by Simon 147 Replies latest forum announcements
Why is it whenever I read hillary step's words do I feel like a robot is behind them????? LMAO
Anyway.... I love his/her humor!
And.... PLEASE HS.... don't come back and say that I'm being passive aggressive or I think I'll bust a gut laughing..... hee heeeee
Continue on giving us your opinion's. They are of value. As Cog just posted, it's all good. This is how we learn and grow.
With all due respect, Juni
Void Eater,
Nope. My bad. I jumped in with both feet as soon as I found the board. And I disagree with your premise that this discussion board is a place where abusive behavior is fine and dandy - as with any community, standards of conduct will be come into play. Those
Uhhhh!
Where have I said this? I do wish that people would actually read posts carefully before commenting on them. It would certainly save a lot of time and frustration. It seems that it is not just on discussion boards that you 'jump in with both feet' but also in threads on those boards!!
Let me simplify this for you as I have done for Caliber:
1) My argument is that in threads where passions are raised, i.e. the political, atheist/science that it is INEVITABLE given human nature that what some interpret as 'abusive' speech will be used. Every person who has decried such usage, including Coffee and Flipper as I proved on another thread have themselves used 'abusive' speech when they have become emotionally involved in a thread.
2) My argument is that people do not have to partake of threads where such emotionally charged subjects are discussed and they can stick to abusing Jehovah's Witnesses instead. After all, they deserve it don't they?
3) People should take responsibility for their words. If the launch an unprovoked attack on a person, they should then take responsibility for what happens after that. If they utter nonsense, abusing posters by not bothering to check facts, or the logical premise for their posts, they must be prepared for a fallout.
PLEASE read a persons posts carefully before you respond to them.
HS
Why is it whenever I read hillary step's words do I feel like a robot is behind them????? LMAO Anyway.... I love his/her humor!
Should that not read 'It's' humor? :)
HS
I believe it should read "Its" humor..... you are partially right...
Take care.... Juni :)
Hillary for President is all I can say !!!
Coffee,
No one ever convinced me of anything by calling me names or being abusive..... with one exception. I was married to a verbally abusive man for almost 20 years.... he convinced me that I didn't want to be married to him any more... and once I realized I could, I divorced him. He's still a jw and has virtually no relationship with either of our grown kids or his grandchildren. He's still convinced he's right though... but no one is listening to him any more.I have been thinking about this paragraph the past hour or so. It is a passive agressive attempt imo to 'win' an argument that you began by PM.
Judging from the private correspondence between us, unsolicited on my side I might add, I think you are suffering 'transference' issues. I think these issues are clouding your judgement. Lets just leave it at that.
Wow HS! I didn't intend to cause such puzzlement...or such an avalanche of HS posts! There's no hidden meaning or transferrence going on here. As I wrote the words "no one has convinced me of anything by calling me names or being abusive ", I realized that wasn't true...so I wrote briefly about the one time that I had been conviced of something by abusive words. I know of the damage that words can cause...in my case to all in my family. It had nothing to do with our lengthy pm exchange. I have not responded to your last pm (nor opened it) because I simply don't want to continue the debate..by pm or here on this thread. At some point it just becomes silly, and I know when to stop.
Whether written or spoken...in person or by phone, recording or by whatever means...words have an effect on others. That is why Edward Bulwac-Lytton coined the saying "The pen is mightier than the sword" over a century ago. They can be used to heal and they can be used to hurt...and everything in between. With your masterful command of the English language, you are obviously more adept at their use than most on this db. "Use that power wisely, grasshopper."
I think we all would do well to think back to our own journey out of the organization....and how much pain and confusion we were in when we took the first tentative steps of that journey. Whether we called a helpline, talked to a friend, or came to a db...that pain was real...and we were looking for help and/or support. My hope is that they find that help and support.
Coffee .... and that's my final answer...
2 things I wanna say: I love Coffee and if Hillary was not on this board, it would not be as interesting.
I think eclipse said it best, channeling Robinson innerantly, of course. I hope you'll find the following eye-opening and epiphanic:
http://www.alamut.com/subj/the_self/misc/egoism.html
EGOISM
by John Beverley Robinson
There is no word more generally misinterpreted than the word egoism, in its modern sense. In the first place, it is supposed to mean devotion to self interest, without regard to the interest of others. It is thus opposed to altruism--devotion to others and sacrifice of self. This interpretation is due to the use of the word thus antithetically by Herbert Spencer.
Again, it is identified with hedonism or eudaimonism, or epicureanism, philosophies that teach that the attainment of pleasure or happiness or advantage, whichever you may choose to phrase it, is the rule of life.
Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that he is an individual; that, as far as he is concerned, he is the only individual.
For each one of us stands alone in the midst of a universe. He is surrounded by sights and sounds which he interprets as exterior to himself, although all he knows of them are the impressions on his retina and ear drums and other organs of sense. The universe for him is measured by these sensations; they are, for him, the universe. Some of them he interprets as denoting other individuals, whom he conceives as more or less like himself. But none of these is himself. He stands apart. His consciousness, and the desires and gratifications that enter into it, is a thing unique; no other can enter into it.
However near and dear to you may be your wife, children, friends, they are not you; they are outside of you. You are forever alone. Your thoughts and emotions are yours alone. There is no other who experiences your thoughts or your feelings.
No doubt it gives you pleasure when others think as you do, and Inform you of it through language; or when others enjoy the same things that you do. Moreover, quite apart from their enjoying the same things that you enjoy, it gives you pleasure to see them enjoy themselves in any way. Such gratification to the individual is the pleasure of sympathy, one of the most acute pleasures possible for most people.
According to your sympathy, you will take pleasure in your own happiness or in the happiness of other people; but it is always your own happiness you seek. The most profound egoist may be the most complete altruist; but he knows that his altruism is, at the bottom, nothing but self-indulgence.
But egoism is more than this. It is the realization by the individual that he is above all institutions and all formulas; that they exist only so far as he chooses to make them his own by accepting them. When you see clearly that you are the measure of the universe, that everything that exists exists for you only so far as it is reflected in your own consciousness, you become a new man; you see everything by a new light: you stand on a height and feel the fresh air blowing on your face; and find new strength and glory in it.
Whatever gods you worship, you realize that they are your gods, the product of your own mind, terrible or amiable, as you may choose to depict them. You hold them in your hand, and play with them, as a child with its paper dolls; for you have learned not to fear them, that they are but the "imaginations of your heart." All the ideals which men generally think are realities, you have learned to see through; you have learned that they are your ideals. Whether you have originated them, which is unlikely, or have accepted somebody else's ideals, makes no difference. They are your ideals just so far as you accept them. The priest is reverend only so far as you reverence him. If you cease to reverence him, he is no longer reverend for you. You have power to make and unmake priests as easily as you can make and unmake gods. You are the one of whom the poet tells, who stands unmoved, though the universe fall in fragments about you.
And all the other ideals by which men are moved, to which men are enslaved, for which men afflict themselves, have no power over you; you are no longer afraid of them, for you know them to be your own ideals, made in your own mind, for your own pleasure, to be changed or ignored, just as you choose to change or ignore them. They are your own little pets, to be played with, not to be feared.
"The State" or "The Government" is idealized by the many as a thing above them, to be reverenced and feared. They call it "My Country," and if you utter the magic words, they will rush to kill their friends, whom they would not injure by so much as a pin scratch, if they were not intoxicated and blinded by their ideal. Most men are deprived of their reason under the influence of their ideals. Moved by the ideal of "religion" or "patriotism" or "morality," they fly at each others' throats - they, who are otherwise often the gentlest of men! But their ideals are for them like the "fixed ideas" of lunatics. They become irrational and irresponsible under the influence of their ideals. They will not only destroy others, but they will quite sink their own interests, and rush madly to destroy themselves as a sacrifice to the all-devouring ideal. Curious, is it not, to one who looks on with a philosophical mind?
But the egoist has no ideals, for the knowledge that his ideals are only his ideals, frees him from their domination. He acts for his own interest, not for the interest of ideals. He will neither hang a man nor whip a child in the interest of "morality," if it is disagreeable to him to do so.
He has no reverence for "The State." He knows that "The Government" is but a set of men, mostly as big fools as he is himself, many of them bigger. If the State does things that benefit him, he will support it; if it attacks him and encroaches on his liberty, he will evade it by any means in his power, if he is not strong enough to withstand it. He is a man without a country. "The Flag," that most men adore, as men always adore symbols, worshipping the symbol more than the principle it is supposed to set forth, is for the egoist but a rather inharmonious piece of patch-work; and anybody may walk on it or spit on it if they will, without exciting his emotion any more than if it were a tarpaulin that they walked upon or spat upon. The principles that it symbolizes, he will maintain as far as it seems to his advantage to maintain them; but if the principles require him to kill people or be killed himself, you will have to demonstrate to him just what benefit he will gain by killing or being killed, before you can persuade him to uphold them.
When the judge enters court in his toggery, (judges and ministers and professors know the value of toggery in impressing the populace) the egoist is unterrified. He has not even any respect for "The Law." If the law happens to be to his advantage, he will avail himself of it; if it invades his liberty he will transgress it as far as he thinks it wise to do so. But he has no regard for it as a thing supernal. It is to him the clumsy creation of them who still "sit in darkness."
Nor does he bow the knee to Morality - Sacred Morality! Some of its precepts he may accept, if he chooses to do so; but you cannot scare him off by telling him it is not "right." He usually prefers not to kill or steal; but if he must kill or steal to save himself, he will do it with a good heart, and without any qualms of "conscience." And "morality" will never persuade him to injure others when it is of no advantage to himself. He will not be found among a band of "white caps," flogging and burning poor devils, because their actions do not conform to the dictates of "morality," though they have injured none by such actions; nor will he have any hand in persecuting helpless girls, and throwing them out into the street, when he has received no ill at their hands.
To his friends - to those who deserve the truth from him, - he will tell the truth; but you cannot force the truth from him because he is "afraid to tell a lie." He has no fear, not even of perjury, for he knows that oaths are but devices to enslave the mind by an appeal to supernatural fears.
And for all the other small, tenuous ideals, with which we have fettered our minds and to which we have shrunk our petty lives; they are for the egoist as though they were not.
"Filial love and respect" he will give to his parents if they have earned it by deserving it. If they have beaten him in infancy, and scorned him in childhood, and domineered over him in maturity, he may possibly love them in spite of maltreatment; but if they have alienated his affection, they will not reawaken it by an appeal to "duty."
In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism. The ordinary man - the idealist - subordinates his interests to the interests of his ideals, and usually suffers for it.
The egoist is fooled by no ideals: he discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest. If he likes to be altruistic, he will sacrifice himself for others; but only because he likes to do so; he demands no gratitude nor glory in return.
Eye-opening.
Epiphanic.
It gave me an epiphany. Then I wiped and flushed.
Coffee,
No puzzlement. I did not appreciate how much your issues with your ex-husband, which you volunteered to this Board, have affected your thinking with regard to 'abusive' speech. This is why I wrote what I did below. I understand why this is such an issue for you.
Judging from the private correspondence between us, unsolicited on my side I might add, I think you are suffering 'transference' issues. I think these issues are clouding your judgement. Lets just leave it at that.
It has to be noted however, that the readers have not as I have, had the benefit of reading your private correspondence, much of which actually unravels your own policies in this department. It also has to be noted that, as you proved yourself, that your very first posts to me on this Board were of the sort that undermines your own position on the matter. The word hypocrite has to spring to mind here. I notice for example, that your desire to have the last word in pm correspondence has precluded you from viewing my own mail sent in return. It would be an interesting experiment to post all our private correspondence on this Board Coffee and see what others think of your 'stand' on 'abusive speech' then. ;)
Two posters have over the past few days, yourself being one of them, both stood firmly against the use of a 'abusive speech' (I use quotation marks as some might view having their posts described in truthful terms as abusive) yet you have both been guilty of using such speech and have not even attempted to justify this dichotony.
My own position has always been honestly and clearly stated again and again and can be read above. No person, not one, including yourself has attemped a point by point rebuttal of the points that I make, the reason being that they are unimpeachable.
Whether written or spoken...in person or by phone, recording or by whatever means...words have an effect on others. That is why Edward Bulwac-Lytton coined the saying "The pen is mightier than the sword" over a century ago. They can be used to heal and they can be used to hurt...and everything in between. With your masterful command of the English language, you are obviously more adept at their use than most on this db. "Use that power wisely, grasshopper."
Just two things to say here.
1) Learn to take your own counsel before you send unsolicted reams to a person by pm, attempting to offer 'firm' counsel and making laughable attempts at summing up the personality of a person whom you have never even spoken to.
2) The correct name for the author is Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Have you actually read any of his work? lol...I did not think so. Not only have you taken his comments out of context, but Bulwer-Lytton was well known for calling a fool just what they are, a fool. He did not suffer them with ease.
Wisdom is not intoned from what a person writes, but what one reads. As I have droned on for days now, IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ A THREAD DO NOT ENTER IT. IF YOU DO, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN WORDS. AVOID THE POLITICAL AND ATHEIST/SCIENCE THREADS IF YOU HAVE A THIN SKILL OR ARE IGNORANT OF THE SUBJECT.
Of course, mots people know this because they have read the board, often for years before they subscribe!
Shall we call it a day?
HS
