Glen -
Exhibit A, One Glen Ropella who can't (by his own declaration) seem to get
through Social Ettiquete 101 in the OldSkool of hard knocking around. What
is that about? It is certainly not (or not obvious to me) about careful
evaluation of consequence trees... It looks a lot like the adherence to an
ideal (and/or aspect of self-image?).
Actually, it is purposeful, but not ideological, on my part. My
unwillingness/inability to learn social grace has little to do with ideals and
more to do with practice. I simply get along better with people who don't care
about social grace.
That explains why I get along well with both you AND Doug...
It took me a _long_ time to learn that. I swapped in and out various ideologies
trying to find one that fit the data I had in hand. None fit. The best I can
come up with is laziness on my part. If laziness is an ideology, then yeah, you
got me. ;-)
I use lazy typing and late binding in my own personal life, and it took
a long time for me to come to that as well, and I have abstracted it
into an ideal on top of exercising it as a habit.
Do you deny that people (egos) operate strongly on maintaining the integrity of
their feedback loop of their self-image? Some people do this by soliciting
reinforcing feedback from others. Some do it by talking out loud to themselves
a lot (like I do here, pretending I'm talking to the rest of you). And some do
it by picking an idealized spot (or set of spots) on the idealism horizon and
keeping their compass trained on them as they navigate the heavy weather of
modern life. Or all three?
No, I don't deny that people (organisms, even) are strongly driven by a
homeostatic self.
Well put.
I just deny that it is solely or mostly in the _mind_. I
believe people (like other organisms) have a huge number of feed forward and
feedback loops that constitute their self.
I'll accept this but insist that there is something going on *in* the
mind (whatever that is) which is at least the *illusion* of
self-maintained self. While much of what passes as "free will" or "the
chosen self" in me might be the entrainment of my thoughts/feelings to
external modalities and resonances, it IS still what *I* experience. I
think this is why Vipassana and other awareness-focused meditations can
be so powerful, they allow whatever our "mind" is to cut loose a little
bit from the bucking bronc of a brain/body/enviornment it is riding
around on.
The overwhelming majority of them
are physiological. E.g. it's much much easier to change a person (change their
self) using chemicals and physical stimulus than it is using words.
Yah, I think most brainwashing and torture experts know this. Meanwhile
I think I'll have a beer and mull this over in my "mind" and give the
next guy who argues with me a good beating.
- Steve
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