Ben D wrote:I'm not sure how that differs from using your judicious discernment to study artifacts, for which imaginary pastime I think you just condescendingly insulted me. To be honest with you. Yet you seem to think very highly of yourself for doing it.
I'm confused. How does that make you better than me except that in your opinion, you just are?
Not better than or worse than, the context is that there are causes and effects,...real people do, and the total number of these are probably about 10% of the world's population (and not necessarily all on the one side), and the 90% play out the consequences of the doers action, as 'actors',... they live in an sort of virtual reality brought to them by the 10%.
I'm sorry, but I'm still confused.
If, let's say, it was obvious not only that my general position on the subject we're discussing had been dictated to me by a paid shill, but also that I'd given it so little specific consideration that I was just mindlessly repeating his talking points without noticing errors that it wouldn't take more than a plain literal understanding of the words I was typing to reveal:
Then you might have a point.
But I'm not. I'm reading two sides of a dispute while making an effort to consider the points being made on their merits. And that does include considering the source to the best of my ability to do so, as you have every reason to know, due to, for example, my inquiry about the provenance of that graph.
IOW: It's not like I'm just...Oh, I don't know...taking my reality wholesale from the authorized person who hands it to me without adding anything of my own, including thought, and then proceeding to cling to it so blindly and tenaciously that when somebody else suggests I expand my understanding of it by reading another person's work, I flatly refuse to do it, without explanation.
So how, exactly, do you figure that my reality is brought to me by others rather than experienced independently?
Only those people of the 90% concern themselves with pride of position, possessions, appearance, respect from others, etc., as that is the only thing that gives them a sense of being real and of worth, and unfortunately if that is shattered then there is an awful emptiness and feeling of worthlessness as they are not yet really real people like the 10%ers. Theirs (90%ers) is a world based on conceptualized reality, ie.thought based, whereas the others live in the here and now and therefore are always in the thick of it (actual REALITY).
I don't care at all about my position relative to others. I don't like power, and it's a global dislike (ie -- I don't like it in others and don't like having it myself.) I suppose that I am concerned with respect to the extent that I feel my personhood should be acknowledged, at least in a general way, for social and political purposes. But again, that's a global deal, insofar as I believe it applies equally to all people.
I have to admit that I'm not totally indifferent to my possessions, though. I'm not status-conscious about them, and I don't own any fancy things. Nevertheless, I definitely do love the things I find beautiful very much. (Mostly old things -- books, objects, music, art, etcetera. Clothing, too, though. I cannot tell a lie.)
But aesthetic joy is a conduit to the divine, as I experience it. So I can't honestly apologize for that. And I don't really see why I should.
WRT appearance: I enjoy being a girl. Sue me.
Okay. I bore with you. But you weren't really talking to me. You were talking to some strawman.
I was talking to the whole person, the real person, the actor and the potential doer.
I understand that was your intention. But you were attributing all kinds of biases and prejudices to me that I hadn't shown any sign of having -- such as my putative enslavement to the diktats of proxies working for the PTB, as outlined above. So I'm afraid that you kind of missed the mark.
I appreciate the effort, though. And you still have my amity and respect, fwiw. As you would under all circumstances, assuming that you're a person. So no worries.