Marxist Hacker 42 versus Morosoph -part I

Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.04.12 2:19 (#12202238) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.11.21 20:22)
But what is natural? Isn't that what is precisely at issue? It's easy to confuse 'normal', and 'natural', but gayness is perfectly natural, or else it wouldn't occur. Gays have a variety of relationships, just as hetrosexuals do. If it's natural to marry someone that you love, shouldn't that still apply, even when that love hasn't historically been condoned or recognised? What if marriages between different classes or castes had historically not occurred?
I did write a long article about gay marriage [slashdot.org] a while back, leading to long arguments with On Lawn. The summary of it is that he thought that history what what was important, whereas I believe it to be consistency as regards recognition of a union of spirits, so as to form a larger whole with four arms, four legs, two heads, and two bodies. To have a child requires sexual difference, but the rest do not; besides, many couples choose not to have children; some are infertile.
--The death [tinyurl.com] of reason [slashdot.org]

Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@seeberfamily.org> on 2005.04.12 4:57 (#12204507) (http://www.informationr.us/ Last Journal: 2005.11.29 9:27)
If it's natural to marry someone that you love, shouldn't that still apply, even when that love hasn't historically been condoned or recognised? Actually, what hasn't been historically recognized is the idea of marrying for LOVE. That's only about 300 years old. Before, love was love and marriage was marriage and it was very rare for the two to go together. Marriage was, as Mercedo correctly puts it, an economic affair- it was very much about producing heirs to merge the fortunes of two families. No wonder so many cultures choose to get their children engaged at a very young age- forming advantageous mergers between family businesses. So no- there's nothing natural in the connection between love and marriage at all.Would it surprise you to learn that love and sex are two different things as well?
--If you don't like the reaction- don't do the action. Isaac Newton applied to ethics.[ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) on 2005.04.12 6:02 (#12205303) (http://www.blogger.com/profile/11854854 Last Journal: 2005.11.28 17:58)
Love is spiritual. Sex is physical. Marriage is economical.
.. Therefore I am.
--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters[ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:1)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.04.12 8:00 (#12206440) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.11.21 20:22)
Would it surprise you to learn that love and sex are two different things as well?We might not see eye to eye politically, but that is an insult.
--The death [tinyurl.com] of reason [slashdot.org][ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@seeberfamily.org> on 2005.04.12 9:29 (#12207166) (http://www.informationr.us/ Last Journal: 2005.11.29 9:27)
We might not see eye to eye politically, but that is an insult. Calling you an American is an insult? I suppose it could be. But the point was- in American culture we often mix sex, love, and marriage in a way that would be considered inappropriate, even scandoulous in an earlier time. The point is that there's nothing natural at all in marriage being linked to love; love being linked to sex; or for that matter, marriage being linked to sex beyond the necessary production of heirs to carry on the family name. For tens of thousands of years, these were separate concepts. Tighter inheritance laws in the middle ages under the Catholic Church made the link between sex and marriage a bit stronger- but even that was still tied to the production of heirs. Even in American society throughout the 1800s, at least among the upper classes marriage was an economic, political merger and had NOTHING to do with love.I do have to wonder if the lack of sex, attraction, and love is a part of the reason for the "American Curiosity" of families dying off after 3 generations or so even today.
--If you don't like the reaction- don't do the action. Isaac Newton applied to ethics.[ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.04.12 9:45 (#12207274) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.11.21 20:22)
Ah. I'm a Brit, BTW. And here too, some of the patterns that you mention apply, although less strongly (Europe is even 'softening' us, in a good way).
I forget that you too have AS; I may be lacking in an ability to read, but I believe that I have a subtlety about me that can in some ways compensate.
Love is complex indeed. I believe, personally, that there is more to love than chemistry: some kind of psychic 'resonance', maybe, and I have in the course of my former breakdown experienced enough "weird shit" to believe that this 'resonance' principle is vast indeed. I could make sense of the phrase "god is love" in this way, but having done so, the rest of dogma and doctorine makes no sense. Religion is a socialised massive oversimplification, to the point of harming those who really do want to know the truth.
--The death [tinyurl.com] of reason [slashdot.org][ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@seeberfamily.org> on 2005.04.13 3:58 (#12215128) (http://www.informationr.us/ Last Journal: 2005.11.29 9:27)
Religion isn't about Scientific Truth or even Philosophical Truth at all to begin with- it's about Theological Truth, which HAS to be oversimplified to make any sense at all. You're trying to use logic to understand theologic- and it doesn't work because the rules simply aren't the same.Dogma and Doctrine, as a subset of theology, aren't about God or our relationship with God. It's about the interface between religion and Politics- a form of Political Truth, with a Theological Truth point of view. Thus it shouldn't make any "sense" from a scientific truth point of view at all- and only very tangenitally philosophic truth. What it's really about is- what are the individual behaviors that best support society as a whole? What is damaging to society, and what supports society? It's a TOTALLY different view than modern democratic Poltical Truth which is about freedom for the individual- it bears more resemblance to the totalitarian governments in some ways, but with more of an eye towards massive control of even the most uneducated portions of society, and for the good of all rather than the good of a small minority.Does that help, understanding that perhaps it's pointing at an entirely different thing than what you think of as "truth"?
--If you don't like the reaction- don't do the action. Isaac Newton applied to ethics.[ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.04.13 4:17 (#12215350) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.11.21 20:22)
Sorry. What I know comes from personal experience. There's one reality, and most people are wrong about it. I believe, as it happens, that what I experienced is explainable using current physics, but then it might require new physics. I might indeed be wrong, myself!
Your funny definitions of truth I cannot meaningfully distinguish from myth.
--The death [tinyurl.com] of reason [slashdot.org][ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@seeberfamily.org> on 2005.04.13 4:46 (#12215680) (http://www.informationr.us/ Last Journal: 2005.11.29 9:27)
Physics itself is a myth. An new physics is a myth. There's no reason at all to think that our experiences are any more real than any other, let alone things that are second-and-third-order experiences like TV Sets, Radio Waves, Electronics, etc.What you're doing is confusing the symbol with the thing it symbolizes- like most people. If there is a single reality, it's completely unknowable because it is infinite and we are finite. The best we can do is create myths- symbols and systems that model reality, but are not in and of themselves reality. That's where my "funny definitions of truth" come in- what I'm really talking about is not a single reality, a single truth, but different ways of modeling reality in such a way that a human brain can understand it.As A.S. sufferers- you and I are particularly and singularly bad at some models. You and I are completely, utterly retarded when it comes to other people's emotions. We assume that they are the same as us, when they're really not- their brains work differently than ours do. That doesn't matter very much when it comes to scientific, or even theological truth. There are systems in place, the scientific method and it's older cousin the counciliar method, that specifically negate the emotional component- that's what they're supposed to do. But in Political Truth and Philosophical Truth- they have their methods too, but their methods are specifically designed, near as I can tell, to emphasize the emotions and SUPRESS the facts. You're looking for a factual based truth- confusing your model of truth with reality- when none can possibly exist, and you consider other models to be merely myth- not realizing that your own model, too, is merely myth, because that's all a myth is- a model that explains something about the universe.
--If you don't like the reaction- don't do the action. Isaac Newton applied to ethics.[ Parent ]
Re: People..return to nature...(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.04.13 5:33 (#12216280) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.11.21 20:22)
What you're doing is confusing the symbol with the thing it symbolizes- like most people.I don't do this. Physics is an analogy: a powerful one, to be sure. I stated that I believed that my experiences were "explainable using current physics, but then it might require new physics. I might indeed be wrong, myself!"; this does not mean that I believe that the physics is the reality. I even paused to wonder whether I should write that reality might indeed lack mathematical representation, but I decided that it distracted from my point, so I didn't write that.
Emphasising the emotions is a strategy that is fit, rather than true; it seems that subject to an environment where many perpetually seek social advantage, it is fit for some to specialise in truth over immediate social advantage. This, I suspect, is part of the reason that AS is relatively common. I suspect that it is similar with manic depressives: in that case, raw creativity is the advantage. I am not going to call what is socially advantageous "truth" out of deferrence; after all, the average person considers someone with AS to be emotionally naïve, stunted, maybe even (falsely) cold. Being in the minority, it is easy to accept an inferior status by using others' norms, but I don't think that this is fair, any more than it is fair to rate olympic runners according to their scores at IQ tests.
--The death [tinyurl.com] of reason [slashdot.org][ Parent ]