Diebert wrote:Please show us one place doing it so much better on the exploration of existential ideas! I'd love to visit. There must be one place you are not vomited out of after a while. Oh, that's right, that was this place. :-) It's your destiny to be here locked in with the insane trying to solve your own maze!
It is odd to me, in the context, that this is essentially an 'ad hominem' statement. If the 'ad hominem' is the absolute fallacy it is said to be, it should be useless in argumentation, but in fact it is not. The questions Diebert poses are not in my mind irrelevant. But they are distracting, presented as he presents them.
You see, you might have participated in a more substantial way in this particular conversation at an earlier point, and you might have actually conversed the ideas. But you seem to do this less and less. The function of your thrust here is to cause me to restate all that I have already said. Then, you will find some 'red herring' and use that as a tactic to divert the conversation toward inanities, and then your contribution will simply peter out, as did Trevor's and Jupi's and to some extent Anders's. Those whose arguments or approach you don't like, are ignored. This is a tactic that is used here often. There is an alternative: deal strictly with the ideas presented
when they are presented. I wrote a post where I describe that GF 'insults' the conversation in a grand sense. Do you even understand what I am saying and why? Can you restate it without compromising it? Can you actually listen?
To know and acknowledge there are far worse places in cyberspace is not an argument against the 'insult' I have identified. Go right to
that. Address
that. Not only was it stated in that post, it has been my general them for a long time, and still is.
Here are your 'arguments', Diebert:
- You have been 'vomited out' of forums.
- You were 'vomited out' of this one.
- But you keep coming back.
- You assert that there is someting unwell about the people who hold to 'absolute' opinions.
- But then why do you find it necessary or important to even oppose them?
- You are locked into participation in a place but what you are 'working on' is essentially your own 'maze'.
Mostly, as I think anyone can see, this is argument only for the sake of distraction. If only because you have mentioned the same group of insinuations, at the same juncture in conversations, numerous times before. It would be so much simpler and demonstrate more intellectual integrity to simply deal on the ideas presented.
So, what is the main question here? The one that really is relevant? It is the question of why a person (me) participates in a forum like this when one (me) has identified what one (me) describes as dysfunctional thinking. (It is not a bad question). As to the statement: 'In fact, dearest Alex, you are in and you are working on
your own maze!' is a statement I like! I am not bothered at all by it. It is one of my most important points. But I'll get to that in a second.
- Why would a person stay in a dysfunctional (intellectual) environment and work to present counter-arguments?
The answer is utterly simple. It is done in the belief that these ideas need to be aired here. That 'ideas have consequences' and that wrong or mistaken ideas can do harm. This is a statement of 'wisdom', not grand, astounding, earth-shattering GF wisdom but simple, basic wisdom. I see many people here who seem to me to be tied up in knots. Yes, it is likely that I will not be able to influence them, I accept that. But I carefully write out differing 'conceptual pathways' that a person can follow, and I hope (though I do not know) that this will lead them toward a better territory inside their own selves where they can consider intellectual, spiritual, existential and philosophical ideas in a better way, and of course avoid the rather terrible pitfalls that are quite easy to distinguish in the main players here (and I mean this in a 'to the man' sense).
- You, Alex, are in your OWN maze! WE are not in that maze. YOU are the problem.
This is pretty basic, if very childish material. In different ways, one hears this sort of argumentation in children but usually children under the age of ten. So, let's work through it. According to my view, we are all in a maze. That is exactly the problem we face. I mean this more in our advanced modernity. So many ideas, so many perspectives, so many possibilities, so much that, like some machine with cutting blades, incises the individual, chops them up without caring one iota about them. Indeed, a machine is a machine and cannot 'care'. There are huge forces that surround all of us and that wish to do (were designed to do) exactly that: use persons within the machinery. As I have explained so
FUCKING many times before, the individual is under assault. The individual seeks shelter and protection, and seeks idea structures that offer a means to comprehend Reality; as defensive tools. All this, against bad odds, to keep the individual intact. Which means, to keep the individual from falling asunder. Which is to say
IN MADNESS, which is the undercurrent clearly visible and recognizable in many people who participate here.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, that's one thing. And the ramification of ideas (those 'machines' that have been put in motion, that are the constructs of 'ideas') also have consequences, that's another.
I believe that in a significant degree the ideas of GF are not so much aids to help an individual gather himself together and hold himself together, but are tools used to take him apart. That means, they are like unto machine ideas that have been set in motion by other causes and that left to act on the individual can do
HARM to that individual.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Alright, so essentially I agree with you: I am certainly in the same maze as anyone else. I am attempting to think and feel things through. I am looking for ideas that are 'key' and 'absolutely relevant'. I am looking for defenses against a mad exterior world (forces) that, given the chance, would dice me up only to be a particle in the machinery. And I call that 'Hell'. I propose that there are alternatives, and the alternative ('to the man' in another sense) is in holding the person and the personal as
PRIMARY to all considerations and all conversations. If there is a position where the Individual can find refuge, wellness, 'salvation', unity, a sense of value and accomplishment, it is within the primacy of his own personal self. The key to everything relevant and valuable to us all is found there, indeed where the
FUCK else could it be found!
This is essentially the angle that I work in these conversations. When I came to this forum I had no idea what was in store for me, what would be discovered, and what sort of work would be required. But I set to work
AGAINST a group of machine-like persons, with machine-like ideas, whose 'purpose' was to cut up, dis-integrate, break apart and dehumanify the
PERSON. It is done through forwarding a very
effective group of
LIES that are held up and represented as absolute truths, sheer and recognizable absolute facts, like an equation---Hey! Like A=A! The 'tool' of a person giving themselves over to machine thought!
Yes, yes, Diebert, I know that you do not and that you cannot recognize any part of this. You will
NEVER criticize any of the core ideas presented on this forum as absolute facts, as necessities (in a philosophical sense). You will
NEVER critique David or Dan or Kevin. You are the quintessential yes man! I guess the conclusion that one draws from this, that I draw anyway, is that you are part of the obscuring and (yes) wounding processes. I see that as your personal maze, as your trap.
Others may be able to avoid it. And that is one reason I write here.