We need the look of other eyes

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by water, Jun 19, 2004.

  1. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    Monster? Where? I see only darling Gendanken. Oh, and quantum quack reverberating his way out. But he's a gentleman and won't watch us as we...
     
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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Oh.....gentleman ha ..no.... "and he hides with voyueristic intention" and "waits to see the monster devour the beast"
     
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  5. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    QQ:
    A.
    Aha. Ha.
    Funny.

    Tell me- why must you equate pride with arrogance and violence with self hate? Your line of thinking has always fascinated me for its made to make the strong feel bulky and wrong.

    Vert:
    "Darling" me again and you, sir, are kibble.
     
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  7. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    Heh, which is the monster and which the beast. And the look of other eyes...

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  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Gendanken,
    In response I can only say that I have found there to be differences in what we consider "strong". I have found the ones who profess to strength to be less than they profess, yet those who quietly achieve in the back ground with out need of recognition or acknowledgement to be by far stronger.

    The quiet achiever, the person who struggles to find a stability and consistency that allows him and his/her society to continue with the least amount of chaos, the one who will rise to the challenge then quietly go back to what he / she was doing and not seek applause or confirmation of his or her worth. A person who is self secure in his own understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses.

    Oops...sound a bit like speech ....ha.....

    I can use the old cliche'
    "A tree that fails to sway in the wind will break"

    True strength is something, intestinal fortitude, strength of character, the ability to say "No" when every one else is saying "yes" not because of the desire to be contrary and to be seen as strong but only because of the desire to be true to your self.

    True pride is not something you advertise but is advertised for you by others.

    False pride or arrogance is self advertising and therefore potentionally delusional.

    the true heros of the world are the men and women that survive picking up cigarette buts and foraging in rubishbins, the people who show us how happy we should be.

    I guess I have always looked at things in my own way, and often this has caused in the least a point that can be thought upon.

    You, Gendanken also are an individual I happen to admire, you hold your ground and pay the consequences knowing that at least this is you......

    And I respect that.......
    But true strength is not in what you say but in what you don't say. In what you don't do.

    A person who is secure in them selves can not be brought down, is flexible enough to retreat and fight another day, and at the end of the day remains who they are regardless of their struggle. And this needs no advertising......
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    it takes more strength not to be violent than to be violent
     
  10. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    QQ,

    You are on slippery ground with this!

    Here's a short linguistic excurse on where such thinking can lead -- eugenics (I posted this before, somewhere):


     
  11. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    Gendanken,

    You addressed this at QQ, but from our previous conversations I feel it goes for me too, so I'll give my view:

    Why equate violence with self hate?

    First of all, not equate, there is usually a causal relation between them.
    Ever met a bully, at school? They are violent, aren't they? And they really really respect themselves, don't they? Ever seen a bully drunk, the shit he talks about? Cries, what a pitiful creature he is, and how nobody loves him?


    Secondly,
    Do the strong ever feel bulky and wrong?

    No, and that's the thing. No matter what one does, the strong (however, I'm not sure anymore what the word means in this discussion!) never feel bulky and wrong.
    Nothing gets to them, because they are so "strong". -- Well, I don't call that strength, I'd call it numbness, indifference, if not stupidity. Either way, those people consider themselves strong, that's what they say.
    And then one wonders where such numbness, indifference, stupidity come from -- and it is usually a bruised ego, a profound self-hate.


    Why equate pride with arrogance?
    I should do a linguistic survey on this; but it seems that the two have become synonymous. I wonder why.
     
  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Rosa doesn't it all boil down to choice in the end.

    A person with sophisticated language abilities can always "lower" his use to the colloquial but a person without sophisticated language skills can not rise to the sophisticated nor understand the sophisticated. A person with language sophistication can comprehend the colloquial as well as the sophisticated.

    A bit like when I ask questions in the physics and math forum. I ask a relatively simple question about relativity and well.......you guessed it I have no idea what relativity is....ha .... ( not entirely true of course)

    The point being that my understanding of this particular word was colloquial to the physicist, he could understand me but I had difficulty understanding him.

    Take the word "love" for example. In it's simplist form it is not very complex but after years of learning and much poetry and experience later it achieves a certain depth that would be hard to communicate with out sophisticated imagery and words.

    IN some ways words act as a way of remembering concepts as well.

    Without labelling our thoughts with words or a word do you think the remembering of complex concepts would be as good?
     
  13. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    QQ,

    What exactly do you mean by "language sophistication"? Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness? Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, sylvan historian, who canst thou express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legends haunts about thy shape of deities or mortals, or of both, in Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

    Remember that "sophistication" is often all some dead aesthetes have. Being "sophisticated" doesn't mean being smart.


    Sure. You've probably never seen an Eskimo or rhinoceros or heart-cells with your own eye, live. So you depend on what words say about these.
    But I suppose that without words, we wouldn't even know that there are such complex concepts in the first place -- and we could have no relation to them.
     
  14. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    Why? The statements: "The ability to construct complex ideas and structures of thought is surely enhanced by the level of language skill" and "the language one speaks greatly determines his social success" are not saying the same thing. One is about logic and absraction while the other is about social success. In fact, logic and abstraction might very well prevent social success. No one likes a smartass, you know.

    I do understand what you say about colloquialisms. Just because someone isn't upper crust and they don't enunciate all their sentences properly, doesn't mean that his language is necessarily limited. In fact, lower class speech can often be more colorful than formal speech. More concepts can be expressed in more ways. But, if you compare say a language with 10 words and a language with 1000 words, which do you think you might be able to think more logically in? Which would aid in abstraction more?

    ***

    As to pride and arrogance, I feel that I've already expounded on this topic. I feel, as it seems both Quantum and Rosa do (to at least some extent), that pride is not automatically synonymous with arrogance; but, there is the risk of arrogance. One can easily slide into the other if not careful.

    Why has pride and arrogance become synonymous? Christianity has a lot to do with, I think. Nietzsche, of course, goes on and on about this phenomenon. How the meek shall inherit the earth. The sheep mentality that rises from this turn of mind. The lack of words for positive envy is another example of this type of thinking. We are shaped by our language. And, we are not supposed to be envious (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife), we should not be proud (Pride goeth before a fall.) We should be meek little citizens obeying the will of God and the will of our leaders.

    Danger on all sides. Too far one way, too far the other. Extremes are hazards which we shall never eradicate.

    I don't think so. Being upper class, in fact, can limit your ability to transcend your station. There is a stigma attached to the lower class and many times their brains do not even "hear" colloquialisms. They pass by their mind as the babbling of a brook. Nature sounds. Of course, this is not true in all cases, but it is true sometimes. It is a function of the way our brain stresses certain sounds while deemphasizing others.

    Really? I've followed a few of those threads and it seems that a great difficulty in getting the thread started is getting your point cleared out. The sophisticated must ration their way through your lower order ideas. They must translate it into something they've seen before. Something they can deal with. Sometimes they fail in so doing and your point is never made. The question is never asked. They are as constrained as any. Nobody escapes the conditioning of language and thought.
     
  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Rosa I use the word sophistication in the context of flexibility, articulation and clarity.
    For example the word deficit compared to the word "Loss". Both words can be used to explain the same thing but deficit is more articulated towards a certain logic than the word "Loss" is.

    The word sophisticated compared to complex or smart or articulated, mature, imaginative...etc etc .....
     
  16. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Quantum Quack:
    Yet the contention is not concerned with those that profess strenght. I said the strong.

    Here, I'll show you something. You say this:
    and this:
    and this:
    Compare now with this:

    "Now think of what makes laughter loathsome- if it sounds forced, if exaggerated, or it there were a vulgarity in it that makes the person laughing seem as if he lacked coherence.
    In the first man, his laughter is enjoyed first by himself and you take pleasure in him enoying it, which is your enjoyment. He is real. In the second man, he is only advertising his abilities because he is nothing without approval and his exaggeration makes him disturbing, annoying or loathsome. He is illusion."
    and this:
    "The ideal always falls far short so long as its casts its glance down from its 'pedestal' to fish for approval from 'below' or 'around'"

    "There's (the strong) is a world of desire and innocent opportunism. These men *are*, they become, they move and thrust *despite* men.
    They're babies"

    ....all from my thread on this very idea. Power itself and the idea of it. Strenght itself verus the idea of it.
    You see? We're thinking the same things.

    It was only this image of you perhaps resenting the pride of the proud by mislabeling it as arrogance, coupled with your mentions of violence being a symptom of self hate that stuck in my mind, so I asked.
    The humble tends to esteem virtues that protect him, not its possessors. Which is why the Jewish praise of righteousness if disengenious. Or the praise of that which does not threaten:

    See?


    Rosa:
    Pages back QQ equated pride with arrogance.
    It triggered my question to him/her.
    So yes, it was equate.

    Love is overrated.

    No, but boy does the humble try to make it so.
     
  17. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Gendanken, You have a POV that is valid....to me....you are seeing my comments as we all do through our subjective eyes.

    If this is the impression you have received then this is the impression you have received. The question that comes to my mind is this cross of purpose due to the author or to the reader. I tend to feel that it is both ( thread title)

    Personally I don't equate pride with arrogance, although I admit that to me they can be very similar. I guess it's a matter of who is proud of who.

    For example,

    It is not up to a person to determine how sexy they are by their own self estimation. It is only when the look of other eyes demonstrate your sexiness that tells you of your appeal.

    A person can gaze upon himself in vanity and proudly state how sexy he is until he is blue in the face and yet be considered to be a non event to others. ( superficial example true?)

    Also another point is that truth of strength ( or anything else for that matter) is only available after the most important test and that is the test of time.......

    For example I could argue that the USA appears very strong but is actually very weak because of the poor leadership vision at it's disposal.

    A huge entity that is blinded and unable to articulate that strength in a way that acheives what it desires. Thus it is weak not strong. wasting it's strength on futility.

    If a person loves himself this is reflected in his behaviour towards others. One can not love unless they love themselves first.

    Thus violence is a form of self hatred. The incapacity to love ones self, reflected in the behaviour towards others.

    And violence is a state of weakness. After all it is very easy to destroy something but most times incredibily difficult to create something of value.

    For example, we have a building in my neighbourhood that is being demolished.
    ( it is not of any particular historic or asthetic value) however I was thinking the other day. The building took possibly 3 years to build and many labor hours and heaps of money to build and yet it will be erradicated within two or three days, the energy being used to create this building thrown away in short time and effort.

    So what I am posing is that violence is a weakness, and demonstrates a weakness in the person inflicting the violence. The desire to destroy another persons creation ( himself) because the person who is being violent sees what he can't have and attempts to destroy the other so that he is comparitively more secure in his own identity.

    An variation of the tall poppy syndrome yes?


    Trying to make the reflection reflect himself by destroying the mirror.
     
  18. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    you mention the word "power"
    "True power resides in the having it but not needing to use it"
     
  19. water the sea Registered Senior Member

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    I have thought about pride and arrogance -- and how come we use them synonymously. I have reached the following two conclusions so far:


    1. "Pride" is a term most people know from the Bible. "Pride" is one of the capital sins. It does not surprise that as such, it immediately gets a negative meaning.

    The capital sins are: vainglory (pride), avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, anger. But usually, the name of the first one is not "vainglory", but "pride"! It is that already through the Christian teachings, we begin to think of pride and vainglory to be the same thing.

    Let's observe:

    An article by Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon apostle -- I am using this one as it is an extreme case of fight against pride:



    This is an extreme example, but I think that most of us in the Western world had such an idea of pride implanted into us.

    No wonder it is hard to have an unbiased and positive opinion of what pride is.

    However, how sadly ironic, people like to say to their children before a game "Make me *proud*!" or "I am so proud of you!" Pride is a capital sin, remember ...



    2. To make matters worse, English is a lingua franca, and greatly translated. Things get lost and confused in translation, since the language is used by so many people of so many different backrounds and origins.

    For example, Jane Austen's book "Pride and prejudice" is translated as "Prevzetnost in pristranost" in my language -- an those words mean "*vanity* and bias".

    (But, surprisingly, the word for the capital sin is "napuh" -- 'vainglory'. The meaning of "pride" as Gendanken has it would be "ponos" -- and this word is in the Bible with a positive meaning, and has a positive meaning in general too. Things get lost in translation indeed, and English suffers greatly in this.)
     
  20. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Rosa:
    Sweet references.
    However:
    Lewis is a fucktwit- this is not pride.
    This is petty arrogance and conceit, all variants of weakness overcompensating for its nature.
    This is what I'm getting at, I'm sure you see it as well.

    The Abrahmaic traditions are much to blame for the popularizing of pride as something evil since it in fact forces a man from his circle into the throes of competetion with adversaries. The humble, or should I say, the heros sniffing for butts in the garbage cans so admirably, look suspciously to the gifts and virtues of the noble and, like the Jew, esteem those qualities which allieveate their (the humble's) existence.
    So they praise patience, pity, humility.
    Why?
    Keeps them safe from the strong.

    Because the names have been passed around and around among masses that seek peace and stability.
    They do not wish to go out and cross the Hellespoint or slap Europe accross the face with their boldness; they wish to be born, procreate, grow old and die.

    QQ:
    And if one hates themselves, same thing.
    If antyhing I tend to think the overtly pious, loving, and unassuming quietly hate their condition.
    These characters tend to project needs in others in order that they may soothe them- like a Munchausen's By Proxy mother.
    This gives their life meaning and they talk and talk about Love.

    And I will second this:
    Hear, hear.
    We are saying the same things- self adverstisment disqualifies the very thing it publicizes.
    However, you are one for kindness and love and Disney dystopia.
    A modern man.
    "At no other time in history has man been so afraid to cut into his veal chop for fear that it will explode" - Allen
     
  21. invert_nexus Ze do caixao Valued Senior Member

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    A question I am being impelled to ask. Are pride and arrogance halves of the same coin? Extreme dipoles? Or are they only similar in context? I believe it is easy for one to slip from pride to arrogance. But, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps those who slip into arrogance were in fact never proud? Merely less arrogant? Rosa has mentioned this idea that perhaps to speak of a balance is misleading. And perhaps she is right. If pride and arrogance are completely different traits then I believe that there are very, very few proud people in the world. Merely less arrogant. For the tendency to slip from what is seen as pride to arrogance is demonstrated time and time again.

    This brings me to the other eyes. We have people like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Charlie Manson. All these men are (were) conceited and arrogant to the extreme, wouldn't you agree? Would it have been possible for them to reach this state of supreme arrogance without those others about them convincing them of that fact? Making them more than they might have been without them?

    Have you ever seen Pink Floyd's The Wall? There is a scene towards the end, during the song "Waiting for the Worms" where Pink takes hold as the leader of the mob. It's the marching hammers scene. His voice is heard in a megaphone leading his people, and the cheers of the crowd grow louder and louder. The calls of Pink on the megaphone grow ever more strident trying to maintain his superiority over the mob, but in the end, his voice is lost. The mob rules and Pink is lost.

    Social dynamics can become a vicious beast. Humanity lost. Faceless masses intent upon furthering the goals of society. Sublimating all feelings of remorse and pity. The look of other eyes that cause a holocaust.
     
  22. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Just reading and thought;

    Arrogance is really a demonstration of false superiority.

    The word can only be applied by those other eyes as well. For an arrogant person rarely sees himself as such.

    For example the statement that humanity is the only child of God is a statement of arrogance don't you think?

    Pride however does not necessarilly suggest superiority.

    Maybe it is when this pride switches to superiority that we have arrogance.

    And as we know superiority is a vexatious definition.
     
  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I find this an interesting comment.
     

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