Contributors

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Every Single Word Of This Is True

18 comments:

GuardDuck said...

Every word? Because I saw as much in that spiel to oppose things you like as you could to oppose those that I like.

Mark Ward said...

And what would those be, GD?

Haplo9 said...

Bahaha. Tell us again Mark, just how it is that you don't fall for emotion based thinking. Were you of the belief that his monologue was anything other than a pull directly at your (liberal) heartstrings?

(Wow, "freedom" is a true/false proposition apparently. Who knew!)

6Kings said...

'America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.'

Ha ha ha.. Really? Who is? Where do most people in the world aspire to be?

juris "bully weasel" imprudent said...

Funny M, but didn't you just comment in another thread how this is the greatest country in the world, even with our faults?

I am amazed how so many contradictory ideas/statements can coexist inside that head of yours. Then again, there are so many voices in there too - I guess one shouldn't expect them to be all in harmony.

Larry said...

You just don't understand nuance, Mr. Bully Weasel, sir. Words are just tools to be used in an advanced form of sympathetic magic, and sentences are like Schrodinger's Boxes of living/dead "Cats of Meaning". If you need a Live Cat, then you open the Box of Meaning and, "Hey Presto! There it is!" If you need a Dead Cat a few minutes later from that very same sentence, then you go back and re-open the Box of Meaning and, "Shazam! Behold the stinking carcass of a very long dead cat!" "Nuance" describes the state of mind needed to pull any meaning whatsoever needed at any moment. Many maintain that a High Proggy Adept can indeed be all things to all men for all time, and all this from a single sentence. It is rumored that True Believers hold that The One shall not even need a sentence, but only a single word to derive All Meaning. A Word of only One Syllable. One Sound! He shall not even need a mouth to make the Holy Sound of Progressive Thought!!!

Mark Ward said...

Well, juris, apparently Carl Jung is lost on you. Oh well...

juris imprudent said...

You really want to discussion Jungian theory? Cool - tell me exactly what I seem to have missed. I breathlessly await something more than a wave of the hands.

Larry said...

As usual, someone smarter than me said it better:

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

Mark and Nikto are well and truly Living the Orwellian Dream! Always on their knees ready to "sniff the leather".

Mark Ward said...

The duality of man, juris.

juris "bully weasel" imprudent said...

Duality? Dude, you've gone way beyond mere duality. OK, cheap joke - sorry.

So do go on. Tell me more, like how precisely I'm unaware of the duality of man. You could make this interesting, or you can take the juvenile approach - anyone care to take bets?

Mark Ward said...

I'm talking about the distinction between the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious. I'm an American so from a collective standpoint, my first inclination is to say that we are the greatest country on the planet. That's the image that is imprinted in my brain from day one...a civil religious belief, if you will. All of us in this culture experience this. Yet on an individual level, my personal experiences tell me that we aren't because of the list McAvoy rattles off in this video.

It's an ongoing conflict within myself and this example is one manifestation of it.

juris "bully weasel" imprudent said...

I'm talking about the distinction between the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious.

The collective unconscious - when did science ever validate the existence of that? Psych sure does have problems with applying actual scientific processes, doesn't it?

And your rejection of American greatness is an unconscious thing - or is it a conscious, even reason-driven, evaluation of the things that are wrong with America in comparison with other countries in the world? How can your unconscious even make an evidence based assessment - which such a comparison surely is?

You don't need Jung to explain that you hold contradictory views because you aren't consistent in what you believe. It is a pretty poor rationalization.

Mark Ward said...

when did science ever validate the existence of that? Psych sure does have problems with applying actual scientific processes, doesn't it?

Not really. They use the scientific method all the time. The problem is that it's not considered a science by some and that's where the problem begins.

to explain that you hold contradictory views because you aren't consistent in what you believe

I don't see any reason why it can't be both. But we're back to the black and white thing again. I love my country but am ashamed of it often. Sometimes I think we are the greatest country on the planet and other times (as with the list that McAvoy rattles off), it lets me down. I think my children are the greatest kids in the world but I'm biased. They may not be from a purely objective point of view and they have, in the past, let me down. So, are they greatest? Yes and no.

I guess that makes me a bad dad:)

juris imprudent said...

The problem is that it's not considered a science by some and that's where the problem begins.

So what is the scientific evidence supporting the existence of "the collective unconscious"?

You wouldn't run into these problems if you recognized and admitted that all that really matters to you is faith. I wouldn't beat you up about that - faith is what it is. It is your insistence otherwise, that you are a person of reason that causes me to demonstrate, time after time, that you are NOT.

But we're back to the black and white thing again.

You never moved off of it to begin with. You are the most black and white poster of anyone here. Gotta love how you project that onto other people rather than recognize it in yourself. Even a psych 101 student could diagnose that.

Larry said...

I'm wondering who Sorkin thinks is the greatest country? It's obvious America isn't, so who is? Or are all equally great in different ways? If everybody's special, then nobody's special. I'd be curious to see where Zimbabwe is our equal, except maybe underclass murder rate.

Mark Ward said...

There isn't one. That's the point of the tirade. We are now a multipolar world, Larry, in which there are several "greatest countries." The frustration on the point of McAvoy is born out of the shift away from a unipolar world.

Larry said...

Well, then there must be "greatest" in different categories. What are the categories and what are the rankings within those categories? And since we all know in the Real World that there are rankings based upon the mix of all categories, which still lead to a single "greatest country". Obviously that ranking depends upon how one weights the categories. But one proxy might be which country has the most people trying to get in, both legally and illegally.