

That doesn't change which comes first. We do what we do because of who, what, we are. It comes from inside. The, I don't know, is it irony, is that you and I come down in just about the same place in terms of what is the right way to live our lives. Compassion, honesty, honor, strength, generosity, grace. I must admit, you have come closer to that ideal than I have, but that's not a matter of reason, it's a matter of character. — T Clark

Because of how I interpret those experiences, my desire to be confronted - however harsh - with my own capacity for inauthentic interpretations, for self-deceit, my desire to further ameliorate my knowledge and understanding so that when I reflect on experiences, when I try to network through the complexity and the puzzle of my emotions and feelings, I can piece it all together. My intuition is a voice that has no words, but reason provides those words and enables me to articulate what it means. Any 'veneer' is really just an inauthentic interpretation of that intuitive experience, a way to silence or settle the emotions by suggesting false ideas or methods to calm it, such as what New Ageism can provide. This is evidence of why - as Epictetus said - since it is reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.

Prove it by changing the red faced emoji and treat my girl with gentlemanly respect by replacing it with the love heart eyeball one.

Ewww, why would she be friends with you?

True. The weather here was crappy (think cyclones) probably part of the reason my mood is out of whack. Wildly up and down. The poor horse was spooked when I tried to get her in the barn today. :sad: — Lone Wolf

Holy shit, we're just cold and rainy here. Ok then, jump on youtube and do those 20min HIIT workouts :lol: and stay safe.

Sometimes I wish I were fully dead inside, I would sacrifice the pleasure in order to have no pain. — Lone Wolf

I had a hike planned today but I had to cancel because of the weather, but just like horse riding, being outdoors and active in nature is really useful and helpful in so many ways. Spending time at the park, in forests, on hikes or any outdoor natural environment can improve blood pressure, memory, release stress, eliminate fatigue, and even reduce inflammation providing a number of other physical benefits such as strengthening your immune system, helping you increase your concentration, and all that can boost your self-esteem and improve your mood which thus allows you the improved cognition to tackle rumination. Rumination is the worst symptom and a promotor of the negative affect of depression or anxiety. Camping or hiking can improve psychological and behavioural well-being and is really an effective treatment modality to help you understand how to connect to others and nature. It is really evolutionary.

Get back on your horse or camp out. Even hiking on your own can really change you for the better.

Ah, yes. The voice of reason. — T Clark

You old fool. You dare challenge me?

Ha! I said I'd prove men stupider than women, and now I have. Wait, though, this shows you're stupid for not realizing I did that, which means you're stupider. Damn you. — Hanover

How dare you speak about Tiff like that!

Unlike you, obviously a daughter of an archduke or perhaps a high priestess or some such shit, I grew up in the hip hop area of the Boudreaux region, and that is precisely how we talk when hanging out on our burro (not in a car like your royal highness). Please remember that just because you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, there are other people out there who didn't, who have been relegated to late night love making beneath the simple setting of the moon in the back seat of their burro, while listening to the off-key humming of "Love Hurts" by a stray vineyard urchin, who was paid a small rock for his services. — Hanover

Truth be told, I was raised a pauper in Roubaix, one of those proletarians that worked as a child, ash and soot on my wee nosey, and schools that merely housed me by day as I couldn't afford books. I got smacked around by my brother and my sisters were meanies. Even now I have no car, but I thank you for recognising the whole commoner to queen princess thingi.

Nevertheless, I will respond to you and @T Clark tonight when I get home, since I want to destroy both of your arguments and the day is ghastly and rainy and cold.

just so ya know. Nicely said, imo. :smile: — javra

Silence!