It's about time someone here does the maths! :-)
like sliding the bead of an abacus from one side to another, a blog post representing words formerly reserved to "just" thought, gets slid to the side of the mind of significance Real World Relevance.
The opposing compartment, that of adjacent or contrarian views/ideas, contrast the initial beads put forward. A calculation, or evening out, of thoughts, ideas, concepts. In the end, one returns a sum. Like The Socratic Method and the practice of a courtroom, one can come to truth/justice via two sides of both opposition, yet mandated potential compromise - neither acquitting all or finding guilt all, contrasting the potential of *this* or *that* to arrive at what IS. A common goal.
bringing thought to bear through writing, and the feedback and condemnation of, or vindication in, what is written, is what makes one grow
I used to be of the idea that interacting with people who think different online was a nice way to challenge my own views and opinions on things, and to gain a different perspective, all that shit.
But the page which I called my "home" for several years was full of the kind of people whose comments would only perplex or downright infuriate me for how... caricaturesque they seemed. They were so damn out of this world that they only caused me to go the opposite direction and ultimately developed this very strong "anti-angloamerican" position that has stayed with me ever since. I have left that place because people there I believe are truly fucking crazy, and their insane opinions were only causing me distress, causing me to question how come some batshit opinion on the internet could cause me such a strong emotional response and such persistent brooding. It always bedazzled me that a person could actually hold such a view...
No, I'm not into exchanging views with people anymore, not on the internet. Sometimes I fall into reddit by some chance and I run into a lot milder comments, but comments that seemed to come straight out of a US propaganda pamphlet, and now it amuses me, but it also makes me wonder whether there is actually people whose worldviews are scripted down to every punctuation sign.
No, I really prefer getting my intellectual nourishment from books. For some reason I can read books that hold very different viewpoints and I don't know if it's because a writer holds himself to higher standards in making an argument, but it doesn't cause me this level of perplexion. But talking to people online is certainly something that I've grown very weary of.
You guys are, of course, different. I think some amount of not-taking-oneself-too-seriously is a good antidote to the kind of mind poison that oozes through the speech of some people, especially when they are shielded behind an anonymous comment.
I just keep reminding myself that Automatonic Intelligence is nothing new. :-)
That said, I do wish others weren't seemingly predominantly so-called "NPC"'s whose fingers are somehow connected to their jerk-happy knees. Maybe I was lucky for it not seeming that way growing up, maybe through my 20s. But somewhere along the line, either I, or they, or my modeling of they changed in a way that interactions between I and they felt/feel ersatz relative to how I remember them feeling in my earlier, "ignorance was bliss" days.
So, you know... I keep trying to playfully poke bears in hopes they'll turn around and wreck my model(s). But it's getting late in the (life) game, and mowing the grass dividends increasingly tower over human interactions losses....
Some people are just not into the thinking business. They want to make sure you understand they are entitled to having their opinion, however.
"Entitlement" suddenly seems a bizarre thing to me.
But, then, pretty much everything about individuality seems bizarre to me these days. It seems a horrific mental illness cherished for being what we are, and seemingly all we can be. But I think the results/consequences are bountifully obviously hideous, e.g. those bombs you mentioned in another thread.
I think there are ways out of it, but so much as hinting there's a problem with individuality is a fast path to being verbally bludgeoned by the more acutely individual, or ghosted/shunned by the more timid instantiations.
It's just... oh well........