Re: Tranquility

From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 22:54:32 MDT

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    On Wednesday, July 9, 2003, at 07:49 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:

    > Randall, on Saturday 6:35 PM by his watch, apparently
    > anticipating my post in detail, wrote

    :) I waited a day this time, to set your mind at ease.

    >> On Saturday, July 5, 2003, at 08:50 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:
    >>
    >> Oh, but there *is* something very important at stake: who you
    >> are. If you force a person to repeat something over and over,
    >> most will eventually come to believe it. All you have to do
    >> is force someone to repeat, every day, that they deserved any
    >> punishment that you mete out, to turn them into someone who
    >> really believes that on some level.
    >
    > This is an important point, but I still cannot credit it.
    > I agree that very compliant especially young children
    > perhaps might get brainwashed in exactly the way you suggest.
    > (I also acknowledge your additional explanation below.)

    I don't know how effective it is for adults to do this, but
    since this is how children learn to be adults in the first
    place, I wouldn't credit an assertion that it can't work. :)

    > But anyone who has the presence of self to have resisted so
    > hard and so long, why had she not the ability to say and do
    > what they wanted, yet continue to lead a quite separate
    > inner life? I would have had no trouble after the age of
    > eleven or so.

    Some people can do this, and some people cannot, or refuse to.

    You appear to be asserting that Multiple Personality Disorder
    is preferable to less than two years of physical discomfort.

    > Why is it that they simply cannot act? I'm not a bad actor,
    > (even though many of my associates say that I am, for some
    > odd reason).
    >
    > Moreover, I do not believe that this girl subscribes to your
    > theory on an intellectual level. I wonder if she had managed
    > to learn at a tender age that if you scream long enough and
    > do whatever else it takes, you *can* win the contest of wills
    > with your parents. "Spare the rod, spoil the child", as
    > ancient wisdom has it.
    >
    > (Listen---I do apologize for the troll-like quality of that
    > last remark, but to soften it here on this list would be to
    > give in to pressure, to submit to domination, to surrender
    > my soul, to lose my identity.)

    It may be that she did learn that. Nevertheless, it isn't
    a good excuse to use force against her.

    >> I know, intellectually, that I'm capable, but there's something
    >> very deep in me that is only satisfied if I'm very far from the
    >> goal, and makes actually finishing any project harder than stopping
    >> just shy of success. I often "come to" saying "What the hell am I
    >> doing?" when I find myself playing a video game for hours on end
    >> when I would otherwise have finished a weeks-long project that day.
    >
    > Now this part, I intuit, doesn't really add up. I think
    > some other factors must be at play.

    Really? I'm interested to know what your opinions are on that.

    >> There's a difference between a minor inconvenience from someone who
    >> fancies themselves in authority, and the horror of having that person
    >> insist that you tell them that you believe that they are right, day
    >> after day, for years. Eventually, you'll really agree that they're
    >> right. You may think that you could resist that indefinitely, and
    >> you might be right, but children are, by nature, far more malleable
    >> than you are.
    >
    > Yes, some children at any rate. But those teenagers who are such
    > rebels?

    Are you saying that you think "being a rebel" is a genetic
    predisposition,
    such that their brains are actually different and not susceptible to the
    ordinary mind-altering behaviors that the rest of us are?

    -- 
    Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com>
    "Not only can money buy happiness,
      it isn't even particularly expensive any more."  -- Spike Jones
    


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