Filed under: epistemology, personal, philosophy, politics, psychology | Tags: ability, competition, girls, personal, philosophy, politics, psychology, sex
“The man who discovered fire was probably burned at the stake he built.”
-Paraphrased from ‘The Fountainhead,’ by Ayn Rand
Someone recently pointed out, here on my blog, that I am all at once: attractive, talented and intelligent– in that it is rare to have all three in one person at the same time.
Filed under: epistemology, ethics, personal, philosophy, politics, psychology
I think I may be beginning to oppose capitalism.
Not on a political level though, my objection is philisophical: that the profit motive isn’t a valid goal for human life.
Filed under: ethics, news, personal, philosophy, politics, psychology, sex, sexuality | Tags: behavior, feminism, gender-roles, girls, radicalism, sex
The problem with feminism, is feminism.
As far as I’ve understood, ‘feminism,’ in its original sense, is the pursuit of women to be that of equals to men and has had its biggest victories beginning in the nine-teenth century, reaching the apex of its first wave in 1920 when women got the right to vote.
The second wave, I would say, began during World War II, when women had to take over the jobs of men, and began to smoke and behave like their husbands.
The third wave of the last century I’d say was during the 1960’s when feminists would burn their bras in protesting the sexual hegemony with flower girls, ending with the 1980’s version of the career woman. Then there was a fourth wave in the 1990’s concentrating on a reaction to all the previous movements.
From what I’ve read, we are currently undergoing post-feminism.
My mom was a feminist. And she was a very respectable intelligent woman.
But when I think of feminists in general, I get the same feeling about men and being ‘masculine’ at a bar full of frat-boys: by declaring us as not just males or men, but ‘MEN,’ it sort of says something a little different to ourselves.
That is why I can’t respect feminism: it is the slave and captive who mistook her cage to be its key.
The biggest disservice a person can do to themselves is to think of themselves as a gender, a race, an ethnicity, nationality, sexual preference, etc., and not WHO they are.
By assigning oneself to being a ‘feminist,’ one devalues their identity in ascribing themselves to a group, on the basis of biology no less, rather than self-will and intelligence.
This is why the biggest problem of feminism, is itself, including feminism striving for equality–its own contradiction in terms.
Modern feminism, as opposed to its original definition runs along the lines of special rights more than it does equal rights, radicalism over moderation. And as I’ve pointed out, the mere idea of thinking of yourself as a woman, before being an individual, is the root of the very slavery feminists are alleged to oppose.
Feminism, for instance, in general today, would ascribe certain rules of behavior to women in regards to men.
I’ve heard feminists declare a host of things that doesn’t necessarily differ too much from the boiler plate conventional drivel they often so vehemently cry about.
Now, I understand the fact that there are more than one types of feminism, sex-positive, sex-negative feminists, feminist theory, and certain unique characteristics to each wave, and so forth, but those are not what necessarily concerns me here. It is the general idea I am interested in talking about.
My own idea of it comes from what I’ve read, things self-described feminists have told me, in concert to personally witnessed behavior in how everyday women seem to regard the concept.
Coincidentally, however, this usually does appear as either sex-negative or sex-positive feminism. I attribute this to the fact that I am a man and my observation is nearly always biased toward sex or its possibility with the person to whom I witnessing or speaking, the very admission of which, would, no doubt garner much of their antipathy.
But, observe, in all cases, that the emphasis of being feministic concentrates on rules of behavior rather than the empowerment of individual decision making. Here are a few I have seen manifest either outrightly or implicitly in behavior.
-no sleeping with a guy on the first date
-no letting him open doors for you
-no letting him pay
-no wearing make up
-act proactive and aggressively
-take the initiative
or
-sleeping with him is good on the first date (to empower yourself)
-no wearing make up
-you make the first move
-(implicitly) discussion needs to be centered around being female
-act proactive and aggressively
-take the initiative
Despite all this, and due to the fact that we predominantly live in a post-feminist age, women on average, still buy and wear make-up, lingerie, are obsessed with their bodies, and are destroyed egoistically very early on.
As an important tangent, a common confusion is to think of ‘egoism,’ to be ‘egotism,’ when they are not the same thing.
As my on-board mac dictionary points out:
“The words egoism and egotism are frequently confused, as though interchangeable, but there are distinctions worth noting. Both words derive from Latin : ego (‘I’), the first-person singular pronoun. Egotism, the more commonly used term, denotes an excessive sense of self-importance, too-frequent use of the word ‘I,’ and general arrogance and boastfulness. Egoism, a more subtle term, is perhaps best left to ethicists, for whom it denotes a view or theory of moral behavior in which self-interest is the root of moral conduct. An egoist, then, might devote considerable attention to introspection, but could be modest about it, whereas an egotist would have an exaggerated sense of the importance of his or her self-analysis, and would have to tell everyone.”
Egoistically then, women aren’t doing so well, and the long history of feminism hasn’t really seemed to do all that much on a personal, mainstream level. This augments and facilitates the feminist movement’s fervor toward extremism, which then, in turn, further alienates the feminist movement, which ends women up where they began: nowhere.
But let me illustrate what I mean by being an individual in giving you an example of a true individual’s reaction to, say, someone hitting on them at a bar, versus a reaction where someone thinks of themselves and behaves as a ‘woman.’
A girl is sitting at a bar, and a guy approaches her. She is very attracted to him, and this means, immediately that she must appear unobtainable in order to attract him further. He, of course, encroaches on his kill, asking her if she’d like a drink. She responds with compliance, merely compliance, nothing more. He buys her a drink. She receives it from the bartender as he strikes up conversation. “What’s your name?” “Lizzie,” “Where ya from,” “New York,” etc.
As they get to talking, the conversation slips immediately into jokes and lines, which she laps up while maintaining a casual indifference that makes him go crazy for her. They end up playing pool and eventually, she gets more and more tipsy, and hence, he gets closer and closer to his goal: sleeping with her. At the last moment she ‘comes to her senses’ remembering the floating recitation of an amalgam of people who taught her that sleeping with a guy on the first date is bad, who knows why, but nonetheless, how could she respect herself if she did? So, she goes over to her friends who have been waiting in the wings, leaving her number in his hand.
So, now let’s say a different girl is sitting at a bar. A guy approaches her. She is very attracted to him, and thus keeps an open demeanor, for casual and direct conversation. The usual small talk is gotten out of the way quickly and they begin talking about each other’s work and that leads to interests they might have in common. She doesn’t hide her excitement for him, despite all the other girls, and nearly everyone she knows who’d tell her to hide her feelings for fear of driving him away. She thinks in with cool casual confidence: “Well, if he likes the things I say, then he likes me, period, and if he is drivin away by me being myself, then that’s his problem…”
They have a blast, the guy enjoys the refreshing interaction of the confidence and intelligence he senses with his guy friends. Nothing is held back, they kiss and grope each other playfully as the night goes on without a care in the world. Ideas are shared, experiences are recanted and retained, they play pool and keep drinking. Sleeping together was never the primary goal, and so, that is what they are able to enjoy. She didn’t come with any friends and she was tipsy, too much to drive, they both knew they wanted to sleep together, so they did, and had everything in the world left to talk about in the morning.
See what I mean?
All these social rules, taboos, and equivocations, have something in common with feminism: they are robotic, and unreasoned. Confidence enables a person to be a person, and not need the comfort of a group to have to ‘wait in the wings.’
You may think that the first example is the embodiment, not of a feminist, but of a typical girl in mainstream society. It is, in fact, its an example of post-feminist age if anything, but remember that that is where feminism has lead us, and is in my opinion the overall affect the movement has had, which in mainstream society, is minimal in terms of actual self-liberation. This is because the under-pinnings are the same in either case, and as I have found, most often, their behavior too.
Confidence and ego, having things one is proud of, enables one to have genuine interests, making them interesting to other people.
Developed personal interests, physical health and genetically derived attractiveness, a good sense of humor, rational self-interest, experience, knowledge–these are values.
Wearing make up or not, a bra, or not, sleeping with a guy or not, opening doors for you, or not, whether you make the first move, or he or she does, whether you need to prefer women and be a lesbian, or-not…
These are not values, but alternatives, alternatives set up in terms of the alleged enemy–by men.
Feminists, by being feminist, think in terms of reactive alternatives rather than active values. Reactive vs. proactive behavior is also something psychologists identify to be the earmark of low self-esteem, which is probably reinforced by feminist ideology in an endless loop.
The idea of feminism whether it views itself as a pursuit of equality or superiority to men, is itself its own worst enemy, and bad for humans in both cases.
Let us crush and forget this idea, the idea of feminism entirely, in favor of a very new one: a confident person who happens to be woman, or happens to be a man.
Summary of Part 1:
I introduce the objectives of the blog: one to show how the equivocation of reason as aggression, objectivity for ‘perspective’ actually works, two, to relate it to the intellectual disintegration of society, and three how this all relates to the misuse and disregard for rational life and communication.
I introduce Dale Carnegie’s view of social behavior in his book ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ in that self-aggrandizement is the operative motive is most people’s behavior. He explains how it is futile to argue with people, and better to simply agree with their point of view, or humor them in some way. I use this as a good example of how society works at present, in general.
I introduce the concept of ‘flight and fight ego’ to relate to some of Carnegie’s ideas about how people turn comments around to flee or evade a premise, or to turn the premise of their own disagreement into their own ideas.
Continuation:
Carnegie illustrates how even upon making a point successfully, the other contender or participant, will not be happy with you unless this somehow extols their own abilities in the face of other people, and even themselves.
Both Carnegie and my Dad told me the very same conclusion as a basic life lesson: ‘if people want to be right, and wish to hear only about themselves, let em.’
Until recent years I had followed this advice by letting people speak before I did, politely letting them interrupt so that they can speak on what subject they really want to hear about: them.
My point in bringing up Carnegie is to put a foot in the door of your mind, through examples of how ‘we’ tend to operate on a regular basis, particularly with reference to how we behave with our own egos.
I commonly encounter a discussion involving the topic definitions where definitions are precisely what is overlooked. This has a name in grammar–its called reification: when a(an) (abstract) concept is equivocated to be a concrete entity in that it is treated as such.
I might point out that people seem to be better at defining concepts or words, though they are rarely not making them up on the spot, but people seem even worse, far worse in applying them to reality.
So, for instance, if I were to begin the discussion of objectivity and perspective you’d commonly get a conversation which very quickly led to blatant misunderstanding in that two parallel dialogues would emerge: one, who understood his initial definitions, and the other who didn’t.
Either of them would point out that the disagreement on virtually everything was the result of conflicting definitions, or they wouldn’t. In most cases, this is the latter, or I wouldn’t have much of a subject to write about here.
Let’s say a guy named Gary begins by stating my premise:
‘Objectivity and perspective are equivocated to be the same thing often in society.’
A typical person, let’s call him Sam would tend to respond with something like:
‘That isn’t true.’
Or that ‘it is true’ depending on his opinion on the matter. It doesn’t necessarily make a difference but I will make him disagree in this instance so I will have something to demonstrate.
So he says: ‘that isn’t true,’ without asking what Gary means by either concept.
Gary might respond by saying:
‘But they are different, and they are often confused for each other.’
But this wouldn’t be a very effective way of responding since Sam would then just lash back in disagreement. So, let’s say Gary happens to be a rational and informed fellow. So, being rational, he instead asks Sam:
‘How are you stating that those are not true?’
Sam: ‘What do you mean?’ (Justifying a claim with a reason (!) is automatically foreign to Sam, but at least he’s asking)
Gary: ‘I mean, what reason do you have to say that?’
Sam: ‘Well, a perspective is the same thing isn’t it?’
Gary: ‘No, it’s not, it’s actually quite different.’
Sam: ‘I don’t know I don’t think so.’
-Believe it or not, this tends to be the typical response to any sort of even abstract question. As Carnegie would point out, people begin by being experts, whether or not they are is irrelevant to them. -
Gary: ‘How can you say that if you don’t define them?’
Sam: ‘I have a general definition, just because I can’t spit it out right here and now on the spot, doesn’t really matter, I know what it means.
Gary: ‘How can you be sure you know if you can’t even explain it?’
-At this point, the conversation would turn into ego based mud slinging, but I will go on having skipped that part.-
Gary: ‘Objectivity Is the idea that reality is independent of our minds and existence. Perspective, is the point of view of a single person which has a certain degree of both objectivity and subjectivity in it, and depending on the person, can be more one than the other.’
Sam: ‘I get it, so, how can a person have objectivity or subjectivity in them when they are both abstract ideas?’
Gary: ‘Because abstract ideas do not refer to other abstract things, they refer to things people do, or things in reality, otherwise they are just words.’
Sam: ‘Okay I don’t get that part, but I think its generally the case that people are subjective, I mean, they are people that have a point of view, we can never become objective.’
Gary: ‘Why is that?’
Sam: ‘Because we are not independent of reality, we are all part of the same thing, we come from nature.’
Gary: ‘I think you have not understood what I meant.’
Sam does not understand, and is quickly confused. This is partly to do with factors like impatience and attention span, but I think in typical instance like these, mainly to do with the fact that to people like Sam, explaining certain things, such as the definitions of words, is redundant, since to him, there is no difference between words and reality.
There is, also, more generally, no difference to him in how he regards things, between his own point of view and reality. Hence, anything he has come to understand, IS, in a sense, all there is to understand.
In order to understand how people confuse objectivity for perspective lies in the consistent observation that people do so, in inappropriate ways.
It is inappropriate to marginalize science into a purely non-philosophical realm for example. Virtually all scientific authorities agree with the opposite: that there’s no way philosophy could ever be considered a positive science.
This has to do with two misconceptions: one, to do with the general definition (if there is one) versus the way it would have to be defined if made scientific, and two, to do with the history of all sciences which, at one time or another, were philosophy. All sciences evolved from philosophy. The way philosophy is defined generally is on the basis of the many ways different authorities define it without much consensus.
But the way philosophy would be defined if made into a science, would have to be concentrated on people and the system of beliefs by which people live, which isn’t quite, but linked with psychology.
But rather than seeing the ways in which philosophy could work as a science, which if kept to the range of what systems of thought exist, rather than anything projectional, or normative, the society ousts it to the realm of being a ‘humanity.’
This is the same mentality which will maintain that subjectivity is inescapable and objectivity, unattainable. Complete objectivity, perhaps is impossible, since that would possibly entail omniscience because a completely objective view is nothing less than a whole view, A is A.
This either-or mentality leads to its social manifestation, which is the common mistake of regarding objectivity as a mere perspective. We see this in people who will discuss science until it pertains to ‘such an indefinable element as –the truth-‘ or more typically when people regard science itself as having no bearing on politics such as is the case with stem cell research, or even abortion, both examples where the conservative political machine regards science as merely one person or another’s perspective.
I just got done watching a documentary called ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’
I wasn’t even aware that there ever even WAS an electric car, let alone, someone who killed its existence. I took the general statement to mean: who prevented the electric car from ever coming into the market place, when actually it meant, who really took it off the road.
And, in fact, in 1996, GM (of all manufacturers) in California, came out with the full monte, real deal, electric car that runs on absolutely no gasoline and does not possess a combustible engine, but rather a cell battery.
This miracle machine was called the EV1 Electric Car.
It was fast, real fast, rivaling the speed of normal cars’ acceleration. It could go up to 80 miles on a full charge in a single day which was more than satisfactory considering that apparently and according to the government, the average distance traveled by car by the average car owner is only about 23 miles in a day.
GM allowed consumers in California merely to lease the vehicles, which in turn allowed GM to be able to repossess the vehicles at will.
Why they did this is what one must read between the lines for.
To add insult to this mystery, GM did in fact, end up repossessing all the vehicles and destroyed every last one of them, garnering much protest from most of the former owners.
About 9 months after the car was ‘on the market,’ California Air Resources Board (CARB) mandated, I believe it was, that the auto-manufacturers had to make like 1 out of every 20 automobiles to be BEVs. (Battery Electric Vehicles) ostensibly in order to cut down on emissions.
Now I can see the sense in cutting down on emissions, but why then and not before? I guess it makes sense considering there never was an electric car on the market in the way the EV1 was. I can understand the car manufacturers feeling singled out I guess.
On the other hand, the force and thoroughness with which GM followed through in killing the mandate was considerable.
And they did, they killed it, and killed it for good it seems.
They even sued CARB through a federal court and got their way.
Today I saw an ad from Chrysler, which is apparently owned by GM. It was for an electric car.
Here’s its link on YouTube.
Notice how explicit it is in presenting the car as if it were already out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_J2Jx51XZs&eurl=http://www.gm-volt.com/2007/09/15/chevy-volt-tv-ad/
My friend, George, called up a dealer and asked about the silver muscle-car-like beauty, expecting to hear about when he could go and see it.
George: ‘So do you guys really have a fully electric car?’
Dealer Rep: ‘Well…it isn’t really out yet.’
George: ‘Are you serious? But I just saw the commercial for it.’
Rep: ‘Yeah, but it wont be out for another year at least, if even then.’
It isn’t so bad that the company GM, is wating to come out with their electric car, necessarily, but for a car they are advertising for full on, as if it were—IS.
This goes right along with the pattern of GM ‘leading us backwards into the future,’ in the words of Ralph Nader.
In conjunction with the 1996 beyond peculiar decision to repossess a (full-on) consumer product through the bizarre leasing of the vehicles, it kinda makes one wonder what the motive of auto-manufacturers really is.
With the EV1 story that resembled a cover-up more than it did a business practice, and the oil companies buying out Washington, I really tend to think this is less about business for GM and more about external pressures, and someone else’s business.
Seriously, why would an auto-manufacturer test out consumer demand by leasing out electric cars that ended up in a landfill?
Why is GM still so cautious about putting out an electric car now when people seem to be chomping at the bit for the idea? The EV1 was extremely successful a product with the mere 80 or so owners who got them.
Or does this really have more to do with the fact that GM is concerned about how the oil companies will fare beyond the era of the combustible engine?
This, while they bide their time keeping the consumer at bay with false ad campaigns with no inherent indication of being at all a ‘concept-car’ as they claim it is.
Be sure it is companies like GM who are keeping the dream of an electric car, just that.
I am observing with greater and greater frequency the confusion of objectivity for perspective. With even more frequency, I observe the interpretation of reason itself, as aggression.
Dale Carnegie in his 1937 book, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ outlines the ‘mistake’ of trying to prove a point at expense to social ‘harmony.’
He illustrates how (even in 1937) it is rarely advantageous for an individual to pursue a point for the sake of truth or objectivity, within a group especially, but even while in the company of a single individual. He explains that, though truth might be important, people basically work on the basis of a single fundamental principle: self-aggrandizement.
In the end, he goes on, people hate being wrong, always want to be right, and that these two, in the face of their own egos, are the fundamental most basic operatives in people’s social behavior. The trick in spotting it, is knowing that it can be manifested in many forms.
My point later in this blog (which consists of an eight-part analysis) quite contrary to the way things are at present, will be to illustrate how it doesn’t have to be this way, that people do not have to operate in this manner so long as they are self-aware. It will also show how this phenomena is a major manifestation of intellectual disintegration in society, and how it can be changed so that people live and communicate objectively rather than subjectively–meaning by means of reason rather than some substitute, i.e. emotion, intuition, authority, etc.
My general point, as stated, of course will be to show how reason is equated in itself, more and more to be an act of aggression, how objectivity is marginalized to mere ‘perspective’ and how both relate to the above.
My father explained to me early on in life how to ask questions rather than making statements in any verbal discussion with other people. He told me ‘people rarely want to hear about you, but will always want to hear about themselves.’ (paraphrasing both Carnegie and my Dad)
But, both Carnegie and my Dad, are right.
People do not typically want to hear about you, and they scarcely ever care about the truth. Carnegie goes on to say how ineffective it is to keep up an argument with the goal of winning over the other person, that it will only work in any case, to isolate the person who pursues it, and embarrass the one in reaction to it.
He identifies how the responder will escape in one of two ways, with what I have conceptualized to be called: ‘flight-ego,’ and ‘fight-ego.’
‘Flight-ego’ is a way of deflecting or turning a statement around so that you are the one who ends up on top (ego) but in a way that evades the fundamentals of the other person’s stance (flight).
The opposite, but counterpart concept, what I call, ‘fight-ego’ is in the case, where the meaning of the statement is not evaded, but the responder reacts in a way that assumes ownership (ego) of the initial statement (fight) so that it doesn’t have to be evaded.
The two typical reactions to ‘flight and fight ego,’ take place with either scoffing at your statement in disagreement, or turning it around in some way through ‘flight or fight ego’ as a response to itself. I notice how particularly independent a person’s agreement or disagreement tends to be from objectivity, and how dependent it is on how agreeing or disagreeing will make them look.
I notice this takes place quite subtly and often gracefully.
(In the exceptional case of intellectual circles where disagreement is the norm, I don’t observe that the overall pattern changes very much, but in some ways gets subtler and even insidious.)
For example, someone is arguing for the advantages of the electric car at the table (politics is generally a social no-no to Carnegie anyway). Another person in the group disagrees in saying:
‘What do you mean, the electric car has never even come out on the market?’
(Though many different responses are possible to any statement, I would say that responses to reason based statements, that is, declarations of objective truth, usually fall along the lines of the following:)
In general, the initiator has the option of two responses:
One, he can flat out state how ‘the electric car actually, and in fact DID come out with GM’s 1996 California model,’…
…or he can merely back down and say or (better) ask,
‘Is that so?’
In this case, usually posing a question will allow the other person an opportunity to laud themselves with their superior knowledge, and hence, is the better option, especially in the face of an audience.
Notice how, then, the second person also has the option of two more responses, one for each of the two responses the initiator has produced.
If the initiator chooses the latter option, the respondent will surely take an opportunity with some or other knowledge (or garbage), to make himself look good by graciously offering the initiator the opportunity to (gracefully) admit fault.
But if the initiator chooses to correct him, however with: ‘No actually that’s not true, the E-V1 was brought out by GM in California in 1996 and many of those cars were actually even on the road’…
…the aforementioned reaction will then ensue:
He will either flat out disagree which is usually an end to the conversation depending on the natural inclination of the respondent, or he will admit the initiator is right in a way that if he can, turns the statement around, which I notice is more often than not the case. I notice also, how this tends to take place in the form of revising their initial statement to make it look as if they agreed all along in some way or another.
Again, in the latter response, the dual component of ‘fight-ego’ can be observed: both ego and dealing with the statement are assimilated by reinventing history, in this case, the history of the argument, again as if it were the case all along.
In general, people will do what they can to make themselves look as if they were always the one’s right, or that, when wrong, one, do it to show they are so gracious and strong in admitting fault, and two, making fault look like the glaring exception:
‘Oh I must of read some other article on the electric car, you can’t always rely on the editors,’ or even more outlandish a remark will fly below the radar with something like: ‘oh I must have missed that documentary,’…
…implying of course, that this is one out of many documentaries they watch, not to mention the implied ‘fact’ that they slipped in a self-complement: showing that they are intellectual enough to be avid watchers of informative documentaries. All these are examples of ‘fight-ego.’
I observe how little often this has to look even sometimes remotely plausible, as I have heard many an outlandish come-back in the face of admitting fault, though in very few reactions do I actually see the audience and its participants, point out how the other person is wrong which is quite awkward and embarrassing in most circles.
To be continued in part 2…
