Qualifiers
I was reading a post of Johnpe1, and he ended it with IMHO. I recognized what he was doing as I have done it a lot in my life. I call it putting qualifiers into anything I say to other people.
Some examples of qualifiers:
IMHO
Well, I may be wrong, but I think.....
I don't mean to disagree with you, but ......
My point is that in my life I have dealt with a lot of jealousy and resentment from other people, and I have tried very hard to deflect it or try to make the other person see that I am a person, too, you don't need to be jealous of me.
The hate inspired by jealousy has been a recurring theme in my life, and I wonder if any other Gulchers have encountered this. Could you tell me if this has happened to you, how it has affected you, and how you have dealt with it?
Recently a person who has fixated on me attacked me through attacking my child, and it has caused me a lot of anxiety and pain, even though in the end my child was able to overcome the considerable obstacles he put in her path in order to hurt me.
I am curious to know if jealousy is something other Gulchers have had to deal with.
And by the way, John, your opinion should be anything but humble. Your comments are intelligent and interesting and often fun.
Some examples of qualifiers:
IMHO
Well, I may be wrong, but I think.....
I don't mean to disagree with you, but ......
My point is that in my life I have dealt with a lot of jealousy and resentment from other people, and I have tried very hard to deflect it or try to make the other person see that I am a person, too, you don't need to be jealous of me.
The hate inspired by jealousy has been a recurring theme in my life, and I wonder if any other Gulchers have encountered this. Could you tell me if this has happened to you, how it has affected you, and how you have dealt with it?
Recently a person who has fixated on me attacked me through attacking my child, and it has caused me a lot of anxiety and pain, even though in the end my child was able to overcome the considerable obstacles he put in her path in order to hurt me.
I am curious to know if jealousy is something other Gulchers have had to deal with.
And by the way, John, your opinion should be anything but humble. Your comments are intelligent and interesting and often fun.
God is the constant of all things.
Jesus is the door to God.
We all have the free will to believe that or not.
So you've chosen to introduce a wildcard, namely God, to stand for the as yet unexplained. You're making A + X = A to comfort you in the face of uncertainty and the unknown.
Faith is the volitional disconnect from reality, a self-sabotage of the mind. Religious people compartmentalize this irrational part of their thinking or they wouldn't be able to function in the real world.
Minds are amazing machines. They can conceive of explanations of the most imaginative kinds, creating patterns and continuums of possibilities, of speculative causalities and infinite regress, loopy logic and Rube Goldberg connections, in the pursuit of understanding existence. What would be useful is to learn, as children should, the difference between the real and the make-believe.
However when the ignorant do their best to drag you down to their level and beat you with experience, it does sometimes feel that way :P
What I have observed from decades of being a "meme hunter" and Martian anthropologist is that qualifiers are used by both kindhearted and cretinous individuals. As children we were taught to be humble, not show off, not incite others' resentment, not be proud or arrogant, to "neither look too good nor talk too wise". As grown-ups we are expected to be self-effacing, apologetic for our very existence, brown-nosing to higher-ups and respectful where respect is not merited. Disgusting, isn't it?
There's nothing wrong with being considerate, thoughtful, courteous, friendly, solicitous, compassionate where merited and reciprocated. It is the social glue, the relational lubricant, for living among other humans. Deliberate rudeness and indifference just beget more of that and make for a cold, hard, unpleasant atmosphere. Someone has to make the first move back toward benevolence without self-deprecation.
Defensive qualifiers serve as cushions to soften the blow when conflicting ideas collide. They serve to get a foot in the door before resistance breaks out. Salesmen use them to soften up a prospect. They are a form of insincerity that I can spot a mile away. They are also a sign of someone not sure of himself, who proceeds tentatively so as not to arouse disapproval. Sad to say, the world runs on popularity contests, rendering people into schemers and deceivers, poseurs and bullies, sycophants and schmoozers. The best way I have found of coping is not to associate with such people.
It was one of Ayn Rand's most powerful insights that one should not live for the approval of others, even though as children we are conditioned to do so, to win nods from parents, teachers, adults and friends. It is a vicious device for social control. Ultimately, though, it is our own approval, by our own rational standards, that is the only thing that counts.
Thank you for your frank and open comments. You are individuals I would be honored to call friends.
Thanks!
(and done, btw!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oyCGrb...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708732/quot...
You don't bother me.
So what I wasn't going to bother to respond?
Big Government wants sheeple, not independent minded citizens.
To achieve this they will smother anyone or anything they have to.
Political Correctness is currently their most effective tool for this.
I can't quite agree, however. Anything which is subjective in nature _requires_ a value judgment to take place as a precondition of anything else. Jealousy and Envy are emotional _results_ of the perception of a value judgment originating in the mind of the observer as a comparison of two states which finds disparate outcomes where one was expecting similar or identical ones, and where there is a perception that the disparate outcome negatively and irrationally impacts the observer. The inherent fallacy in envy and jealousy are in the expectation that the two compared states _should_ be equivalent in the first place or that there is any real disparate impact on the observer at all!
One does not get jealous that a plant exists. One gets jealous that one's neighbor has a plant of a particular nature one finds desirable and which we irrationally conclude should exist in our yard by no power other than our own will. Theft occurs when rather than seek out and work to purchase a similar plant, we take our neighbor's plant.
As for the fable, I stand corrected. I should have used the word "fallacy" rather than "fable". I meant it to emphasize your exact point: that it is an illustration of actions resulting from the influence of envy.
If so, it doesn't shake my faith.
Something can't come from nothing unless God wants it to.
I don't care how convoluted someone wants to warp or wormhole science.
I wasn't going to bother to respond but you asked me a direct question.
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