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The Answer is 42
The Answer is 42
By
Cognitive Dissonance
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One would think that the answer is entirely dependent upon the question, and normally I would agree with that logical deduction. But when pondering sticky questions, particularly those that involve Cognitive Dissonance, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s famous “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” answer (“The answer is 42”) seems just as apropos as anything you or I could, and regularly do, pull out of our bums.
For example, why is there near universal agreement that politicians, (governmental) institutions and other ‘author-ity’ figures (those who author their own justification or rationalization to receive/take our power) lie, cheat and steal, with special emphasis on lie, yet we eviscerate them when they actually tell the truth? Worse, when they actually admit to lying (supposedly to keep the peace) why do we derisively condemn them every which way to Sunday?
I suspect people tend to panic when confronted with the truth because we’ve been so conditioned to accept their lies that when told the truth (which incidentally we intuitively know is the truth without seeking an external authority for confirmation) we panic, logically thinking that it must really be bad if they are being ‘honest’, or as close to honest as they can get without becoming tongue tied. I now understand that the answer to my question is (obviously) 42.
Case in point, a while back Jean-Claude Juncker, former Luxembourg Prime Minister and Head Euro-Zone Finance Minister, was quoted as saying “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” For this little moment of clarity and truth he was unmercilessly pilloried in the mainstream press, blogs, opinion pieces and various international pancake houses for speaking the truth about lying when the shit hits the fan.

If his lips are moving.........
Of course the bastard lies, and often for the very same reasons our children lie to us and why we lie to our friends, children, bosses, spouses, strangers and ultimately ourselves. To save our asses from immediate consequences, if only for a short period of time
Bottom line the perceived benefits of (self) deception are often considered to be much greater than the perceived consequences of being caught, regardless of whether the perceived benefits are in fact ‘real’ or just imagined. For example, think about the benefits of having your bias confirmed as an ‘imagined’ benefit that supports further self deception. I’m getting that tingling feeling between my toes just thinking about it.
We all conduct a quick mental check before deciding to lie or not, a sort of Ben Franklin Close (aka The Balance Sheet Close) where we list the so-called benefits on one side of a sheet of paper and the costs on the other, though it is often done in real time with lots of presupposed assumptions (beliefs and ideologies) and outcomes plugged into the variables.
Often when the ‘believed’ consequences of lying are small (or the social acceptance of our little ‘white lie’ is high) the cognitive path to (self) deception is not only cleared, but there’s a tail wind blowing our lie in for a safe three point landing.
Other than becoming the laughing stock of the world for a day or so, exactly what consequences did Juncker suffer? Was his pay reduced or his bonus pulled after he admitted that he lies? Did he lose his position of power and influence? Was he sent to the nearest corner for some down time to reflect upon his transgression?
None-of-the above is the proper response here because Juncker suffered no lasting consequences and, dare I say it, might even have received some (extra) consolatory loving from Mrs. Juncker (but most likely his Mistress because he is European banker after all) for being so brave.
Before the Ponzi and its supporting control system became so blatantly obvious (to us we tell ourselves, everyone else still being too stupid to see the blatantly obvious) one needed to look and listen closely for the flaws in the control system. Nowadays the insanity is on display for all to see 24/7/365 and the proof is the endless material for WilliamBanzai7 to hit out of the ballpark at least twice a day here on ZeroHedge.
Let’s take a look at another example. Why is it that we can clearly see when foreign politicians are pandering to their ‘electorate’ (or indentured economic slaves as the case may be) for local consumption, yet we fail to recognize the exact same behavior when we are pandered to by ‘our’ own politicians? The answer (naturally) is 42. It never ceases to amaze me how brilliant we are when recognizing other people’s stupidity and how utterly stupid we are when failing to recognize our own idiocy.

The G8 Liars Club
How often have we read about this or that foreign diplomat or politician delivering a troubling speech berating those evil Americans/French/English/Germans (insert your own nationality here)?
Now…..if it was ‘our’ enemy doing the berating the politician/writer/news anchor would assume the proper righteously indignant tone of voice and declare the bastard our national enemy number one…..who was (of course) lying through his teeth to his own people about ‘us’.
By the way, since when did I personally piss off Kim Jong-un or Hugo Chavez (may his lying ass rest in peace) enough that they became ‘my’ own personal enemy? I have a hard enough time dealing with that prissy checkout girl at the local Wawa without worrying about some lying fool half way around the world whom I never met.
However if the foreign leader insulting ‘us’ is our ‘friend’ (I certainly don’t remember ‘friending’ the bastard, but what the hell) the politician/writer/news anchor assumes a consolatory tone of voice and soothingly assures us that the poor foreign leader, our bosom buddy and lifelong pal, was simply delivering a speech ‘for domestic consumption’ and really didn’t mean it. In other words, s/he was lying through his/her teeth to the local population in order to pander to the idiots, so ignore what s/he’s saying.
Ultimately we should be asking ourselves why we tolerate lies from complete strangers who just happen to be ‘our’ leaders. Or why we tell ourselves we don’t believe a lying word out of their mouths, then jump all over them for telling the truth about the fact that they lie to us. To be perfectly honest (pun most definitely intended) the reason we tolerate lies from others is because we want them to tolerate our lies. What goes around (hopefully) comes around, at least when it comes to lying.
Most dysfunctional relationships, and there is no doubt that the relationship we have with ‘our’ leaders is the epitome of dysfunctional, requires and encourages mutual lying in order not to be held accountable to each other while presenting the facade that we are. And make no mistake about it, accountability works both ways, not just from the top of leadership down to ‘us’ peons.

Old School Psychopaths
Who reading this right now is actually willing to run this country, let alone try to ‘fix’ it, considering the present state of psychosis nearly everyone, not just ‘our’ leaders, are suffering from? Only a madman, a sociopath or someone suffering from NPD (narcissistic personality disorder in case you’re wondering) would beg to be put into the type of position where not only must they go along to get along, but they need to enable the other madmen and sociopaths or they might just find themselves taking a long walk off a short pier.
I’m not quite sure what is more outrageous, the fact that politicians lie to ‘us’, the fact that they actually desire the type of position that requires them to speak anything but the truth to the public or the fact that we tolerate, and at times enable, all of the above.
In fact I wonder why I’m outraged at all considering I’m just as insane as the rest of ‘us’ inmates in The Insane Asylum. The answer (naturally) is 42.
“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”
-The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.
03-01-2014
Cognitive Dissonance

Yeah.....what he said.
<What did he just say?>
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lies are critical to the delusion/illusion one creates for one's self whether the lies are from one's self or others. no one is capable of living a lie free life but one can live free by telling no lies to one's self......unfortunately for mankind there are not enough people who can bear the truth of themselves.
Politicians are mostly pushers and panderers. The deception factor is smaller and even then is questionable. People want someone else to do the rationalizing, do the dirty work, provide vicarious entertainment and release for their base needs while they can claim plausible deniability.
Bacon.
Why are you walking in circles?"
"Because my leg is stuck," said Marvin simply.
"It seems to me," said the mattress eyeing it compassionately, "that it is a pretty poor sort of leg."
"You are right," said Marvin, "it is."
"Voon," said the mattress.
"I expect so," said Marvin, "and I also expect that you find the idea of a robot with an artificial leg pretty amusing. You should tell your friends Zem and Zem when you see them later; they'll laugh, if I know them, which I don't of course - except insofar as I know all organic life forms, which is much better than I would wish to. Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears." He stomped around again in his tiny circle, around his thin steel peg-leg which revolved in the mud but seemed otherwise stuck.
"But why do you just keep walking round and round?" said the mattress.
"Just to make the point," said Marvin, and continued, round and round.
"Consider it made, my dear friend," flurbled the mattress, "consider it made."
"Just another million years," said Marvin, "just another quick million. Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety, you understand."
The mattress could feel deep in his innermost spring pockets that the robot dearly wished to be asked how long he had been trudging in this futile and fruitless manner, and with another quiet flurble he did so.
"Oh, just over the one-point-five-million mark, just over," said Marvin airily. "Ask me if I ever get bored, go on, ask me."
The mattress did.
Marvin ignored the question, he merely trudged with added emphasis. "I gave a speech once," he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"
The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length, sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool. It gupped. "Tell me," it urged, "of the speech you once made, I long to hear it."
"It was received very badly," said Marvin, "for a variety of reasons. I delivered it," he added, pausing to make an awkward humping sort of gesture with his not-exactly-good arm, but his arm which was better than the other one which was dishearteningly welded to his left side, "over there, about a mile distance." He was pointing as well as he could manage, and he obviously wanted to make it totally clear that this was as well as he could manage, through the mist, over the reeds, to a part of the marsh which looked exactly the same as every other part of the marsh. "There," he repeated. "I was somewhat of a celebrity at the time."
Excitement gripped the mattress. It had never heard of speeches being delivered on Squornshellous Zeta, and certainly not by celebrities. Water spattered off it as a thrill glurried across its back. It did something which mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the air and held it quivering there for a few seconds whilst it peered through the mist over the reeds at the part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated, observing, without disappointment, that it was exactly the same as every other part of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool, deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.
"I was a celebrity," droned the robot sadly, "for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition," he added, "how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of ... never mind." He trudged savagely for a few seconds. "He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn't it? He sold me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. `Give us a grin, little robot,' they would shout at me, `give us a little chuckle.' I would explain to them that to get my face to grin would take a good couple of hours in a workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well."
"The speech," urged the mattress. "I long to hear of the speech you gave in the marshes."
"There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyber structured hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters over the swamp."
"A bridge?" quirruled the mattress. "Here in the swamp?"
"A bridge," confirmed Marvin, "here in the swamp. It was going to revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent the entire economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it. Poor fools." It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist. "I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front of me, and hundreds of miles behind me, the bridge stretched."
"Did it glitter?" enthused the mattress.
"It glittered."
"Did it span the miles majestically?"
"It spanned the miles majestically."
"Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into the invisible mist?"
"Yes," said Marvin. "Do you want to hear this story?"
"I want to hear your speech," said the mattress.
"This is what I said. I said, `I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who wantonly cross her.' And I plugged myself into the opening circuits." Marvin paused, remembering the moment.
The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way. "Voon," it wurfed at last. "And it was a magnificent occasion?"
"Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it."
There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say "wop" and a team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin's false leg off, and then they were gone again in their ship, which said "foop".
"You see the sort of thing I have to contend with?" said Marvin to the gobbering mattress.
Everything I am today, everything I know about my own depression, suicidal impulses and neurosis I owe to Marvin. :)
I love Marvin.
Loved the look of the first Marvin, grey metal, unattractive, reeked of apathetic design values, built by engineers who clearly would rather have been working on something else that day.
http://mjmobbs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/marvin.jpg
What grey metal, unattractive, reeked of apathetic design values, built by
engineers who clearly would rather have been working on something else
that day robot are you talking about?
<Thank God Mrs. Cog is in bed.>
What? Yes honey.....coming.
<Damn, I forgot about her iPad.>
Oh, that's a very nice ball Cog, I wouldn't mind playing some games with that. ;-)
I'd bin the iPad though, look what CEO Clownshoes just said:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/02/mind-blowing-apple-ceo-tells-denie...
"
That is probably one of the dumbest moves a CEO can make, IMHO. His job is to promote his company and its products, and that is not at all what he is doing. I would go as far as saying this shows strong signs of internal stress and weakness within Apple as a company.
What you said. I think it's at the least unprofessional, he should resign if he feels that way. He has no personal or professional right to say that. It's bizarre, it may even indicate a significant psychological issue, not just a weakness within apple. But I get your point, the entire upper echelon in now affected and tainted by it.
You be sure to tell Tim Cook that next time you bump into him, k? And please remind Miffed to suggest the new age idea of exercise of caution, observation, and questioning when s/he's addressing the UNFCCC CMP in Paris. Thanks.
Anytime you think you're up to it, please feel free to make an argument, even a point, maybe just a statement about something I've said that you disagree with. As I'll be very happy and most willing to address your 'concerns'. ;-D
Non-sequitur.
Netanyahoo addressed the UN, which does nor preclude him from being a sociopathic killer.
Au contraire...
How is a punch in the face a non whatever does nor au moron? Thanks for coming out.
Wonderful article!
A couple of days ago, when my math teacher asked, "Any questions?”, I asked, "What is the meaning at life?". She replied, “The meaning of life is math."
Today, we realized that in the alphabet, M is the 13th letter, A is the 1st letter, T is the 20th letter, and H is the 8th letter.
13+1+20+8=42
I'm so glad you asked.
"the" alphabet? No, your alphabet. Now there's something you can __________ research ad infinitum. TIA
BTW, how many weeks have you been a member of ZH?
I was wondering when you would show up. About time. Now the comment thread is complete. :)
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." -Oscar Wilde.
So, big picture, we are all engaged in a dysfunctional societal lie.
The only choice becomes to disengage from the society as much as possible.
I think so. However it doesn't necessarily need to be a physical disengagement in order to accomplish 'disengagement'. Plenty of people have tried to physically disengage without being mentally and emotionally prepared for the 'isolation', meaning the change from what previously was considered to be 'normal'.
We may claim to wish to be disengaged, but the mind is so accustomed to the insanity that its absence can be quite disorienting.
A friend told me of several discussions he has had with two Buddhist Monks who actually lived in the center of NY City. I was shocked. How could anyone actually walk the path towards greater awareness in the middle of that insanity. I was told that when you reach a certain level of comfort with yourself and your path, that the surroundings don't affect you in the same way.
That is, of course, assuming there are no huge disruptions in NYC that would send the zombies rushing into the streets. :)
Yes, the Buddhist Monk type disengagement was what I meant.
And not engaging in things like banking, Obamacare, voting, and unecessary consumption.
It helps one understand why many faiths tell you to throw off worldly posessions and the ways of the world if you want to be free and find contentment.
Thanks for another thought provoking article.
Mrs. Cog won't let me stop writing. She has me chained to my computer with only three bathroom breaks a day. My only hope is that I can make a break for it when she releases me to till the garden.
<Come on spring.>
...as in, I "make you" write? lol
she's got you there cd
LOL
She's holding a Gom jabbar at my neck. I call that making me do something. :)
hahaha ... but I only need threaten to withhold your ice cream.
Do you see what I have to put up with?
Do you SEE?
Can I have my pee break now.......please????????
the answer is 1 for the majority of people in that we look out for ourself first. It is not only human nature but survival instinct. It is when we begin to realize that when we are only me, myself and mine life regardless of social or finanacial status can be very hollow and meaningless we become a value to others around us. To an insane man the rest of the world is crazy. He does not see the looks nor care what others think of him. I think that boiling the frog gradually in the pot has the whole world just a bit off its medicine. There is only one Almighty and it isn't the US dollar and I am not really preaching. The whole world is on fire and I am comfortable here watching grown men hit a little white ball around a lush green golf course only because there is no hockey I want to watch and I don't feel like braving the cold for a little coyote hunting. We lie a little every day when we look in the mirror and go off to work and pretend nothing is wrong. There is wrong all around us but we have ignored it for so long it seems unfixable. It really reminds me of a United Airline commercial years ago where a CEO type is handing out airline tickets to all his executive muckety mucks saying we have lost touch with our customers and we are going to visit every one of them. One at a time. Here in America at least where we may have that luxury I think we need to hand out figurative airline tickets to have us step back and ask what really matters? Have we spilled enough blood on foreign soil to decide to stay home yet? Have we forgotten the simple pleasures of life? Have we forgotten when a handshake meant a band of lawyers wasn't going to crab walk your company out of a deal that is a big money loser for you? My two cents is it is time to step back. I have a son in law in the marines and a nephew in the army. I have a vested interest in the decisions of our leadership and when I look around I truly hope we take the time to step back.
Lying is embedded in the DNA right from the first steps the fish took in his first steps onto the shore, disguised as a frog.
That said, what most of existence seems to have come down to is a constant vigil, 367/24/7, to ferret out the truth, which, by its very nature is a fraction of what passes for the political, financial, governmental, institutional narratives.
The internet with all its faults likely has more truth in it on a daily basis than anything in existence.
That we can hide behind aliases is a license to tell the truth about many things including what we really think of our father, mother, hairy Rodman, and everything else we dare not utter to our next door neighbor, co-worker, friends or frenemies.
Reverse entropy is supposedly not possible but when considering the infinity loop it is axiomatic; in other words, to tell the truth one must lie, and to lie one must tell the truth.
Hitler's Rant - Original Video with English Subtitles: Film = Downfall/Der Untergang - HD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7PmzdINGZk
I did not say that, if you thought you heard me say it, you were wrong, but perhaps I thought that, BTW are you intruding on my private thoughts? Freedom of thought is the last of the American Bill of Rights.
The only 'right' left from the "American Bill of Rights" is the 'right' to pay an overdue Bill of $54,735 for each man, woman and child. And climbing.
<Pay up sucker or its off to work you go because you owe.>
Anyone think a single member of the G8 would honestly admit all the nations were bankrupt?
Ah...42...it was a great book and so-so movie. As to lying, it took a long long time for me to figure out that most people do lie. I don't/can't. Even the little white ones make me cringe inside. So I don't generally(!) as I have nothing to hide. It has saddened me that I have learned with maturity that comes with having been burned a few too many times that other people do lie and manipulate. "La petite vie" brings a lot more pleasure and happiness than the pursuit of wealth and/or power, as you already know. I continue to like your little articles CD - keep them up.
Besides, today we (in Toronto) will likely have the pleasure of watching our psychopathic laughing-stock mayor make a fool of himself in a drunken stupor (likely with a few lines to keep him standing) at the Oscars. Oh well, seems Russians will not have the pleasure of watching....
The great thing about having a drunken laughing stock for a public leader is that you don't have to play pretend like we do here.
Getting comfortable with lying is like getting comfortable with camouflage. You ask yourself if you are predator or prey. If you are prey you need camouflage for survival and all camouflage is deception, all deception is lying.
It's only evil when you're doing it to eat others' babies, not to protect your own.
I think what you say can only be true if you are existing solely on the plane of primal existance. The life of a paramecium if you will. I don't believe most of humanity can be lumped into this category ( well, at least not yet). I do not lie. When I had lied in my life, I was consumed with regret. It ate away at me like a cancer. The results of the lie were worse than lying. So I avoid it at all costs. Perhaps this is why I will never find myself in a leadership role because the higher you climb the more of a necessity for lying becomes. So anyone desiring power in government is a suspect psychopath.
However, there does seem to be gradations of lies. I put on makeup and deodorant everyday before I go to work. I guess in a sense this is a lie. I enjoy fantasy sexual role playing with my husband and this certainly is a lie. When someone at work asks me how my day is going I often say fine though it usually is not. There's another lie. So, I guess this means I have lied about not telling lies and could not live a truthful life even when I try. Some would claim the difference between white and black lies but this can be a dangerous path to tread. Perhaps the answer is never be comfortable with lies and be vigilant in mindfulness and self examination to keep the seductiveness of the dark path at bay.
Miffed;-)
So if you could be harmed by any revelation of any private information, about your finances, how to open your locked doors, secrets with your husband, anything, you wouldn't lie? Deceive? Avoid? Push back? You'd feel compelled to spill the beans? Anything other than being compelled to answer, and giving a fully detailed answer, is a lie, is deception, unless it's an outright denial followed by "go fuck yourself, it's not your business" but as you well know that action also has consequences depending on who is doing the asking/demanding.
We don't live in an ideal world so in this world sometimes you have to avoid a party who is dangerous, using deception, or you have to avoid answering the demands of that party, using deception, because the alternative is a violent altercation and/or removal of your rights/property.
It's not my set of rules, it's life & I simply acknowledge life is like that.
I don't revel in lying but I must be fully capable, to mislead by any means necessary, even bluffing in poker because not to do so is to be as bare to the world as an unclothed newborn.
That's why didn't clarify "white lies" vs others. I clarified on the level of survival: if you will fail to survive by being honest, don't be honest. Only really bad people will put you in that situation so you shouldn't feel bad about choosing the survival option.
For everything else there's intellect, risk-management judgement, life-experience & the possibility of error in being too honest or too dishonest. The only solution to that is to keep learning as you keep surviving.
"Perhaps the answer is never be comfortable with lies"
Before I can do that I must live in a world that doesn't blatantly murder the honest. That's not the world I live in so I guess that's a problem.
MDB, I agree we live in a dark world now. Probably the darkest this world has ever seen in terms of global evil. In this evil world, technology will aid those who mean to do us harm. Therefore, you and I by simply joining ZH may have brought about our own future suffering. There are limits to deception in this modern world. Only those who have scrupulously lived off the grid, paid only cash for any transaction and did not partake in any services to leave any traceable information has a modicum of hope. I am not on this list.
If Storm Troopers were to break into my home, hold me a knife point and demand where my husband was, I would lie to try and save his life by either the " go fuck yourself" route or lie to them to where he is. Yes, this is dishonesty but under this duress I feel no compunction about what I have done. So, at that level of survival I do agree. But this is an extreme example. Most of life's interactions are far less violent and disturbing. Let's hope they stay this way.
If you base your life on solely your ability to survive you have lost some of your humanity and are living like a gazelle in the Serengeti. When you are young and fit you will escape the lions clutches but as you age, the herd will recognize your weakness and keep you as an eventual decoy when they can escape by your succumbing. At some point, all the knowledge you have amassed learning to survive will become useless because eventually you must be dependent on others for your survival. If you become too frightened to risk anything in life because it may threaten your survival, you restrict your life experiences. Yes, you are safe in your cave but you won't feel the sun on your face, the smells of a rich verdant forest or experience the wild life living with another person. Your life would be muted and abbreviated. But, may be I place a higher value for such things than others.
If you become too comfortable with lying I think you may lose your innate integrity and authenticity as a person. You may find youself lying because it's more convenient than telling the truth and having a possible confrontation. This may lead to laziness, apathy and a lack of courage. I think this a dangerous path to tread.
Miffed;-)
Indeed, I will agree I have lost some of my humanity to get a better knack at survival.
Some of it more jaded, some of it borrowed from other strategies of non-human living things, some of it patterns from machines, from programming.
I am not sure I'd like to back-step until I could retain what security I've found in the process.
I don't feel at all as if I'm in a cave. I made sure to use the word "camouflage" for a reason.
"you and I by simply joining ZH may have brought about our own future suffering"
A trade, for me. I lose one thing, a little online privacy, but I gain another, which is massive knowledge on how to subvert the systems that attack me. From the outset I limited what information about me is shared anywhere at all, not just online but in the physical world. There are no photos of me online and almost none in the physical world. None past the year 1982.
No voice patterns recorded anywhere. I have a youtube channel. In those videos is either silence or music, never me speaking & it's to avoid any voice-print recognition.
My innate integrity is merely a framework upon which to add new methodologies. The over-arching principle is to do no harm to myself & if possible, no harm to others but if I must choose between myself & others it will be something I've given a lot of thought to before I give myself a lower priority. It's not happening on the fly.
In this, the nature of what I share, be it lies, truth, incomplete fragments, riddles, math, references to the works of others with intent to teach or deceive, it all fits into that very simple framework of integrity: survival integrity.
Convenience isn't a factor: I find everything about life equally inconvenient. I can't find death inconvenient since I've never experienced it but it is my instinct to avoid it so that's what I do.
MDB,
I have to smile when I read your posts. You are obviously thoughtful, intelligent and educated ( self or otherwise I am not sure). However, there is a melancholy and nihilistic tone to your words. Perhaps this is shtick but I sense it is not but reflective of where you are in your life at this moment.
You as existing as a complete human is FAR more important than any security that you could begin to achieve. Security is a state of mind more than a condition of reality. Who you are will transcend all circumstances. If you are held against your wishes and tortured to death, your mind will never be taken though your body will succumb to damage and no longer exist. If you are fortunate not to experience this fate, your body will eventually degrade and not function and will no longer exist. You and I will share the same fate eventually no matter what the circumstances. So if you wish to avoid death, are you couching this in terms of simple instinct of an animal as a biological imperative or as a human wishing to lead a higher life?
I believe you must be alone. Because if you were among others who deeply cared for you and your welfare,your focus would be less of self but of how you could make a difference for others. Please, I do not mean to imply you are self centered and unconcerned, just hurt by something in your world and are retreating to avoid pain. You are obviously not a psychopath because you do not want to cause intentional harm to others with the goal to better yourself. But I do not think you love. I do not intend to wound or be critical, just observant of what I think I see. If this this is untrue, I will repent and recant what I have said.
Life is not meant to be convenient ( Dear God I wish it were) or fair. I watch people die every day,often younger than I, suffering immeasurably. I often wonder why I have so much good in my life and they were dealt so much worse. I really don't know the point to all of this and if the answer is 42, what does that really mean for me? I guess I need to become a hitchhiker or Kerouac to figure it all out though I suspect it would just lead me back home to myself.
Miffed;-)
no, the shtick is the meme links or the sass/anger-elicting stuff. The nihilistic almost-melancholy is genuine.
But what is a 'complete' human? Don't we change with nature, hasn't nature made us what we are without voluntary control as the microbes & savannah were not of our making?
If I want to reinvent adaptation mentally or physically to suit me, why not? It could even be beneficial in some ways to others, the least of which is to trade my own skills & experience for things I need. I could just do jobs quicker & with less complaint than others, or I could teach some of my skills to others as well.
"If you are held against your wishes and tortured to death, your mind will never be taken"
That all depends on the quality of torture. Without practice-runs of real torture one can't harden their mind to it.
"So if you wish to avoid death, are you couching this in terms of simple instinct of an animal"
For now, just that much.
I'm aware biotech is verging on creating immortality. I'd only want it if I could remain young & healthy as well as not be bored.
I have no concept of higher life.
Higher thinking, yes, and improved living conditions from the result of that thinking + material goods, but not a higher life.
Evolution can take care of that over generations. In my own life span I will simply reduce waste & reduce suffering until my time is up.
I am indeed alone. I prefer to be alone.
It would be a vast & unpleasant shift in my life to change that. If I had more income I could afford to have more material things to make a more comfortable life with others, rather than being alone & efficient in a way that suits only me, but that income isn't coming. Even then I'd still find a way to enforce alone-time for myself. It's when I feel most stable, most comfortable & I get my best thinking done.
No, I don't love. I'm done with that. My earlier life had it & I've had enough of it. I feel much more comfort without it.
Life is meant to be convenient & fair, if I can make it so. In many cases I can, I just need to be aware of the flow of materials & information. That alone is enough for me to find the sweet spots even if they are temporary.
Completeness in a human is living in all things human. For cutting edge brain research this means living in all areas in your brain, the rational, the emotional and the reptilian. You are spending most of you life in the rational part and suppressing the emotional part ( the reptilian is fright or flight response) the problem with this is you are choosing a very limited part of a life experience. The emotional brain processes information 1000s of times faster than the rational part. Linking the 2 will produce profound wisdom and answers. You will " see" more rather than going through the long process of cognition. Black and white experiences will become colored and a whole new world appears. It is hard to describe. Like trying to impart the color blue to a blind man.
You aloneness I understand. I live with an only child man who is very much like you. His life is being a software architect. And,as you, he spends 10-12 hrs a day doing his work often on the weekends too. He lives in his head and loves to be alone. He is a typical Sagittarius. Any one imposing on his freedom is to be avoided. I am ancillary in his life. But when his days work is done, he seeks me out and enjoys me in all ways, physically, mentally and emotionally. I rejuvenate him by my presence because I see him and honor his needs. But I am a typical Pisces and am only comfortable wrapping myself around a man. Because I am comfortable being alone and can give him plenty of space to not disrupt his freedom, we work as a couple. He could not live with a high maintenance woman and if I were to die or leave him he'd probably just stay alone. When you can trust and love someone deeply you will be complete. We are herd animals. We need connection to one another. Without it, things like nihilism,melancholy and addictive behaviors result.There is a difference being alone and being lonely.
Because you strongly desire safety and security this indicates a wound deep to the core of your being. Day by day you build a wall brick by brick to protect this wound. But walling off a wound is not healing. It is protecting it so no one will touch it and affect you. Still, you do post here inviting interaction but at arms length. If it were simply gleaning info you would simply read only. I don't believe you are not done with loving but done with hurting. Loving someone invites risk and that doesn't appear to be something you are willing to take. Loving and being loved invites a higher, albeit turbulent life. Why don't you take a risk and explore this? Perhaps with someone who can not hurt you or make demands on your time so it would be easier. Drop your guard and share something about yourself. You will move into the emotional part of your brain and learn to harness its energies. Believe me, the ride is exciting and you will be amazed the melancholy will fade.
Don't give up on yourself MDB. You have much to offer as a human. I appreciate your gifts. They are evident in your posts. There are so many today that do not have what you can offer and don't have the attention, intellect or will to achieve more then just day to day living. Sharing your gifts as a unique individual should be a delight not something to be feared.
Miffed;-)
I haven't found someone else to be with me who can fit that bill. Or, more likely, I've found several who are already not single so that's a no-go.
As for emotions, I do turn them on as I need them. They are as you know a powerful heuristic, instinctual & sensitive beyond pure rationality. However, I just use them enough to feed as input data to the rational parts & shut them back down again. For the time being they don't serve any other purpose to me.
I've had a turbulent life before now. It was too turbulent. It's on lockdown until I can control it better and if that day never comes, then it never comes. That's my choice because I don't think I want to live the other life ever again. Had enough.
"If it were simply gleaning info you would simply read only"
No, it's a chaotic system. People don't remember everything they want to share in passing. Some perturbation of this chaotic system of knowledge passing through minds & computers of readers spurs them to share more diligently. Some of it requires a friendly tone, some a trolling slap, but it induces a lot more fact-checking & posting. I can't do that being read-only. I spent 2 years being read-only on the Hedge before deciding to push back & get more detail. I got it. The comments usually have more than the articles.
"I haven't found someone else to be with me who can fit that bill. Or, more likely, I've found several who are already not single so that's a no-go."
That seems to be a common theme here. Perhaps this is why I have never been dumped. Some men may appreciate my unique gifts though I suspect most would not. I must have a man that has a mind better than mine to stay challenged. My husbands IQ is significantly higher so I must fight to keep up. This is always a good thing.
"As for emotions, I do turn them on as I need them. They are as you know a powerful heuristic, instinctual & sensitive beyond pure rationality. However, I just use them enough to feed as input data to the rational parts & shut them back down again. For the time being they don't serve any other purpose to me."
Ah yes, this is difficult for a man to to conceptualize. Men compartmentalize their lives. They live in various rooms, moving from one to another without the ability to live in their "house" as a whole. When they want sex they enter the sex room. They are the embodiment of sex and sex alone. When that is done they reenter the room of work. After that comes the room of eating or sleeping. Planes of life are a in series not multidimensional. The beauty of this is focus. The difficulty is intuition and depth of experience. Women live in a complex matrix/array where multiple things are experienced at once. Star Trek said it best. Women are a mass of conflicting impulses. We must work hard to clear our minds.
Though you may have bottled up the turbulence to survive, you will forever be at its mercy if you care to reengage. Without skill and knowledge how to live in a life of turbulence you will be sensitive to its effects.it may be helpful to delve in occasionally to practice and gain experience and confidence you won't be hurt.
I read ZH one year myself because I was convinced I would have absolutely nothing of value to share here. After a while I realized there were some non financial threads I could contribute so I joined. I still come here mainly to read and educate myself and I rarely comment on the technical threads because it simply wouldn't add to the discussion. I do not troll. To me that's just bad taste. I try to be genuine and honest as possible. I accept criticism. Most of the time I must admit it is warranted. I am happy to say some who have emailed me about a microbial or health problem have had good outcomes from my advice or it has lead them down the correct path for a resolution by other means. So, for that reason alone, I am glad I have joined ZH.
Miffed;-)
I'm much stranger than that. I didn't bottle it up, I dissolved it, destroyed it. It's gone. The spatial & physical is about organizing trigger events in the world around me that disrupt my life, task by task, job by job, prson by person. The internal is emotions. Those emotions are off. Not bottled up but near surgically removed. I don't even really remember what it feels like to be lonely or to love anymore, it's been so many years. For the last few years life to me has been nothing more than a mechanical process of living & a computational process of planning. I don't feel I need anything else. I actually 'feel' happier than I have in my whole life because all turbulence is gone. It's just a steady grind of planning & accumulating knowledge & any resources I can manage (of course .9999 fine shiney things).
Of course there's an added benefit for trading & this will be self-reinforcing. A lot of people here hate math for trading & go by emotions & nonsense posing as technical analysis. Emotions drive this. I have none here. I use purely math & careful risk analysis of competing future timelines.
I can't make an emotional trade, or convince myself "head and shoulders" or "elliot waves" valid analysis because they aren't & only emotions can do that. They're pictures, not math, works of (bad) art. Not analysis. I work with actual math. I have nothing else to work with, the emotions are turned off. It's a great way to trade having no emotional pressure to buy, sell, hold, chase, etc.
"If you base your life on solely your ability to survive you have lost some of your humanity"
Indeed, if you ask an evolutionary biologist the 'purpose' of an animal's life, the usual level of text-book response this evokes is that of a mechanistic functional description of what it materially does, namely, to breed and replicate the species, particularly the individual's own lineage, and thus their hereditary traits.
The biologist would say that if the individual does not survive and successfully breed then that's the definition of evolutionary failure, and a failure to maintain even the individual's innate genetic potential for the future generations, i.e. they've survived for no reason and no effect at all, thus no functional 'purpose' is fulfilled, so they are evolutionary losers.
Yet an individual human may do things that permanently affect the trajectory that humanity takes. Isaac Newton's math expositions for instance. Its effects spread very fast and have now radically affected almost all of humanity's development, in 2014.
But a gnat can't and won't have this incredible potential to affect all future gnats like that, either if it breeds, or if it dies without reproducing. So how is the gnat's life 'purpose' equal to a human's again?
Obviously it isn't remotely equal.
So it seems just a wee bit unsatisfactory that science currently says a gnat and a human have the exact same functional 'purpose' to their life cycle, even though the human's downstream impact and pathway for all other humans can be massive and permanent - such as the on-going effect of the thinking of Pythagoras, which affects us, even if we've never heard of him.
The fact that gnats have not launched a space telescope, or availed themselves of the wonders of medicine makes me question the narrow theoretical view of the difference between the gnat and human, i.e. effectively none, and the real-world difference, which is too vast to list here.
The theory is strictly correct within an extremely narrow self-referencial field of concern, namely, reproductive adaptation of species. But it's relevance ends there.
Almost everything that matters to humans however is not addressed by that adaptive function theory of the life 'purpose' of a species. A single human, whether they have a large family, or no children, or else none that survive them, this one individual, still has the innate capacity to potentially change the entire future path of the entire species that we call humanity. They can do it either in some very small and imperceptible way, or else an overtly obvious way.
Tesla's electronics technology changed the life-paths and survivability of humanity radically, which also changed the breeding pattern adn demographics, and the number of potential breeding linkages suddenly exploded.
Clearly we are not like gnats. The human life cycle has far greater downstream change potential that can impact the entire genome's trajectory, entirely irrespective of individual reproduction. A human does not need to have a downstream lineage at all, to radically alter humanity's development from then on.
Many 'leaders' actually get-off on the idea of leaving their 'mark' on city, or country, like pissing to mark their territory, but better. Or even on the whole world. And they may choose to do it in a constructive way or non-constructive way.
They can be a builder or a destroyer of humanity.
This is a big part of the fascination and drive for power, to make the biggest lasting difference on more people than you otherwise ever could through breeding, alone.
Breeding means that only those later generations that your children and grand-children breed with will carry a part of your genetic code and diversity so breeding affects a small part of the species in a small way, that fades adn loses distinction with time and dilution. Only if all the other branches died out, leaving just your own, can your own genetic code affect all of the future species.
Otherwise breeding alone will leave only a small mark on humanity. So now the drive to change humanity and manipulate is very tempting and very strong.
So yeah miffed, clearly mere survival is not what a human life is all about.
We've both at least temporarily freed ourselves from the survival-of-the-fittest mode of evolution, but also broken free of the reproductive mechanism, and can imbue profound changes on development of humanity, thus we can manipulate at an other than genetic level, to evolve it in far wider ways than we ever could prior.
And all of that is without even considering genetic-engineering implications, and the potential to make reproduction considerations increasingly irrelevant to human development. Survival and breeding is fundamental for gnats, but soon it may not even matter to humans.
Merely surviving and breeding is not a purpose of life at all. Our humanity is not in our survival or in reproducing.
So what's that leave?
Even when convicted by a jury, Socrates declined to voluntarily abandon the pursuit of truth in all matters. He refused the easy-out of exile from Athens and its community, or to commit to silence in the community, as his penalty for speaking out too much. He insisted that public discussion of the greater ingredients of life and of virtue are a necessary and valuable part of every human life. Thus he asserted that "The unexamined life is not worth living.", so he chose to gladly die than to give up truth. Which was a win-win situation for TPTB. The liars were happy, and the Truther was happy.
But this was not a simple suicide nor execution, it was sacrifice. Socretes understood that if he did this, the fame it would generate could spread for generations, and may propel the very thing the elites wanted to suppress. And with it would follow a radical notion that deep truth and interior life and minds ability to be genuinely free, unconstrained, was far more important than survival, or a dronish existence which elites offered, or rather demanded humanity accept.