this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Oh this is very interesting. I meant you do not need worry about my safety. As you seemed to be keen on "curing" me of my "naive" ways, convincing you of yours, seeing the whole world as nothing but enmity. It didn't even occur to me that it could be read the other way around. How did you come to that interpretation?
Someone who is harmless has no way to defend themselves. They will be afraid little tiny chihuahuas throwing their ire at anyone that they ever meet, considering all to be more powerful than them, that ire will be directed inside into self-hatred or outside into anger, but it's still the same helplessness.
If you are not harmless, however, you can find safety, even in dicey situations, in your capacity to get out of them on your own terms. It's the martial artists who is not impressed by chest thumping, and see no need to engage in that practice: If a punch flies their way they're going to react, they can trust the back of their mind to deal with it. Any worry there might be does not need to cross the threshold of consciousness because they have achieved unconscious competence. That enables peacefulness even in a biker bar.
Are humans fake to their pets, to their children? To their frail elders?
How much do you yourself enforce that brand?
...never mind you just answered that.
To me, that's the only interpretation that makes sense. Why the fuck would you allay my fears of your safety? To you, my fears would be you r asset you can use against me. Allaying those fears disarms you.
Not necessarily. "Not harmless" does not guarantee "sufficiently harmful".
For this definition those beings are equal. Equal in social status, not competency.
I don't. The entire point of talking to you people is to break you of this obsession with putting down.
It's not my mind forcing you people to denigrate me; you choose, of your own free will, to do so. Even your belief that I influence that choice is your choice to allow me to influence , your choice to even believe that I can influence that choice. You can choose to not denigrate NO MATTER HOW I ACT, and that is in fact the only moral choice, but you all choose the immoral choice because it is immoral, because it is anti-social.
You choose to assert that I am less than you to dominate me, and you claim my behavior is the cause to further that domination.
Now why would I do that. Humanity aside that's strategically unsound: Fearful people are not at the full extent of their abilities. And if we are are to, what, hunt mammoths or some shit I'd rather have you at your best.
I assert that your neurosis is less than you, that it diminishes you. Anyone trying to get you out of there does not do it to further their control over you -- on the contrary, they want to see you fly and soar (or at the very least not get on their nerves). Those narcissists you speak of would rather reinforce it, because it is a leash they can lead you by. How do you clearly distinguish between those ends people aim for? "Everyone is out to get me" is not an answer to that question, it's a cop-out, it's avoidance.
Or, let me put this differently: If there was a single decent human being among the billions we are, and you might just by chance stumble across them one day... would you be able to tell that they're the exception? Can you develop that skill? Is that a hypothetical you're comfortable contemplating?
You know goddamned why; you're not fooling me. You hate me because I prove your belief that that you're inferior. And you don't want me "at your best" because that results in me killing you the next time you attack me.
That would be suicidal for them. Do you expect me to believe they're openly suicidal?
No one is trying to "get me out of there" and anyone who's trying to convince there is is exactly the people I need to destroy first - because they are the boldest liars.
That's your strawman.
It wouldn't matter, because a single person wouldn't make a difference. In fact, the idea of a "single person" is an oxymoron; an "individual" is just meat. Personhood comes from group membership; no "individual" is a "person" until a group recognizes them as such.
The social atom is the group, no the individual bag of meat. A human being's worth literally comes from the group; one's own estimate of worth is hopelessly biased and therefore perfectly invalid.
Was that a Freudian slip?
Just for the record, no, I do not think of myself as inferior. Or superior. I generally don't tend to think it those categories and definitely not as a generality. If there's a shoemaker, sure, I'll recognise their authority when it comes to the question of shoes.
Why would I attack you? As I said in the beginning: No amount of flailing will make me hate you. Any aggression will have to be started from your side.
...no? I didn't write it wrong.
Sure you don't.
And as I have said throughout: I won't take anything you say at face value. You have no reason to talk to me if you're not trying to lie to me somehow.
If you do not consider that possible, I suggest you suspend disbelief. Try it out for yourself.
As I already linked Epictetus: