Nick asked if anyone could translate Glen's email... in an effort to do that... larding below
Eric C On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 1:20 PM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected]> wrote: > There's so much that's so wrong I can't let it go uncommented. <Boy have > you set me off!> Everything you say (in almost every post) seems to > factor out *time*. When you say "As commands to the self, [anger, hate, > contempt, etc.] make no sense what so ever", you're speaking as if the Nick > of 20 years ago is the exact identical Nick as the present Nick, which is > so wrong as to be laughable. <Even if you convinced me that it was silly > to talk about the things you do in this moment as commanded by you, > certainly you can issue commands to future you. ---- They guy hitting who > said something awkward and lost his chance at the girl hits himself on the > head a few times saying "Stupid, stupid, why did you say that?" What is he > doing? He is trying to control his future self, not his past self. ---- > Across long swaths of time whatever "command" is, you can probably do it > yourself as effectively as anyone else can command you.> > > Your ill-expressed point is that the empathy/sympathy emotions for Trump > supporters are not under your intentional control. <Let's grant that you > are correct that you, personally, cannot stop yourself from attempting > empathy/sympathy under these conditions> And you seem to be saying that > those of us who claim we shouldn't "spare" any empathy/sympathy are either > in denial or self-blinding or somesuch. <Your generalization of that to > me and everyone else is suspect, and the way you phrase it is presumptous > and pretentious> Again, that ignores *time*. Sure, I feel empathy for > some of them, someTIMES. But I don't for others of them, at other times. <I'm > not saying that I will literally never be empathetic to any person who > happens to be a Trump supporter, at any time, ever. I am saying that I am > not going to be empathetic to them as a group, and certainly not empathetic > to any of them at all times. I've got a lot to do besides sitting around > being empathetic with 60 million strangers. And I'm not in denial or in a > soulless trap when I point that out.> > > If you've ever extracted yourself from an abusive relationship, you should > understand this episodic concept. <Your relationship with Trump > Supporters, as a group, is equivalent to an abusive relationships in > important ways> If you have never had such a relationship, then you are > the luckiest person I've ever met. The longer the idiocy goes on, the less > empathy I feel, the fewer episodes of empathy I experience. <Empathy is > one of the things an abuser can use to trap you. The way out of that trap > is to be less empathetic the longer the abuse goes on.> The abuser only > has so much time to change his ways before I explode and murder him in his > sleep, my tears of sympathy mixing with his blood. <If it's bad enough, > long enough, it's time to end things one way or another, and any empathy > you have left is more time spent crying while you do whatever else you need > to do to sever the relationship.> > > Maybe the additional premise is that there is such a thing as time and > evolution? It's weird that someone who talks about things like MOTH would > fail to understand that, though. <Seriously man.... How can someone who > trumpets the virtues of unconditional altruism with conditional association > not be willing to walk the hell away from a group of people who are > continuously defecting against you?!? It is a winning strategy.> > > <Glen, how did I do?> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > On 11/12/20 9:57 AM, [email protected] wrote: > > Ok, but, let’s look at that impulse. Is it the impulse to sympathize? > Why is that so scary? Sympathy is informative, not paralyzing. Can one > not feel sympathy for the rabid dog just exactly at the moment one kills > it? Somebody ran over a cat in our yard, once, crushed it’s hindquarters. > I felt tremendous sympathy for the cat, /and so I killed it. / For sympathy > to be paralyzing, there has to be one more premise, and I cannot identify > that additional premise. Anger, hate, contempt, etc., are assertions of an > ought. Oughts only work in the context of trying to incite others to a > common action. As commands to the self, they make no sense what so ever. > So, unless you are standing in front of crowd, trying to get them to lynch > somebody, these emotions are self-blinding. Now, I suppose, self-blinding > is useful, when you just don’t want to fuck with subtleties of life, but > nothing about them can be claimed as rational. Right? What is the > additional premise that turns my > > empathy into something I should not feel. > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> > http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >
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