Scienceguru / Texts
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What exactly does one make of the magic water, the strap-on forcefield, and the hand-held conflict resolution gizmo?
"Though largely uncredited, The Jejune Institute was an integral part of the philosophical breeding grounds of EST, Esalen, and Dianetics, which collectively spawned a thousand like-minded schools of pop psychology"
I'm not sure there's a huge rush to take the credit for EST and Scientology nowadays :,>
I disagree. The task has some inherent problems, most noticeably that people often don't behave in exact accordance with their stated beliefs. But if you expand the lens to their actual experiences, past history and temperamental profile, then you can get a pretty good read on what drives other people, and where they are coming from. Then their trivial choices about food, sexual attraction and music make sense in context.
But it takes a very long time to actually *get* someone's history and past experiences - one interview is unlikely to produce that much information and honestly, most of us don't listen well enough or long enough to other people to absorb all that . We generally tend to pick out the parts that are most like us or that we identify with. Such are the problems of ego and the nature of human connections.
The obsession with subtle preferences is not to the point. Those are among the easiest things to explain to other people. I know *exactly* why my food preferences are the way they are and exactly who I find attractive and why and if anybody really wanted to know - I could explain in mind numbing detail what sets of past experiences make me fond of creamy foods and attracted to certain characteristics sexually and what I react to positively in music, art or cinema.
Its puzzling to say that one couldn't hope to explain such things. Or "get" them, especially in the case of friends, where more often than not, redundancies in matters of taste and the histories that lie behind are established stories, as well as the more serious stuff relating to flaws and destructive behavior patterns we see our intimate friends and family struggling with.
A little sad to imply the impossibility of understanding another person and what makes them tick.
Maybe if we get a bead on our own behavior and what drives us and why we do the things we do and like the things we like, then we'll develop the tools to understand other people fully. There's big advantages in figuring out how to explain ourselves to ourselves and to others. One of them is the ability to extend a less dumb analysis of whats going on around us.
I know, I know. There can't be too many repetitive "awesome" comments, but just a few of the other variety and it's too upsetting to be tolerated :>
How gonzo.
Don't be silly. After commenting how boring Dolores Park is getting, and expressing such disappointment in the lack of outraged response to barefootedness in Berkeley:
(A place where a few barefoot hippies have been spotted from time to time in recorded history)
The plea to be un-watched is a leetle bit ironic.
Again ... the panache don't quit.
The point of the task, as I read it, isn't a silly guessing game about whether the subject would pick the chocolate mousse or the peaches flambe for desert. Although it can be fun to see if one is "right" about that or not.
The point of the task is to get as far into the head and history of another as you can and try for a day to operate with a set of beliefs, experiences and personal narratives very different from your own .
This requires you to respect that people operate with a set of beliefs, reactions, and expectations that are based on what has happened to them and how they see the world around them. The story of their lives and how they tell it makes them who they are.
The quality of the listening is generative of the predictive power of the interview.
Just for this line: "If you are clever, you may find that food products can also make excellent moisturizers and cleaning agents"
Cheers,
SG
Ooooh. Snow men, plastic eggs and a badly-working sundial watch.
Busy, busy.
Glad to see the commitment to dopey stunts remains total.
Definitely the coolest shit EVER!
This is at least, fairly clever and the Brautigan makes my heart happy. My only quibble is the rather unnecessary codocil that the respondents were sad. I doubt they were. They were just trying to connect: exactly like all you folks on this website. Whether you do it with the brains or the organs is just a matter of style.
And sadly it will take a honking lot of text to address, but there are a few things that need to be said. I'll try to be as brief as I can, but may fail :>
I'm not going to debate that there were a lot of conversations going on: there were. But there's something a little disingenous about posting something in a public place and then expressing total disinterest in the comments about it. Why post it if you don't want anybody to see it? I don't seriously believe you or anybody else here is *that* obsessed with points or getting to level 8. There is a bit of a game being played with regards to tremendous interest in hearing about how awesome praxes are and feigned indifference to hearing about how not-awesome they are. It strikes me as a false note, FWIW.
In terms of assessing people by your own standards: isn't life a process of figuring out that everyone else *isn't* just like you? Not at all. People have totally different experiences that make them react to things in totally different ways. So it isn't going to work to act as if everyone is just like you. That's where the golden rule falls down as an operating module. You may not mind at all being treated in a way that really upsets someone else. Does that make them crazy? Does that mean you can dismiss them out of hand?
If you don't know them very well, that's what you do. That's what we all do. Because dealing with difference is exhausting. But as you put it, when it was someone you *knew* - you paid more attention.
But you can't have a community unless you treat everyone in that community as if they are someone you *know* - i.e. someone whose differences from you will be acknowledged. I think you got the reaction you got because you acted as if members of your on-line community (it's not mine, but it is yours) were not acknowledged as such.
And theoretically if this some advanced model of enlightenment and community and collaboration and free, unfettered activity, it shouldn't be dismissing human differences as too trivial to be paid attention to: as that's the model of the oppressive, difference-hating, lemming society.
I'm gonna skip the art definition part as other people have addressed it in detail and go on the "hardest subject" as it's more compelling to me.
First of all, I'm not a fan of prefacing an answer by saying "now I'm a dickhead and I'm going to seem like a misogynist fucktard". If that's the direction that you're going with an argument, it's a pretty good indication that you ought to STOP RIGHT THERE. Because misogynist fucktardness is not, ever, the truth. It's prejudice, bias, discrimination and falsehood. Is there ever a good answer to a question that makes you seem like a racist bigot? Or a queer-hater? Of course not. it's a pretty big indicator that you're on the wrong track. Misogyny means the belief that women by category are inferior to men. If you're saying something that "sounds that way" - it's not a good thing that you're saying. And more to the point, it's not a true thing that you are saying because the truth is that women are not inferior to men.
Of course women have used their sexual power over het men. They're not stupid, after all. Any entity that makes .79 on the dollar needs all the help they can get and is gonna use whatever they got to try to even out that built-in disadvantage. Since we're talking about the *history of art*, lets be a little more real. Women were chattel. They belonged to their husband like cows. They couldn't vote. 25% of them died in childbirth before their 30th birthday, often perishing in the delivery of their rapist's child. And *that* was in civilized Europe.
So you say what's wrong with objectifying women's bodies as a category and saying complimentary things like how beautiful their sexual parts are when they're young and nubile? They like that. Look how they pose and preen for us. How is it different than saying "all cats are graceful?". I'm gonna argue it isn't different at all - it's the same frigging thing.
Besides the obvious point that not all cats are graceful (some are klutzes, some are old and sick and deformed) and if the cats could talk, I'm betting they'd kinda prefer to be appreciated as individuals rather than as a species: the reality is that no matter how graceful their idealized form might be: they die by the millions every year in nightmarish shelters because nobody will give them a home. And living creatures need individual nurture and care, not idealized objectivity that doesn't save them from the gas chamber. So all these vague compliments - don't do them any good.
Women needed health care, a vote, their personal freedom, a room of their own, a way to earn a living, the autonomy of their own bodies from rape and unwanted childbirth. Alot of them still do. And they all need to earn the same damn dollar for a dollar's work. Need that a lot more than odes to their breasts. You can't eat an ode to your breast.
So these paens to parts: is it any wonder women read them as a re-affirmation of a damnable deal: lame compliments instead of meeting actual needs? Worshipping the ideal form while kicking to the curb the real women who stands in front of you? Not only kicking her to curb and neglecting her needs or actively abusing her, but having the frigging audacity to do it while singing the praises of "her" species and holding the mantle of a lover and admirer of women?
I'm not saying this praxis did that, but it sure brought up some bad societal memories.
Which brings us to preening and posing: if you're smart and you've got a bad deal, there isn't anything to do but play the angles you got. And that's what any self-respecting human being does under rotten circumstances: use the weapons at hand. And male lust is a weapon pretty women have. It's dumb as a rock though to confuse the angry, cynical use of sexual appeal to climb to a slightly better position in life as anything but what it is. Rage. Rage is not power. Rage is a reaction to lack of power.
What's repulsive is the lack of recognition of what all that preening and posing is about. Sure it's a choice. Sure it's a route to empowerment. It's an angry, hopeless, desperate, cynical and bitter choice. That's what women see. And they see the stupidity of the men that fall for it and say "how beautiful". Its the exact opposite of freely given sexuality that is a positive choice and not about lack of power. Which is what women find greatness and beauty and art in the exalted sense in.
So it's a difference in narrative. When you define as great images of objectified powerlessness that represent bad choices, you negate the difference between the two. Which negates the female experience. Which makes the "compliment" a decidedly uncomfortable one at best.
Well, it might have been a little more Gotham-like if you'd made it to the South Side of town.
No need for "gentrified seedyville" in Chicago. Plenty available of the real thing.
Hey Myrna,
I'm sorry. Not an easy one. Thanks for being brave and honest. Sometimes we do things for reasons even we can never figure out.
Its part of the journey. Even the hurting part. It's never bad, really, to take a dumb chance even if it doesn't pan out.
Have a hug and say hi to Stony Brook and New York City for me .....
SG