Philosophy

[dwndrgn]

Some would say, dwndrgn, that your head was predestined to hurt.

It sure seems that way. It likes to be in pain for some unknown reason. Could be fate, could be faulty logic circuits!

 

[mac1]

He he he he he, I get that too! (especially on a Sunday after a heavy Saturday night. )

 

[Michael]

I really enjoyed The Republic. There's no way he could know me, but it sure seemed like Plato described me accurately when Socrates mentions the man who indulges too much in a literary education and not enough in a physical education (I'm just very lazy and often a big grouch). Otherwise, I have to agree with your assessment on most philosophy, Brian (although I like to tweak a few of my own in fiction). I tried to read Hegel's Phenomenology and hardly understood a word. For shorter works, Neitzche's The Birth of Tragedy was interesting from a linguistic view. The rest of his stuff had me feeling a bit uneasy, but I like that one.

 

[Michael]

There is an inherant irony in the fact that to commit murder is something our society considers to be utterly dispicable, yet under the correct laborotary conditions it has been proved to be in our nature to adhere to a social hiarchy, no matter how questionable it may be, and carry out its abominable machinations regardless of an individuals moral code. This I see as a loss of free will. It is almost effortless brainwashing, deliberate yet remarkably simple, and it really puts into question debates about fate, free will, obedience, and the ability of a ones role, be it social or domestic, to govern not only ones life, but ones entire ethos and thought process.

For a while now I have wondered about free will myself. Maybe it is a loss of free will, as you say. Personally, I just don't know. I actually have strong spiritual beliefs, but I don't take everything for granted (I'm definitely not a fundamentalist). I've asked myself, several times, "If God gave us free will so that we could choose for ourselves to be good or evil, why is it that we so often tend toward evil?" "Free will" seems very unbalanced to me, if it exists at all, since it's easier to do the wrong thing than it is to do the right thing (or it seems so). There's a lot more to both sides of the argument, however, and I'm just expressing a few passing "thoughts" and "feelings." I wish that, no matter how hard it might seem, people would strive to care about others (notice I didn't say "be good" or "do the right thing" this time).

However, I'd just like to note one little "philosophy" that helps me with anything I study. It's supposed to be a principle of science--just how often scientists actually use it is beyond me. I do not believe that anything is "proven"--defining proof as "absolutely and irrefutably true." There is only "evidence" (a suggestion of a possible truth) and how we interpret that evidence.

 

[Michael]

That's right, G-borg. In another post I mentioned The Birth of Tragedy, but I completely forgot about Zarathrustra. Truth is, the way it was written seemed even more neurotic than my own writing and I had a difficult time with it. If you want to speak in terms of evolution, that works for me. But the "overman" I still perceived (and this may be another "misinterpretation") as something akin to the high evolutionaries in Spider-Man ("We're bigger, stronger, and smarter than everyone else so we should govern the world").

That being said, the concept really is a good one for sci-fi (I love Spider-Man, and I won't apologize for it). Not only that, more "versatile" leaders may be a good thing in real life--if there's any such thing. So just in case I misrepresented myself, I meant to say that you have a good point. Glad you mentioned it and I hope I'm not confusing you with my neurotic banter.

 

[Michael]

So basically, I suppose, what I believe is that even if it is the case that certain things - or even all things - are predestined, it is better to act as if it is not.

Wow. I couldn't agree more. Just this one sentence seems very insightful to me. I have problems with predestination from a philosophical view as well as social and cultural--because if it were true I think I would hate God. I don't believe it is, but that isn't the point. You already made the point, so I won't repeat it.

 

[Michael]

Okay, Bigmac. Here's my answer, for what it's worth. I would say (and I'm not sure I'd be right) that at some time during the experiment I still made the choice to follow through. There may be reasons, such as altered states of consciousness caused by traumatic experience, or any any number of reasons, that I made this decision. If I I did it in a relatively "normal" state of mind, I knew what I was doing and probably didn't care (in which case I was probably already messed up). If it were the result of brainwashing, somehow, someway, I still made the decision to succumb. I did not have to. Maybe I was told things that I really liked hearing that was later twisted with things that I previously would not have accepted. Charles Manson and (shoot! just watched it last night and already forgot her name) Annabelle? (darn! if anyone can remember that girl's name I would greatly appreciate it) is a good example. She believed him, because he said things to her that made her believe he loved her. Later, however, when he told her to kill, she could not do it. All the others did (you've got more than 50% in this case). They were not like that before Charlie's brainwashing, but they were afterward. Why? Because they liked what they heard originally, and allowed themselves to be drawn into his insanity.

Granted, I should probably check out this experiment more thoroughly before I can say that this answer really applies, but you did mention brainwashing, didn't you?

 

[littlemissattitude]

Maybe I was told things that I really liked hearing that was later twisted with things that I previously would not have accepted. Charles Manson and (shoot! just watched it last night and already forgot her name) Annabelle? (darn! if anyone can remember that girl's name I would greatly appreciate it) is a good example. She believed him, because he said things to her that made her believe he loved her. Later, however, when he told her to kill, she could not do it. All the others did (you've got more than 50% in this case). They were not like that before Charlie's brainwashing, but they were afterward. Why? Because they liked what they heard originally, and allowed themselves to be drawn into his insanity.

Michael...I think you're probably thinking of Linda Kasabian (I'm not sure her last name is spelled right). The thing with Charlie is, he's a little con man. He used drugs to gain influence over his followers, but he also used the tried and true method of treating people as if they were special as a way of manipulating them. He'd pick out vulnerable girls who either were not attractive (or felt that they weren't) or who were looking for a father figure. And then he'd use them to attract a few men who he also felt that he could manipulate. There was a great deal of method to his madness (which is a misnormer, for he isn't crazy at all). And it is a mistake to assume that the people who followed him were stupid; as I've written here before, I had a friend in junior high who used to hang out at Spahn to go horseback riding and who, while she never joined up, swallowed his line and believed at the time of his arrest that "he could never have had anything to do with that." (I lived near Spahn at the time these things were going on.) She was an exceptionally intelligent girl, but was fairly vulnerable to Charlie's way of operating.

 

[Michael]

Thank you littlemiss--yes it is Linda Kasabian (God my head hurts!) Only one day later and I forget.

Oh, and sorry--I never meant to imply they were stupid! Far from it, actually. They were likely very intelligent young people who were taken in by Manson's methods. I only meant to say that I think they still made a choice. Yes, and the choice was made under certain conditions (manipulation, intoxication, sleep deprivation, trauma, or any number of reasons that might cause a person to make decisions that he or she would not normally make).

Also, by "insanity" I meant the methods. However, I think a person's actions and thoughts may be described as "crazy" even if the person really is otherwise "sane." I don't know if you've ever heard this, but: "Neurosis means you're crazy and you know it, while psychosis means you're crazy and you don't know it." I'm crazy and I know it (thank God I'm not anything like Charles Manson!).

In fact, I like to believe that I would be like Linda. I'd say that I have been subjected to a very mild form of brainwashing before (won't go into details--want to keep religious discussion to a minimum). As soon as I heard something that disagreed with my core belief, however, I wrenched myself out of that place.

I still feel like I'm rambling, though. does any of this make sense?

 

[littlemissattitude]

Sure, you're making some sense.

And, yes, of course those people who chose to follow Charlie made choices just like we all do. It's just that, I think, because of their circumstances (emotional, mostly, but also probably fueled by the drugs they were taking) the choices they made were skewed by their inner needs. Not so different from all of us; they were just looking for acceptance somewhere (in most cases; from what I've read, Susan Atkins was acting out long before she ever met Charlie). Most of us are looking for acceptance, but most of us (I hope) are not needy enough to commit criminal acts in order to get that acceptance.

As for brainwashing, my personal belief is that we are all brainwashed to a certain extent just as a function of daily life. That's what advertising is all about, not to mention the inculcation in school of patriotic attitudes in whatever country we live in and the indoctrination into political and religious belief systems. Leaders in all these areas set out to convince people that their way of belief is the right one; we just don't usually think of that as attempted brainwashing because it is mild and the ideas pretty much acceptable in most cases. Everyone uses propaganda; it just usually isn't identified as such.

I hope I'm not sounding too cynical here.

And, Michael, as far as being crazy and knowing it - nothing wrong with that. It's the ones who don't know it, who think they are completely sane at all times that I worry about.

 

[Michael]

Hmm . . . you've given me quite a bit to think about there, littlemiss. Oh, and thanks for the encouragement (I really thought I rambled too much).

 

[Michael]

Okay, Bigmac. Here's my answer, for what it's worth. I would say (and I'm not sure I'd be right) that at some time during the experiment I still made the choice to follow through. There may be reasons, such as altered states of consciousness caused by traumatic experience, or any any number of reasons, that I made this decision. If I I did it in a relatively "normal" state of mind, I knew what I was doing and probably didn't care (in which case I was probably already messed up). If it were the result of brainwashing, somehow, someway, I still made the decision to succumb. I did not have to. Maybe I was told things that I really liked hearing that was later twisted with things that I previously would not have accepted. Charles Manson and (shoot! just watched it last night and already forgot her name) Annabelle? (darn! if anyone can remember that girl's name I would greatly appreciate it) is a good example. She believed him, because he said things to her that made her believe he loved her. Later, however, when he told her to kill, she could not do it. All the others did (you've got more than 50% in this case). They were not like that before Charlie's brainwashing, but they were afterward. Why? Because they liked what they heard originally, and allowed themselves to be drawn into his insanity.

Granted, I should probably check out this experiment more thoroughly before I can say that this answer really applies, but you did mention brainwashing, didn't you?

Sheesh . . . this is one of the worst arguments I ever made. Obviously needed more time to think about it.