Friday, March 27, 2015

Re: Mind's Eye Re: War, good god y'all, what is it good for?

You are a better man for the job than I. My work song would shake while digging this grave. Progress marches on as they say, I will try to assemble something after my wolves settle down.

On Mar 27, 2015 8:26 PM, "archytas" <nwterry@gmail.com> wrote:
Gabby (or Gabriel) has raised some interesting points and left us unable to trust each other.  This is a classic intelligence trick.  And obviously hesheorit has the place bugged.  Probably doing the spontaneity bit right now Molly.  We have similar classroom scenes.  And even as an army statement, 'no man left behind' is a lie.

I think we should continue, but even Molly and I can't trust each other's identities as not Gabby-Alter.  There are ways through this.

On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 7:59:43 PM UTC, Molly wrote:
I'd say the time for such debates is now, within the relative calm. I completely understand and applaud the notion of giving people the space to learn and self govern. The no child left behind philosophy fell apart in the US when the inclusion lines fell so far beyond kids that could learn and self govern that the classrooms became chaotic and students became witnesses to teachers trying to manage disorder, and only able to do so. Kids throwing furniture, spontaneously masturbating on a regular basis and never passing a test set the class tempo and every class seemed to have a child or few that required al   the attention. Teachers were frustrated because the old system of having schools capable of handling such students were already in place, but the rolls were diminished and very few students attended because of the new guidelines. It was costing taxpayers more and their kids were not getting better education, any of them. We were never leaving any of the kids behind, educating them all. But the labels of special education were so traumatizing that the grand experiment began and failed miserably.

I know first hand the struggle of families with members suffering from a mental illness. Once did an internship on a suicide hotline. 90% of the callers weren't contemplating suicide at all, just looking for someone to talk to. The service had to set up guidelines for how many times such people could call a day, how long the conversation could be, what language was and wasn't allowed etc. It was really a community service for families dealing with these family members, as having people to talk to and vent to gave the families some measure of relief. I learned a lot about people in those six months. And I think we should all have an active "study in humanity" going on, contributing through that study in some positive, compassionate way. Whether through work, church, a swim club, sitting on a bench and watching the world go by with the occasional conversation with strangers - whatever. I don't think we should ever stop learning about the people around us and how we relate to them. It is a powerful mirror of life.


On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 2:26:48 PM UTC-4, archytas wrote:
Listening to mad people falls within the principles of education as an aim in itself, though there clearly are limits, even if it can be tough to establish what they are.  We could have some cracking debates on such as this.  Of course, you can't have the debates (which might spawn such as books) if some miserable sods flood it with nonsense and libellous attacks.

On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 12:52:18 PM UTC, Molly wrote:
Ed Norton was in a movie called the 25th hour that I really liked, and not just because his character's name was Monty Brogan. The plot line unfolded in the 24 hours before Monty went to jail and at one point, his friend turned to him and said, "wouldn't it be nice if you could take your dog to jail?" The chances of that happening anywhere seem slim but gee, wouldn't it be nice?

I've never enjoyed competition but saw two boys through a few decades of it and watched the fruition of decency it can create in terms of cooperative effort, team work, camaraderie, strategy and physical prowess. Accepting victory and defeat with grace is probably the most valuable lesson that I saw them learn. When a group can get beyond personality and move as one toward a common goal it can be a beautiful thing. When that is obviously absent in a group the dysfunction can be painful to watch and the fruit becomes toxic or dies before edible. Competitive spirit when married to generosity of spirit is glorious. I saw my son help another player up off the field that had just tackled him hard (found out later he told him, "good hit!") I also saw him clash helmets so hard with a guy before the play started that it was heard loudly throughout the stadium, walk off and sit himself on the sidelines, taking the 20 yard penalty with his team. Was told later it was a move calculated by the team to stop the trash talk. (We won't get into the neck injury) But stomping on someone's knee to try to get him out of the game, while seen by some as just part of the competitive spirit, takes us into that win at all cost mindset where the honest competition is lost and the flavor of war is set.

Free speech is a tricky thing when speech becomes more about inflicting pain and inflaming conflict than communicating. I thought it interesting that the moderators were seen as beast masters by the trolls in this group over the years, as if those roles are a necessary part of the psychodrama. It may be the nature of an internet group and the reason that most have a life span. Most reasonable people walk away from perpetual conflict. There are groups on the internet that thrive on it, and all the members engage. Then there are trolls on the internet whose personalities get more of a charge from the feeling of victory having disbanded a functional group with conflict. How does free speech come into play when speech is used as a weapon of war? That use may be ingrained in US culture, with political ads designed to smear and manipulate voters running for months before every election. I am sure that is what makes Netflix's business model successful. Gotta be.

Allan has a point about the narcissist. Using words as weapon is a major part of that personality disorder and the flaming narcissist goes off at the drop of a hat, willing to tell you everything that is wrong with you and how you ruin everything. but I think somewhere in each of us there is a narcissist, so fascinated with their own reflection that their awareness is stunted by their inability to look beyond it. It becomes a disorder when the fascination becomes obsession and projection, and war with experience becomes all that is known.

Are we obligated to listen to the ravings of a mad man indulging his free speech? Are we entitled to inflict words of hate that can lead to violence or destruction (yelling fire in a crowded room?) Is the prevention of the destruction of a productive group a line that should be drawn for hate speech? Or is it a line drawn too soon?

No soul left behind is certainly noble. But at the level of soul, all that is required is unconditional love. We are not required to submit ourselves as target practice.

I have no desire to be anyone's beast master. Nor do I want to see this group die. If it can be preserved, it should be preserved because by all accounts, it offers a place to dialogue like no other. The guidelines to this group have taken many forms over the years but have the same essential message. Reasonable, respectful dialogue is the space they provide. Is anyone who gets a charge by continually violating the guidelines (and the members) invoking their free speech or engaging in war?

Is there an example of a society that successfully operates with a governing structure of anarchy? I would be interested to know. Because I would like to experience a world where laws and social contracts were not necessary. I haven't found it yet.

On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 3:38:07 AM UTC-4, Allan Heretic wrote:
I think you are right there Neil.

تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwterry@gmail.com>
To: minds-eye@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 7:20 AM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: War, good god y'all, what is it good for?

We may have been closer to Nous sommes tous Gabbie than we know Allan - almost had to switch myself on and off this morning to make sure I hadn't become one of her alters.  She put so much effort in I thought she must be some kind of crooked scheme going, but con men usually try and use offered exchanges of humour to manipulate.  I suspect most people don't really empathise much beyond genetic imprinting and sex.  Odd stuff.  

On Friday, March 27, 2015 at 5:44:31 AM UTC, Allan Heretic wrote:
I think the problem lies in people having narcissistic personality disorder.  The people involved know who they are and about their problem . . Sadly they have no desire to change.

This probably  the problem  with a lot of groups not just ours. This narcissistic people drive away quality people as they have no desire to put up with them.


تجنب. القتل والاغتصاب واستعباد الآخرين
Avoid; murder, rape and enslavement of others

-----Original Message-----
From: archytas <nwterry@gmail.com>
To: minds-eye@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: Mind's Eye Re: War, good god y'all, what is it good for?

Many google groups are effectively dead.  You have to wonder, in front of undergraduates, whether anyone does rational discourse at all.  Hardly any of them will be interested in learning how to work things out for themselves and trying to give them the opportunity is something resisted very hard.  We run feedback exercises, but in staff development events the chances of it all starting with a 10 second biopic in which you learn the French teacher next to you teaches French are remarkably high.  

I'm seriously interested in how free speech is stopped.  This is connected with Molly's question in this thread.  The bickering, personation, alters, slagging, barking and the rest look like scenes from British secondary schools - and this is where I would judge most knowledge content expressed over the years.  Of course, I can hear the old fart speaking this.  The jaded lecturer who cast pearls before swine now sits in condescension on all the teecher mincers who thought they were smarter and cooler than Bart Simpson, grown to druggie failure as adults.  I know the thinking in this is not good enough, partly because I know a huge amount taught in schools and universities is simply crap - though not quite in the way the kids themselves feel this.

My approach has been to look at the "secret pleasures of bureaucracy".  Slagging Gabby, for instance, is very easy because she even pisses off her (?) own alters - yet what are the "secret pleasures" of such engagement?  The possibilities are legion and disturbing - yet what could be more disturbing of the mannered society in which many of our kids can't remember what they did in school yesterday and any adults I've polled on general and scientific understanding over 30 years live in cloud cuckoo land.  One can start a lecture by such polling and a comparison of human knowledge with the performance of chimpanzees on the same multiple choice tests.  The same chimps are turning up by the end of the module too.  

If we wanted to, we could offer "her (?)" as slagging - hinting "she" is, say, a cross-dresser (I know a few and wouldn't want to upset most of them - slag +) etc.  Few seem to get that decent people can be very "impolite" in actual friendship and a lot of the mannered stuff covers appalling war-like hostility and lies about in our society without real help.  Most murders and brutality have such pathetic "origins" I can barely relate the tales without people thinking I'm making them up.  Anthropology tells similar tales.  In the Balkans and Cyprus you can find communities with inter-marriage, shared wealth and friendships one day, killing each other the next.  Genocides are not uncommon and Jews are not over-often the victims (think how impossible this debate is and the turds who would make me a holocaust denier).  I suspect "secret pleasures" in hating other people, even that the relevant traumas may be generations old.

My guess has long been that most free speech can't start because people get used to living without knowledge because it is much easier to cheat following fashion or modelling on role.  I'd love to get into discussion of such and to an extent can with books and papers (there is a 'fashion' theory of learning and exploitation).  What we need to imagine is why various clowns and barkers, those gossiping loudly at the back or even those good adaptive children who want to know which page of the textbook to copy, want to stop us having our free speech. 

On Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 10:50:26 PM UTCes, archytas wrote:
I was just thinking I don't go around chasing the tail pipes of north bound trams, when the modern art of MOMA dawned on me.  

On Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 4:07:19 PM UTC, facilitator wrote:
Neil, I wish I could sculpt with metal to the degree you sculpt with words!  I would have been in MOMA years ago.

On Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 12:01:31 PM UTC-4, archytas wrote:
I was impressed when I thought she was a bot.  One had to admire that almost human quality. Now we know she's just a daft old bat addicted to white board wipe vapour or a runaway from the Rocky Horror Show, the disappointment would be intense if we'd ever cared for substrate dependant mind fetish.

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