Women, Freedom, Entrapment, Strategy

[SeekerOfWisdom]

They get hold of the absolutist possibility and value this abstract thing or idea while they simultaneously destroy, in themselves, a connection to the wide range of knowledge that is part of our heritage.

First of all, this "absolutist possibility" is the recognition that all ideas are only abstract conceptualizations and imaginations with no permanent relation to ultimate reality, including this "wide range of knowledge" which you think exists in the mind of any one man, but in reality, every single person is as dumb and ignorant as you are, the illusion that there exists more knowledge of ultimate reality is only because you are thinking of all the other people out there, since there are so many, they must know right?

But, all those people out there are simply a collection of people thinking they know, all having these same illusory fleeting shallow hollow thoughts and experiences, YOU don't know shit, now apply that to everyone. It is simply a collection of egotistical ignorant people pretending to know because they don't want to a) look ignorant in front of others b) think of themselves as ignorant. In reality, when every single person thinks of the earth, or fire, or water, or consciousness, they are all experiencing the same mystery, the same illusions.

"For all is but a web of woven guesses"
- Xenophanes

^

[Alex T. Jacob]

John? Dennis?

You can gesture at them till you dislocate your jaws and your wrists and still they will not have understood you and will never understand.

[Dennis Mahar]

you are out in traffic trying to hail a cab to nowhere.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

You will understand, life literally won't stop fucking you until you do

[Dennis Mahar]

the only thing he's got John, in any conversation he involves himself in, is a retreat into slinging insults.

as if it mattered.

[SeekerOfWisdom]

That's really the only way to tell the difference between a bunch of people making this same claim, one question, who's insulting or having an internal fight?

[Dennis Mahar]

who's insulting or having an internal fight?

the condition 'ignorance'.

[Pye]

Alex writes: As far as I know I have not been 'intellectually dishonest' and I don't see anything I have written in this post as new revelation.

I meant 'intellectually honest' as a quality in itself; not in contradistinction to the presence of its opposite.

I'll tell you what 'elitism' is :)
Elitism is dried-up love. It begins the way all love of something does, but dries to a crust around the very thing it means to protect.

Have mercy on the elitists. They once knew how to love . . . . :)

[SeekerOfWisdom]

Elitism is a natural result of most people being really dumb(unaware) and some being a bit less dumb

[Dennis Mahar]

Elitism is dried-up love.

no possibility of love.

his conversation with the GF:

'I've got you covered bitch, I hid the money'.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Pye:

I am sure there is an elitism that is that and does that. But there is also an elitism that knows, sees, holds and expresses things that few manage to touch.

Conversely, there is a 'populism', a vulgar commonality, that never reaches and knows or understands much of anything, but assumes it does.

• The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
  The best lack all conviction, while the worst
  Are full of passionate intensity.

[Dennis Mahar]

But there is also an elitism that knows, sees, holds and expresses things that few manage to touch.

touching the money in particular.

'I've got you covered bitch, I hid the money'

shit scared.

the 'lower orders' might understand a bit more than you think.

[guest_of_logic]

Dennis, I don't catch your meaning. Who is the witness and in what way am I leading him? What is the object of the Court's inquiry?

Alex, I'm curious to know what these concerns of women are that hold men back, and how women themselves hold men back. I usually find women to be more encouraging and supportive than inhibiting. Perhaps you mean that being involved with a woman at all takes a degree of time and energy that could have been spent in other ways... but I don't think you mean this. Perhaps you mean that being involved with a woman in the full and complete sense in which, for example, married family men are, takes so much time and energy that one cannot focus on one's personal project of self-realisation, if that is indeed one's project. I'm not even sure that this is generally true though, because some men find self-realisation through involvement with, and learning through engagement with, an intimate other. More than likely you are talking about a particular kind of woman (particularly shallow?) and a particular kind of man (particularly independent), perhaps even at particular points in their lives/development.

I wouldn't speculate on whether the average woman questions deeply, but if you want to find examples of women who do, you need look no further than this forum. As for still living in grass huts, I'm not sure that that would be a particularly bad thing. Look at the immense damage our industrial society has caused and is still causing the planet - potentially fatal damage that would not have occurred had we remained in our grass huts. Look at the 9-5 trap that so many are caught up in. Look at the drug and health problems in countries like the USA. Look at modern warfare, drone attacks and the military-industrial complex, look at organised crime. Need I go on? In any case, I'm not convinced that the assertion is true. Women have shown themselves post-liberation to be perfectly capable of "participating in the project", to use your terms.

This view you have of women as "dependent" and men as "servers" of women is the kind of role-casting that I think is unhelpful. If that sort of dynamic works for a particular man and woman, then that's fine, but to set it up as a general expectation is to impose normative gender roles that limit people who do not wish to fit into such roles. To women who don't fit this expectation, it is paternalistic, and not in the positive sense in which you seem to intend your paternalism, but in the condescending sense. Perhaps this doesn't matter to you, perhaps because you don't know how it feels and the possible consequences of such an attitude. I do know how it feels due to my experiences as an involuntary psychiatric patient, where a paternalistic system deems to know better than I do what is in my best interests, turns me into a dependent and "serves" me.

[Dennis Mahar]

Dennis, I don't catch your meaning. Who is the witness and in what way am I leading him? What is the object of the Court's inquiry?

The purpose of the Inquiry is to get at the truth.
Alex is on the 'hot spot' by his invitation as he wanted to explore.
He is the witness under examination.

You are 'leading the witness' by offering the witness ways to think about the situation such as something about 'aligned with feminism'.

The truth is he wants sex and relationship on the one hand and is shit scared of losing his money on the other.
It is conditional.

No amount of poetic license, florid prose, obscuration cuts it.

he's a strutting peacock caught in inauthenticity.


of course, he's your ally and you will try to get him off the hook.

he doesn't want the Inquiry to go against the idea he wants to transmit that he is an elite human being.

There's no way a human being can avoid inauthenticity.
To know one's self is to know one's inauthenticity,
to be authentic about one's inauthentic modes of being in situations are the moments of authenticity.

Laird, several times you have showed how in your own private Inquiry,
you have realised yourself as committing inauthentic actions and 'come clean'.
That is known as 'the way'.

I've lived in impoverished and patriarchal countries, India and Vietnam, and being rich by contrast have felt the seductive lure of thinking I was elite and special and could take advantage. That kind of intellectual and emotional dishonesty is abhorrent.

[guest_of_logic]

Hi Dennis,

I don't see how conditionality can be avoided when it comes to sex and relationships. It would, for example, be a rare person who engaged in them without being attracted to their partners, so at the very least there is the condition of "I must be attracted to you". More basically, and at the risk of being accused of pushing the point, there is generally a condition of "You must be human". Feel free to enlighten me if you do not apply these conditions yourself. Given a philosophy of freedom, I don't begrudge anyone their freedom to attach further conditions. A condition of "I will not give away all that I own" seems reasonable to me, if not, as I said, very romantic.

Yes, Alex is an ally, and yes, I was as charitable with him as I could be. You might notice that I qualified my comment about alignment with feminism with "in one sense". There is also a sense in which his attitude and behaviour are not aligned with feminism, and you might have missed that I did (briefly) remark on that. To reiterate and elaborate: Alex seems to view women as lesser humans (less "conscious", more "mediocre" and more "dependent") who deserve his (and men's generally) "service", which is the typically paternalistic attitude which has seen women excluded from participation in various arenas in the past, and that feminists fight against for that and other reasons. This is not to say that I believe that Alex seeks to exclude women, just to say that it is on the basis of similarly paternalistic attitudes that women *have been* excluded. I think it's admirable that Alex seeks to further the possibilities of an impoverished woman; I don't think it's admirable that he promotes an impoverished view of women.

I also don't think, though, that he is taking advantage. From what I know of Alex, he has more integrity than that. My guess given what I know of him is that the relationship from her side is *not* predicated on "finance me through college", that it is predicated on "I am attracted to and want to be with you", and likewise from Alex's side. My guess is that the financing through college arose out of the warm feelings of the relationship, out of one person who cares about another wanting to help that person in some way, not because he can get something out of it (that something was, I imagine, offered freely), but because he wants to help a deserving person.

Just as a side note, with respect to your closing paragraph: "I've lived in impoverished and patriarchal countries, India and Vietnam, and being rich by contrast have felt the seductive lure of thinking I was elite and special and could take advantage. That kind of intellectual and emotional dishonesty is abhorrent".

I far prefer it when you write like this, in rich and intelligible sentences. You are more believable and relatable when you write that way; I find it a lot easier to take you seriously as a human being.

[Dennis Mahar]

Laird,

Yes, Alex is an ally, and yes, I was as charitable with him as I could be.

Prejudicial. Useless to Inquiry.

I also don't think, though, that he is taking advantage. From what I know of Alex, he has more integrity than that. My guess given what I know of him is that the relationship from her side is *not* predicated on "finance me through college", that it is predicated on "I am attracted to and want to be with you", and likewise from Alex's side. My guess is that the financing through college arose out of the warm feelings of the relationship, out of one person who cares about another wanting to help that person in some way, not because he can get something out of it (that something was, I imagine, offered freely), but because he wants to help a deserving person.

Leading the witness. Useless to Inquiry.

The Inquiry reveals that once 'separation' is believed in.
The condition of ignorance prevails.
Automatically the 'self' seeks advantage and fills with vanity.
Self-aggrandising perpetuates a necessity for fictional accounts.
Hollow victory.
Worthless trash.

Such is the worldliness of the world worlding.

Surely you have noticed the unsatisfactory, unwholesome state of affairs.

[guest_of_logic]

Dennis, who's more prejudiced, the man who has come to know "the witness" personally, and has personal evidence of his fundamentally good character, or the man who knows "the witness" only through public exchanges in which "the witness" has expressed contempt for his views and manner of expression, which could easily be seen as leading to a personal resentment towards "the witness"?

[guest_of_logic]

To add to that: to write that I'm "guessing" is actually a bit misleading; Alex has effectively made all of what I wrote clear already (e.g. he has written that his girlfriend had no "designs" on him). It's hardly "leading the witness" to paraphrase his own explanation.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Dennis wrote: "I've lived in impoverished and patriarchal countries, India and Vietnam, and being rich by contrast have felt the seductive lure of thinking I was elite and special and could take advantage. That kind of intellectual and emotional dishonesty is abhorrent."

I too immediately noticed this one, clear, readable paragraph. And this is what I thought: Here is a man who takes it upon himself---fantastic arrogation!---to mediate and arbitrate 'authenticity'. The 'argument' about it is really a non-argument, and similar to John's entire position represents the end of all possible conversation or exchange of ideas. But this fellow feels that he is 'on to something authentic' and, it would seem, knows it in his heart ('passionate intensity'). Coming into this forum space, he has developed his 'ideas' which amount to, in fact, the end of all ideas. I won't bother to sarcastically paraphrase those simplistic, mind-numbing ideas but I will say they become deeply seductive and also that John has been pretty obviously seduced by them (reductionism, absolutism).

So, this fellow takes it upon himself to decide 'authenticity', and it follows that this 'unit of philosophy', this non-argument, can be used against, essentially, the whole world. There is no level of ideation or attainment which it cannot attack and, in its own mind at least, defeat. This is exactly what I mean when I speak about a vulgar mind (I mean 'vulgar' in the Latin sense btw) that feels it can enter domains which, in truth, it has no right whatever to enter and does not understand and then with 'passionate intensity' carry out a destructive work. (I write these things and they seem so obvious to me but then I note that they are significantly misrepresented).

What I find curious is that this self-defined 'authentic man' has adopted what looks to be a false style which is very far from authentic. To write in a bad Tao Te Chingy imitation style, to take on these airs, to write just to appear in the space and never to really engage in idea-exchange and the work required for that, and at bottom to defend one's whole position through 'moist-eyed emotionalism', is wretched. But then in a seemingly unguarded (sincere?) moment to write one paragraph that manages to communicate 'authentically' but as if by accident. It is the only sincere paragraph that I have seen in months if not in years. How strange!

In this sense, as I see it, this GF platform (one sees it again and again and again) seems to invite a peculiar sort of person who wanders in, adopts some of the terms of discourse, and perpetrates an enormous and from the look of it quite insincere and 'inauthentic' theater of appearances. An 'inauthentic' image-management game. And because it is transparent and false it does not invite authentic and sincere exchange, but rather contempt.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Laird wrote: "Perhaps this doesn't matter to you, perhaps because you don't know how it feels and the possible consequences of such an attitude. I do know how it feels due to my experiences as an involuntary psychiatric patient, where a paternalistic system deems to know better than I do what is in my best interests, turns me into a dependent and 'serves' me."

You have constructed your argument through a group of analogies and you have, it seems, summed up through this comparative. But in doing so you have, perhaps unintentionally but perhaps not, put me in a bit of a fix. If I defend 'paternalism' (and I qualified my position differently and did not use this rather charged word, these are terms that have been attached to my position by Dennis and at least tacitly by Pye) in the context of my arguments and perspectives I will take a position in pro of that psychiatric system which impinges on your person. But I do not think that you wish to precipitate a conversation where I or anyone else comments on these very personal matters.

To speak about those things you would have to say: 'I give you and everyone else my permission to speak about my struggles in the arena of mental health and I promise not to take it personally'. I won't touch it otherwise.

[Pye]

Alex writes: But there is also an elitism that knows, sees, holds and expresses things that few manage to touch.

But Alex, this is exactly the crust I'm talking about - crust built up around a valuable thing and assumed withheld from others, these 'untouchable' fruits.

As far as I know, I'm the only person here whose living puts me squarely in the trenches, where I have found that many many persons are capable of many and very profound thoughts, as long as the right conditions are set for this to happen. Does a person leave a classroom and take up again all the other overwhelming conditions of civilization that conspire against such thinking? Mostly yes. But it's just that - conditions. Not constitutional incapacity to "touch" these things. Very, very rarely have I found this to be the case. Elitism stands in the way of this being seen. And love that still courts a valuable thing wants it loved (i.e. valued) by more, not less. Elitism demands exclusivity, for its own sake. It's dead love.

And Dennis, for once I dropped the worldly ball regarding this word 'elitism' and was not making the connections to Alex's opening post. It was his 'spiritual elitism' that moved me off this mark, but its all the same, really.

You have been to some countries wherein you could have played out the sex-in-exchange-for power system. Myself would have been a very rich and privileged woman, indeed, had I taken up some of these sex-in-exchange-for offers, and not in any 'third-world' circumstances, but in the 'polite' and living streams of power, privilege, wealth, and position in america. Marriages, vacations, promotions, special 'career considerations,' secret avenues of influence and power that run through the veins of some man's sexuality straight to the 'withheld' goods. (My mum used to refer to me [with a kind of loving exasperation], as "downwardly mobile" :) I also could have had a very different life-time, but am greater satisfied with thorough-going independence, marriage-less-ness, relative poverty, sex only in exchange for itself, and woe betide the male who tries to attach something else to it. Woe betide myself, who refuses to attach anything to it, either :)

[guest_of_logic]

Hi Alex,

I hate to do this to you, but in fact you did use that rather charged word; not only did you use it, but you were the first person to use it, and to make clear that you owned it, in your second post to this thread: "It may appear paternalistic (but that is also the theme of this thread: paternalism)".

You are right that I do not wish to discuss the details of my struggles with the psychiatric system; that is still too personal for me to be comfortable making it public. I would not have considered even raising the issue were it not for the fact that David "outed" me as a psychiatric patient earlier this year. I would be happy to discuss "the system" in general terms though. In fact, it would be a useful exercise in developing my thoughts.

[guest_of_logic]

Pye, you're awesome. I just had to say it.

[Alex T. Jacob]

Quite okay. I don't have a problem with that word as I define it! But your use of it follows your own definitions, and the background of them. I am fairly certain that I 'resist' your use of the term and qualify my own. So, should I restate what I mean by paternalism?

[guest_of_logic]

I'm not sure that you need to restate your meaning as I think you've made it clear already, but sure, if you want to, then go for it. I don't think it's so much the meaning of the word, or the concept itself that's in question, but rather its effects. You offer a view of "kindly" paternalism; on the other hand, I don't think that well-meaning is enough - as the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". I favour freedom, especially from imposition, and paternalism is not at all shy of imposing itself and restricting the freedom of others - "for their own benefit". I don't find you to be particularly guilty of that type of imposition in your personal interactions, but it comes along for the ride when you set up a vision of superior versus mediocre, which easily becomes "those who know best" versus "those who need to be led". In fact your choice of words, "controlled", makes this dynamic explicit. Switch "women" to "mentally unwell", and your attitude becomes very personal for me, as it already is for the women who inhabit this board, who have been very restrained given what you're saying about them.