DaVinci

It's just something I've been thinking about. As an artist I've noticed that a lot of the rules of making art seem to be related to the way humans view the world through their senses. Preferences seem like they might be getting informed by our biology, and I wonder to what degree. What degree do we like something because our biology is telling us, and what degree are we choosing to like something. Those ratios seem reasonable to me.

Yeah, in regards to your last sentence I was wondering how this would work given free will. Cause a determinist would probably point to that the color orange is liked because of some earlier thing which is related to some earlier thing, etc. But if a choice can be made then why isn't it? Like, why does someone like orange today but not red tomorrow? Is there an emotional connection? Is it involuntary?

But where do these preferences come from? If someone says they like Jazz music above all other forms of music, well, why? Is it an emotional response? Is it a choice?

I know this is a silly question, but I'm in a silly mood. When someone says "My favorite color is orange" what does that mean? Is it an emotional response to seeing orange things? Is it a choice to like orange? Both? Obviously saying orange is your favorite color doesn't mean you don't like the other colors. It just means you like orange more than red, yellow, green, blue and purple. Right? But why would someone like orange more than the other colors? When someone sees the color orange and they think "Yeah, that is the color I like the most" where is this response coming from? Maybe they had an orange shirt when they were a kid and orange reminds them of childhood? So then is liking orange in the present without choice? If someone did decide to not like orange more than the other colors anymore why would they do that? Why would they choose not to like something that is producing a good feeling inside of them when they see that color? I guess this is similar to food as well. Like, if someone said that chocolate was their favorite food. Well, why? Where do these preferences come from?

That's very brave of you to post that. Not because you have something to fear here, but because you are being so open about yourself and exposing your own anxiety. I'm sorry that you've had experiences like that in your life. I've also had a rough life, so I can kind of understand.

An update on this: Since the Republican convention has started I've seen a ton of reposted news stories on my FB feed. It's almost getting to the point where I just want to block it. It also seems like it's coming from people I've talked to recently about non-aggression. Like, there is a push back against what I am saying through these news stories. It actually makes me a little hesitant to even engage people if they are just going to retreat further away from non=aggression.

I actually wish I could tell you some names, but the heroes I've encountered, at least the ones who have gone out of their way to help me when they could see I was in a bad place, were strangers.

I'm sorry you went through that. I've never been in this situation but I think you did the right thing confronting the parent.

I've found it can be difficult to talk to someone who has opinions that are the polar opposite of yours especially when you are talking to multiple people who have the same opinion. The group of people who share the same opinion don't want to single themselves out, even if they might be considering what you are saying in their head, or actually agree with you. They will also back each other up if you make a good point that someone can't respond to, and the person who gets backed up will then thank his friends for finding the words he forgot, and they will thus reinforce each other even more. Look up Group Think for more info on this. There is also the issue that when someone holds a very firm belief it becomes part of their identity. "I'm a good person because of my belief in God!" So when you say that belief might be wrong, or misplaced, that person will take it as an attack on their identity. They probably won't say that, but they are thinking it. So the harder you push, the more they see you attacking their identity, and eventually if cornered they might blow up at you, and call you names and say you are a bad person. As for your friend who is so concerned about your soul even though you are saved, well, that doesn't sound like a friend. That sounds like someone who is trying to play a game of moral positioning with you. "I'm just so concerned for your soul because I'm a caring person who cares about people in trouble. Care care care hearts love" I'm not going to tell you not to hang out with these people, because I don't know all the details of your relationships with them. I will however tell you I spent waaayyyy too much time around people who weren't really my friends. I let people into my life who weren't right for me. I don't do that anymore. Maybe this sounds like a jerk thing to say but I'll be alone before I spend one more second with someone who isn't exactly right for me.

Yes, that does make sense. I can certainly understand how there might be a defense mechanism related to self preservation. However, I'm not sure that a defense mechanism necessarily equals intellectual sloth. I think someone could have a defense mechanism and still be able to critically evaluate ideas. The question seems to come back to why some information hits the defense mechanism and some is evaluated. So for example, when someone learns math do they run up against these self preservation based defense mechanisms? I'm not sure we can know the answer to that unless someone has self reported that information, but it seems unlikely. Unless of course the math is tied to something happening in the world that is unpleasant.

Recently I've been asking myself what the difference is between being open minded and closed minded. Why does one person accept new information in, and another refuses that same information? I know from my own experience that when I hear someone say something that I've never heard anyone say before that makes sense to me I investigate what they said further. But why do I do this? Why do I do this and other people don't? In trying to figure this out I stumbled upon this quote: [There is a] dangerous little catch phrase which advises you to keep an “open mind.” This is a very ambiguous term—as demonstrated by a man who once accused a famous politician of having “a wide open mind.” That term is an anti-concept: it is usually taken to mean an objective, unbiased approach to ideas, but it is used as a call for perpetual skepticism, for holding no firm convictions and granting plausibility to anything. A “closed mind” is usually taken to mean the attitude of a man impervious to ideas, arguments, facts and logic, who clings stubbornly to some mixture of unwarranted assumptions, fashionable catch phrases, tribal prejudices—and emotions. But this is not a “closed” mind, it is a passive one. It is a mind that has dispensed with (or never acquired) the practice of thinking or judging, and feels threatened by any request to consider anything. What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an “open mind,” but an active mind—a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants—a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear. I read this quote and thought "I never thought it about it like that before.". Here I am trying to have a better understanding of why someone is open or closed minded, and in researching it I find myself thinking exactly the same thing I mentioned before "I've never heard it phrased that way before, and that makes sense". But why do I think this way? What separates a person with an "active" mind from a person with a "passive" one? I sometimes wonder if it is some kind of life trauma that is blocking an active mind, but my own life has been traumatic. I've wondered if it is a crappy government education, but I had a crappy government education. So then is it not trauma but the degree of trauma? Is it not crappy education, but the degree of crappy education? Can anyone give me some insight into this? Have you run into this in your own life?

I'm not sure I can write a response that can answer all your questions. Maybe only Stef can answer all this stuff? I'll add my two cents though. I think there isn't much that can be done about cops right now. Yes, some of these instances that have happened recently with the cops are terrible, but it makes more sense to try put the brakes on the race baiting narrative than it does to point out that the cops are bad guys. We basically all kind of agree on the cops. You have a community right now who sees themselves as standing in front of the tank daring the powers that be to roll over them, except those same people standing in front of the tank are going to go vote for the guy in the tank in November. That's way more critical to stop than the actions of a couple cops given how many people it will affect.

I've seen people entrench themselves before, but it usually isn't during a one on one conversation. It's usually during a conversation where their friend comes in and disagrees with me, and the person I was having the conversation with now entrenches themselves because now there is a fear of losing a friend. Basically what dsayers said above me. Peer pressure seems to cause people to default to who the've known the longest, and not necessarily to who is making the most logical argument. I'm actually not sure what to do about this situation when I find myself in it.

That has always bugged me about comics. I understand they are a product for consumption, but that product-ness often times comes at the expense of the story.

Stock up on canned food. I would say we are doing worse. Think of it like a rotting building being propped up. Another 2x4 might be wedged in to hold up the walls, but the building is still rotting. It's going to fall eventually. As for steps to move towards a more free market? I dunno. A lot of things that could be done would probably get you in trouble.

The major export of the U.S. is Hollywood. Does that make us a Hollywood Republic?

I do this too. My major concern is that having conversations with someone in my head is me reliving some kind of trauma, or beating myself up in the absence of that person because I'm so accustomed to it. I've had to learn when the conversation is about me learning something, finding some insight into a relationship, or preparing for when I actually have to talk with someone who could be antagonistic towards me, and when I'm just being mean to myself.

That quote is something your dad said to you? 1.) it actually sounds like something my dad would have said. For that I'm sorry. 2.) It strikes me as being very manipulative. He admits that some of the things you are accusing him of might be true, and then proceeds to tell you that you have a problem with yourself that needs to be fixed. For comparison look at the statement "you're a piece of crap" vs. "I've done some bad things, but you're a piece of crap. The first statement is clearly an insult. The second is an insult qualified with some moral positioning made to make the person talking and the target of the insult more ambiguous in relation to each other. In other words if you're both on the "bad side" of the spectrum it's much harder for you to point out the things that were done to you because you're both on this bad side of the line together. Like you both agreed to rob a bank together and are now arguing about who did what to who. Except in your case it would be your dad robbed a bank when you were a child and now that you have the ability to call him on getting you involved in such a horrible thing he is going to try and manipulate you into believing you some how agreed to everything that happened and went along with it when you really didn't have a choice.

I've been seeing a lot more people having meltdowns online recently. Not like crazy incoherent meltdowns, but these "appeals to reason"/"remember the holocaust" type meltdowns. Which are usually followed by "vote for x person" kind of comments. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this something that is going to keep getting worse as the year goes on?

That's one of the reasons I disliked SW EP 7. Rey just "knows" how to use a lightsaber because of her "mysterious past" we never see and we should accept it because we the audience are Star Wars fans. She didn't earn a single thing she did in the movies.

I've noticed it has a tendency to appeal to people with nihilistic view points as they see something that reflects the real world better than other fantasy fiction.

Those are some good questions. I think the aim of therapy is to make your therapist not needed, or at least not needed at nearly the frequency that they were. As far as knowing how well self therapy is going, that can be hard to determine early on, but I think the more time you spend on it, the better you will become, even if the process is slower than paying a therapist to help you through it and guide you away from areas that might not help. There is more fumbling around and unbroken barriers in the beginning for sure, and I think not fumbling through self therapy as much as you used to is a good indicator of at least being on the right track. I think you begin to know when you've broken down your own walls. I don't know how to describe it better than that.

I don't censor myself much on FB, but I'm also finding that people don't care. They either don't respond to my posts, or they don't respond to my comments on their posts. I've even had some conversations recently where people who I know want to expand their knowledge stop responding to me after a few posts about certain subjects like politics. It's too easy on FB for someone else to "like" the posts of the person I'm responding too, while no one likes my posts which tends to create a kind of group think scenario where I must be wrong because no one is liking my posts and everyone is disagreeing with me.

I think most parents do things for their kids with the idea of getting "paid back" later in life. It's the "I spoon fed you as a baby, you spoon feed me as an elderly person" kind of thing. This is usually never actually discussed with the children, because then it would have to be brought up that the baby being spoon fed had no choice. I also think many parents have had this done to them by their parents and so they feel it is "fair" that their kids do the same. If they don't push their kids into this fairness fulfillment role it will mean they are the last person in their family to be treated like crap, and that is double unfair!

Historically borders are where war lords ran up against one another. Does the fact these borders still exist even make sense? Why are people born today subject to dotted lines on paper drawn hundreds, or thousands of years ago?