The hot stove method of truth transferal is probably the oldest and most common experience in human history. It goes like this, the infant wanders near the hot stove and its mother warns it "Don't go near the stove, Johnny, you'll get burned".
Almost inevitably though, Johhny, out of accident or curiousity touches the hot stove and mother goes "see? I told you so." Even though mothers are being protective in this situation, you can hear a little satisfaction in their tones of comfort. Sometimes laughter hidden in their words - their warnings and admonitions have been empirically proven, Their truth, transferred. I've seen the drama enacted enough times to understand the pattern, and if mommy was really concerned with preventing the hot stove reaction, there'd be some kind of fence around the stove. In some homes, there are such fences, Those kids grow up rebellious usually. Other homes, nothing is said at all about the danger of the stove and the child is left to its own stumbling explorations to figure out which parts of reality is hot, which is not. Those kids grow up cautious. Other houses, kids are whipped for touching hot stoves. Those kids grow up self-hating, self-destructive and prone to self-mutilation. And in every single case, any hot stove experience in the future is going to be interpreted in the light of past experience, and the personality development that's occurred so far. Every hot stove experience is unique, because every person experiencing the stove is unique, with a predisposed, preprogrammed reaction and interpretation of the experience. The bare empirical facts of metal and flesh can be identical, but the experience is not of empirical facts. The experience is of empirical facts being interpreted by a unique individual, every time generating a unique experience. There is nothing pure or immediate to any of this. It's all a vastly complicated interpretive dance, dependent upon so many factors that are impossible to isolate but one thing is certain beyond argument - without an experiencer, there is no experience, And without a social process of experiencer creation, there is no experiencer. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
