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From a thread that has gradually developed into one of the most interesting talks on this board:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33940Here are a couple of paradoxical bits, not to be considered absolutely better than any of the others:
slomo wrote:The fundamental mistake made on this board (and in my personal career decisions) is accepting that human beings are moved to action by rational discourse, by understanding the meaning of words and their true relationships with each other. That is not the case at all. Most people (probably even myself) are moved by desire, what their desire tells them to believe, and by what the superior force tells them about their desires and beliefs through the power of the language they know how to control.
LilyPatToo wrote:Desire doesn't always lead to inattention or blindness, but that's a wonderful distillation of an amorphous, frustrated idea that's haunted me for the past 25 years or so. To it I would add denial as a prime mover in most people's thinking. I see that "superior force" invoking it often these days. And Bruce, I've pretty much stopped trying to penetrate the general blindness/deafness too. Now and then I slip and get into an argument when someone says something so dumb that it's like a slap in the face of Reality, but mostly those conversations end badly for me. Or for the relationship. And relationships are important.
At this point, I seem to have reached a point where simply acquiring accurate information about the true nature of the world in which we live is an end in and of itself. Knowledge matters more to me than it used to and I deeply appreciate the chance to interact with you other rabbit hole denizens here. It still hurts like Hell when someone close to me expresses denial around things that have actually happened to me, but I think I handle it better now than I used to. I needed to learn about desire and denial and their effect on comprehension. And I think it was here that I followed a link to George Lakoff's writings on cognitive framing and metaphors which has helped me to deal with The Right with less danger of bringing on a fatal stroke...always a good thing, especially in election years.
LilyPat
MacCruiskeen wrote:Minds are changed by rational argument all the time. This is why most people now believe that the earth goes round the sun, that continents drift, that living creatures evolve, and that surgeons should wash their hands. Just for instance.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
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