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Two layers of thought

Started by tipareth, October 26, 2012, 09:03:29 PM

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tipareth

I've noticed in recent years a disparity between certain types of thinking. There's ideas which are basically further expounding on a base of agreed-upon assumptions and then there's things that analyze those assumptions. It seems the world is chock full of the former and, as a fellow who is all about the latter, it seems that when I try to get someone to see that our differences are based simply on different fundamental ideas they treat me like I suddenly started spouting gibberish. Is even the intellectual world being infested with ignorance, intolerance and a general lack of self realization?

I'll throw a nice, juicy, inflammatory example that is near and dear to me. I often differ with a lot of people who think that men are more sexually motivated than women (I feel this is a widely accepted idea in our society as well). I try to point out that the real scientific data (Reich, The Function of the Orgasm, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex Morality) suggests that women are actually just as sexually motivated and all the other behaviors around the idea that they are not is really a social convention. It is usually at this point that someone starts treating me as though I just exited a spaceship and am pointing what is obviously a death ray at them. Why is this? I believe that people basically still treat their ideas like religion. They have merely supplanted something they PERCEIVE as more intellectual or scientific and they are just as irrational about it as a religious fanatic. Sometimes someone will appear to be quite intelligent at first and then behave this way. Please discuss and expound

LMNO

Some beliefs are associated with identity. If you challenge those beliefs, you challenge who they are at a fundamental level.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on October 26, 2012, 09:15:19 PM
Some beliefs are associated with identity. If you challenge those beliefs, you challenge who they are at a fundamental level.

Yes.

Beliefs that shape how people think of themselves are usually the hardest for them to truly examine and challenge. The idea that men and women have inherently different levels of sexual motivation informs what they believe to be true of themselves and how they interact with members of the opposite sex. Challenging that idea has the potential to force them to reconsider a vast number of assumptions that stem from that belief, including assumptions and deductions about the nature of our society itself and how it formed the way it did. It's hard.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Nephew Twiddleton

The idea of being an american comes to mind. If youre an american and readily identify as such chances are that youre going to think that the united states hold a special place in history as a champion of democracy that should be considered some sort of leader of the world despite all evidence to the contrary.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on October 26, 2012, 10:09:18 PM
The idea of being an american comes to mind. If youre an american and readily identify as such chances are that youre going to think that the united states hold a special place in history as a champion of democracy that should be considered some sort of leader of the world despite all evidence to the contrary.

Balls.  I identify as an American, and I know all her warts and VD scabs.  And atrocities.  And her view that everyone's free, as long as you're a straight White male protestant.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Nephew Twiddleton

I said chances are. Plus youre an exception rather than a rule.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on October 26, 2012, 11:15:45 PM
I said chances are. Plus youre an exception rather than a rule.

America is my medicine, in the same way that it was James Brown's medicine, which is to say it gives me something to laugh a nasty little laugh about, while it thinks I'm complimenting it.

cf; Living in America by James Brown.  He's LAUGHING at America.  Watch the video again, with that in mind.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

tipareth

OK thanks for chiming in, all. BUT. We didn't take the discussion as far as I was trying to go into. You all agreed that even relatively intelligent people will react emotionally rather than rationally when confronted with an idea that actually challenges an assumption they have based a lot on. But why? Why is it I was attracted to such things and others aren't? I mean I could go into genetics and how large populations of our relative recent ancestors were bred to be submissive to an idea.

It seems that people are still under the yoke we've just been given the freedom to chose a yoke. I mean huge movements of thought will sweep our population (which is a new phenomenon, as far as how common that has become) but can possibly be useless when put up to actual intellectual scrutiny. In short, we seem to have given ignorance a veneer of intelligence. I believe this to be dangerous in that people are electing officials into power who are pandering to these thoughts. Please continue.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: tipareth on October 29, 2012, 06:02:31 PM
OK thanks for chiming in, all. BUT. We didn't take the discussion as far as I was trying to go into.

Sorry about that.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Lord Cataplanga

Quote from: tipareth on October 29, 2012, 06:02:31 PM
But why? Why is it I was attracted to such things and others aren't?

You are a neophile. You see yourself as "a person that seriously challenges its own assumptions about things".
Now, I'm not saying that you are just as stupid as "them" just because you also have an identity (an image of yourself you want to preserve). That's not the stupid part.

Quote from: tipareth on October 29, 2012, 06:02:31 PM
I mean I could go into genetics and how large populations of our relative recent ancestors were bred to be submissive to an idea.
I think evolutionary psychology can be a good approach for explaining this problem. But it's more than just our genes.

In the area of politics, where this kind of thinking appears more often, it is considered a weakness to change your mind, and for very good pragmatic reasons. Instead of constantly updating your worldview as you go, it's simply more effective to begin by picking an ideology you like and then stick with it at all costs.

tipareth

Lord Cataplanga, you still have failed to move this forward. Great, you have a word, "neophile", for someone who challenges their own beliefs. But still, why don't more people. If you read my original post I'm lamenting the invasion of this into intellectual circles. Also people exhibit this behavior in many more realms than just political.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: tipareth on October 29, 2012, 08:57:06 PM
Lord Cataplanga, you still have failed to move this forward.

You're a bit of an asshole, aren't you?
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

tyrannosaurus vex

Why don't more people question their beliefs? It's one of those timeless mysteries to which we will never have an adequate answer. Like other questions which have plagued us for thousands of years, like "Why is the sky blue?" and "Where do babies come from?" These are things which we, apparently, are just not meant to know.

Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Nephew Twiddleton

That was my thought too.

Tipareth- youre not really going to have the conversation moved forward if youre complaining about the people posting not meeting your expectations. Youre actively discouraging us from doing so with your phrasing and attitude.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: V3X on October 29, 2012, 09:00:55 PM
Why don't more people question their beliefs? It's one of those timeless mysteries to which we will never have an adequate answer. Like other questions which have plagued us for thousands of years, like "Why is the sky blue?" and "Where do babies come from?" These are things which we, apparently, are just not meant to know.

Why do people come on a message board and demand that people "move the conversation forward", rather than just discuss it?

Oh, wait.  I know the answer to that one.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.