Posting Privileges and Group Forums

I see a thread has been moved over to the 'Atheist and Agnostic Fapronaut Forum' with the according loss of posting privileges. This is not a criticism of Nofap, but I think itself represents something going very wrong in our culture. A managerial and bureaucratic logic has been let loose that organizes everything into its self-contained parts, and there is to be no meaningful commerce between them.

That the whole system of organization could be thought arbitrary, silly, meaningless and futile becomes marginalized as thought itself is increasingly dissected.. and criticism effectively isolated. The obsession we have with 'scientific' logic is a good example of this - by the terms of its logic anything beyond itself is meaningless.

But there is always a choice involved here. We choose that there is only one method that we will allow our reason to submit to. And what is at stake here is our freedom, our civility and our humor. Consider, all you cast-iron logic-choppers, whether love could ever be analyzed logically? And if not, I say so much for a singular logic.

 

@542766855

An example of the 'brave new logic'.

My response to this, besides the above post, is to emphasize the role that the will plays in the formation of our beliefs. The will, not reason, is central in what we choose to believe. When we see the truth of something, we assent to it... even a mathematical truth. And so the sequence, in reality, goes like this - will ---> belief ----> reason. The importance of this is that we have the freedom to exercise various logics, so accordingly no single one could gain a monopoly. All logical knowledge is our own creation.

There seems to be a rational ladder of sorts that the mind is on built of the poles of reason and observation. At the lowest rung is mathematical certainties, further up there are scientific hypothesis, and further up again there are questions about the nature of reality. The higher you go, the less certainty and more belief... and the better the view.

 

I would add that logics are largely incommensurable one to the other. So if one is locked into a singular logic, then other logics will be incomprehensible.

Behind all the segregated logics that have been organized into their boxes is the meta-logic of bureaucracy. This is only the pathological desire for cold, hard, mechanistic efficiency.

 

And hence the importance of imaginative capacities. For it would be a crying shame should the 'normalized' mind disregard what you have to say as absurd.... whether that be a common prejudice against religion, or an intolerance toward imagination in general.

 

The understanding is over-rated.

 

Well, I think it sad that the art of conversation is lost as various parties bunker down in their dogmatic trenches, where they must remain lest open hostilities break out. The art of conversation is based on various virtues among which tolerance has to be prominent. And without it, the art of politics also, which has always been a dialogue between the more progressive and conservative factions, breaks down. Left and Right bunker down in their political dogmas, where the twain will never meet, without realizing they have already killed politics.

 

The importance of posting on more controversial topics [with a conversational tone of course] is it serves as a diversion from the other more sordid aspects of our existence. A 'sanitization' of our conversation would only lead to impoverishment, and then a continual recourse to our bestial instincts as we fail to find sustenance in the enriching intelligible world of ideas.

 

Sure. I think we are seeing one of the practical consequences of internet technology with an increasing 'ghettoization' of the mind [forget globalization]. It's simply the nature of the beast that people can gravitate to a particular site that suits their own tastes, and which also serves to reinforce them [sounds like something else we are only too familiar with right?]. And then a site can further sub-divide into various groups should 'values' be 'unaligned'. Forget Newspeak, think Group Think.

If civility presupposes the idea of universality, then cyberspace must increasingly become a barbarous space... for there is a principle at work that effectively undermines universality.

 

Yes, confirmation bias.

With democracy to work, there needs to be not only an idea of public opinion, but also the idea of a shared media in which that public opinion could be formed... within the parameters of rational and tolerant debate. This was why professionalism was so important to journalism - the journalist was meant to present the facts whilst allowing the readership to form their own opinions.

It was a long process, but I think you could say that the idea of a shared media has finally been polished off once and for all with the internet. In theory, it has all the potential for the dissemination of 'information', but in practicality it undermines all unity and shared political culture.

 

It's a good point. I think that the more faith-minded people have an extra component to seeing the modern scourge as... undesirable - besides being unhealthy and addictive, they also see it as morally wrong and spiritually destructive. For the more rational/ scientific minded, no doubt they find themselves here as the vice starts to seriously damage their life. I'd like to think that in calling it a vice, there is a middle ground whereby both the secular and religious minded could agree.