I have been reading my favorite philosophers work, Ayn Rand, when I came across this: Xenophobia, "or better yet" Anti-Conceptual Mentality. The main characteristic of this mentality is a special kind of passivity: not passivity as such and not across the-board, but passivity beyond a certain limit--i.e., passivity in regard to the process of conceptualization and, therefore, in regard to fundamental principles. It is a mentality which decided, at a certain point of development, that it knows enough and does not care to look further. What does it accept as “enough”? The immediately given, directly perceivable concretes of its background. To grasp and deal with such concretes, a human being needs a certain degree of conceptual development, a process which the brain of an animal cannot perform. But after the initial feat of learning to speak, a child can counterfeit this process, by memorization and imitation. The anti-conceptual mentality stops on this level of development-on the first levels of abstractions, which identify perceptual material consisting predominantly of physical objects--and does not choose to take the next, crucial, fully volitional step: the higher levels of abstraction from abstractions, which cannot be learned by imitation. The anti-conceptual mentality takes most things as irreducible primaries and regards them as “self-evident.” It treats concepts as if they were (memorized) percepts; it treats abstractions as if they were “perceptual” concretes. To such a mentality, everything is the given: the passage of time, the four seasons, the institution of marriage, the weather, the breeding of children, a flood, a fire, an earthquake, a revolution, a book are phenomena of the same order. The distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made is not merely unknown to this mentality, it is incommunicable.*Ayn Rand* "I could not help it but to think of Tony1 as I read the above, does this not sound familiar as we look at the zeal put forth by Tony1, and Loon?" Within quotes is mine!
Whew, for a second there I thought I'd accidently created some sort of Xeliosphobia or something Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
*Originally posted by Godless I could not help it but to think of Tony1 as I read the above, does this not sound familiar as we look at the zeal put forth by Tony1, and Loon?* You cannot distinguish between the metaphysical and what is man-made, since you are very persistently trying to convince us that God is a man-made concept. "The distinction between the metaphysical and the man-made is not merely unknown to this mentality, it is incommunicable." Ayn Rand Perhaps it is time for you to grow up, Godless, even according to your favorite author.
A little more info on the personality of this people Notice if you will, the similiarities of what I'm about to write and the way we deal here with such people such as Kal, Tony, Loone, and other theists, excluding "Taken" thus far. Anti-conceptual mentality: Ayn Rand [This type of mentality] has learned to speak, but has never grasped the process of conceptualization. Concepts, to him, are merely some sort of code signals employed by other people for some inexplicable reason, signals that have no relation to reality or to himself. He treats concepts as if they were percepts, and their meaning changes with any change of circumstances. Whatever he learns or happens to retain is treated, in his mind, as if it had always been there, as if it were an item of direct awareness, with no memory of how he acquired it--as a random store of unprocessed material that comes and goes at the mercy of chance. He does not seek knowledge--he “expose himself” to “experience,” hoping, in effect, that it will push something into his mind; if nothing happens, he feels with self-righteous rancor that there is nothing he can do about it. Mental action, i.e., mental effort--any sort of processing, identifying, organizing, integrating, critical evaluation or control of his mental content--is an alien realm. This mentality is not the product of ignorance(nor is it caused by lack of intelligence): it is self-made, i.e., self arrested. In the brain of an anti-conceptual person, the process of integrating is largely replaced by a process of association. What his subconscious stores and automatizes is not ideas, but an indiscriminate accumulation of sundry concretes, random facts, and unidentified feelings, piled into unlabeled mental file folders. This works, up to a certain point--i.e., so long as such a person deals with other persons whose floders are stuffed similarly, and thus no search through the entire filing system is ever required. With such limits, the person can be active and willing to work hard. A person of this mentality may uphold some abstract principles or profess some intellectual convictions (without remembering were or how he picked them up). But if one asks him what he means by a given idea, he will not be able to answer. If one asks him the “reasons” of his convictions, one will discover that his convictions are a thin, fragile film floating over a vacuum, like an oil slick in empty space--and one will be shocked by the number of questions it had never occurred to him to ask. He seems able to understand a discussion or a rational argument, sometimes even on an abstract, theoretical level. He is able to participate, to agree or disagree after what appears to be a critical examination of the issue. But the next time one meets him, the conclusions he reached are gone from his mind, as if the discussion had never occurred even though he remembers it: he remembers the event, i.e., a discussion, not its intellectual content. It is besides the point to accuse him of hypocrisy or lying (though some part of both is necessarily involved). His problem is much worse than that: he was sincere, he meant what he said “in and for that moment”. But it ended with that moment. Nothing happens in his mind to an idea he accepts or rejects; there is no processing, no integration, no application to himself, his actions or his concerns; he is unable to use it or even to retain it. Ideas, i.e., abstractions, have no reality to him; abstractions involve the past and the future, as well as the present; nothing is fully real to him except the present. Concepts, in his mind, become percepts--percepts of people uttering sounds; and percepts end when the stimuli vanish. When he uses words, his mental operations are closer to those of a parrot than of a human being. In the strict sense of the word, he “has not learned to speak”.
