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#1 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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Whence comes inequality for sapiens?
The very first class distinction was between mortal and immortal; between human and superhuman. For primitive wo/man it was the dead who held most power. Since the eighteenth century the great minds have formed this question, ‘what is the source of inequality?’ and have sought the answer. Rousseau asked why humanity had gradually fallen from a primitive state of innocence into the conflicts of classes and states. Marx capitalized (a pun perhaps?) on Rousseau’s idea to remind us that humanity did not all start out as exploited peons. Today this class and state differential is more abundantly clear. It has been deduced that power and coercion are not the only culprits here, it is that wo/man harbors an “enemy within”; perhaps the “slave is somehow in love with his own chains”. Rousseau offered this answer “The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say ‘this is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.” The salient question became ‘not when’ but ‘why’ it happened? Primitive man recognized differences in talent, strength, and merit and easily deferred to these characteristics. Why—because such characteristics served well the needs of the tribe or community. Certain individuals showed ability for defying death and others wished to share in that immunity. We see here that he “carries within himself the bondage that he needs in order to continue to live…we are born in need of authority and we even create out of freedom, a prison…This insight is the fruit of the outcome of modern psychoanalysis…it penetrates to the heart of the human condition and to the principle dynamic of the emergence of historical inequality…primitive religion starts the first class distinction…That is, the individual gives over the aegis of his own life and death to the spirit worlds; he is already a second-class citizen.” “The first class distinction, then, was between mortal and immortal, between feeble human powers and special superhuman beings.” Quotes from “Escape from Evil” by Ernest Becker |
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#2 |
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Little Chief Hare
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Wow, Marxism and Anarcho-primitivism in the same place!
Wild coberst appears! Coberst uses ernerst becker! Critical hit! Go Nietzsche! Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker, suppresion, hardness, inposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation. Hardness, forcefulness, slavery, danger in the alley and the heart, life in hiding, stoicism, the art of expiriment and devilry of every kind, that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents, serves the enhancement of the species "man" as much as its opposite does. Indeed, we do not even say enough when we say only that much. It's super effective! Enemy Coberst has fainted! Seriously, all Becker is doing is recasting a classic anthropological perspective in negative light. It's not hard at all to do so in a positive light, as you can see. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 02-27-2007 at 10:07 PM.. Reason: not corny enough |
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#3 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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Kilroy
My suggestion to everyone is to seek out the best when trying to acquire knowledge. I suspect evryone who is knowledgable about such matters would agree that Nietzche is one of the best. |
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#4 |
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is against custom titles
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Guys, if you're not going to be on-topic or helpful, don't post. I've deleted way too many posts here already.
Recall that we also have a private message function so that you can get your point across without the righteous soapbox of the forums. --Guido http://andy.mikee385.com |
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#5 |
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FFR Player
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Edit: oh just read Guido's post.
Coberst, if you want people to respond to your threads, actually type them out coherently. It's not even a thesaurus that's makes your posts so unreadable, it's how unorganized they are and how they give you that feeling of "so, what the hell are you talking about again? What's your point?" you get after reading something. I think I know what you're talking about [this time], but this is a discussion forum--your posts don't allow for many open-ended responses. Most of the rebuttals you get (out of the few you do) are simple 3 line posts that get the job done.
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last.fm Last edited by lord_carbo; 02-28-2007 at 06:41 PM.. |
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#6 |
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FFR Player
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Competition. Although I don't have a logical explanation to it, all I can say is that humans have a tendency to compete with each other to see who's better.
Those who come up as the top are seen as the best. It starts when the treat the losers poorly. Humans are social animals and will tend to follow others and these "others" may be the top group because they have more "prestige". When the next generation hits, it's indoctrinated on them that the losers are inferior to them. After one or a couple of these cycles, we have two distinct group, the superior, and the inferior, creating inequality. The reason why it's hard to break out of the cycle once it has started is because it has been indoctrinated in them early life. In fact, the way the one group treats another may be unknown to them because it has been the way of life since they were born. One such example is a male vs female brother. My English Teacher has a sister that was studying some topic about feminism in a college. One of her projects was to not walk around men while walking on the halls. After three days, she already had difficulty trying to do this. Men did not walk around her when they saw that she was not walking around. In fact, quite a few of the men she bumped in to started yelling at her for not walking around. What's the point of this story? Well, my English Teacher's sister was unaware that she has been walking out of the way of most people for most of her life and men have been unaware of their own actions. ~Tsugomaru |
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#7 | |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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Quote:
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#8 |
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Little Chief Hare
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I like how you're being criticized for what isn't even your own writing a good deal of the time. I also like how your posts don't have even the slightest hint of having employed a thesaurus but people still accuse you of that, and do so as if it were something bad.
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#9 | |
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FFR Player
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Quote:
God, no wonder you understood him. You guys both must read English differently than normal people or something.
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last.fm |
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#10 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: New York
Age: 29
Posts: 504
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It really isn't hard to understand, it is just more advanced language. It is also fairly organized; he makes one point than moves onto another.
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#11 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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A large vocabulary comes with reading lots of books.
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#12 | ||
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Little Chief Hare
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Quote:
Quote:
The fact that you throw a negation into the general vicinity of what you're describing without even thinking about it modifies and then attempt to pass that off as an acceptable use of language is astonishing. |
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#13 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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Connoisseur—one who understands the details, technique, or principles of an art and is competent to act as a critical judge—one who enjoys with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties.
When speaking of connoisseurs we generally think of gourmets, food, wine, wealth, gout and diabetics. I want to add something new to your connotations—I want to talk about ‘connoisseurs of words’. To become a person who enjoys the discrimination and appreciation of the subtleties of words and thus of reality one needs to become a reader of books. Don’t run away—this may be more pleasant and less painful than you think. To become wise of the world, to become a connoisseur of words, it is advisable to be a card carrying member of a large library. Many small city libraries do not fully qualify but most people are close to a small college that has a relatively large library. Most college libraries have a ‘Friends of the Library’ card that is available to any state citizen for a small yearly fee of like $25. Becoming a card carrying member of the ‘connoisseur of words’ club is easy, delightful, inexpensive, and profoundly interesting; and occasionally, as Carl Sagan said, “understanding is a kind of ecstasy”. There are other ways to discover the nature of reality beyond the superficial but reading books is one of the easiest and best, in my judgment. One cannot comprehend the depths of reality without comprehending the words that communicate that depth and one cannot comprehend the words without reading books of quality. Pulp fiction does not qualify as being books of quality. |
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#14 |
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FFR Player
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Can't you just say "If you can't understand my threads, go read a book", instead of this wall of text?
We all know that we learn vocabulary by reading books, you don't need to explain us what a library is.
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O ![]() |
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#15 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 256
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Some do and some do not.
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#17 |
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Little Chief Hare
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The fact that you can read the noun into place without my explanation shows it to be substantially less severe than your profound misadventure with the symbolic, which required you to attempt to construct a shoddy defense.
Which of course you chose not to do, instead pointing out something you wouldn't have noticed if your brain hadn't automatically corrected for it. GFG. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 03-5-2007 at 09:57 PM.. Reason: Not sassy enough |
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