What’s this?
An Open Thread posted on a Thursday?’
I’ll bite.
I know a few spiritual aspirants who buy the mainstream lies. The PMC, as they’re called in certain circles.
It’s tedious.
If you’re a dog, a cat or a denizen of Gaza you’re at your overlord’s mercy.
However, animals will receive preferred treatment even when neglected.
Enigmatic, I know.
Calling our brown skinned brothers and sisters animals is denigrating to both animals and humans.
Barbaric behavior fueled by ignorance.
Tis a sad state of affairs.
This quote is about ten years old now, but I find it more relevant than ever today. Shared in case it’s of interest to anyone else.
They say “doubt everything,” but I disagree. Doubt is useful in small amounts, but too much of it leads to apathy and confusion. No, don’t doubt everything. QUESTION everything. That’s the real trick. Doubt is just a lack of certainty. If you doubt everything, you’ll doubt evolution, science, faith, morality, even reality itself – and you’ll end up with nothing, because doubt doesn’t give anything back. But questions have answers, you see. If you question everything, you’ll find that a lot of what we believe is untrue… but you might also discover that some things ARE true. You might discover what your own beliefs are. And then you’ll question them again, and again, eliminating flaws, discovering lies, until you get as close to the truth as you can.
Questioning is a lifelong process. That’s precisely what makes it so unlike doubt. Questioning engages with reality, interrogating all it sees. Questioning leads to a constant assault on the intellectual status quo, where doubt is far more likely to lead to resigned acceptance. After all, when the possibility of truth is doubtful (excuse the pun), why not simply play along with the most convenient lie?
I have made the point several times that arguments in the ordinary sense (as contrasted to a logician’s special senses) take the form of hypnotic trance induction. The argument’s form seduces the reader or listener into a state of distracted receptiveness and suggestions and emotional associations follow.
I doubt that doubt alone will earn you much truth. The truth may very well not be “out there”.
Propagandists know the magic words and rituals of their business. They know how to push our buttons, to get us riled up, to get us to agree with all sorts of nonsense and to think and believe things that are not true without even the bother of telling us lies. Doubt is no proof against someone who has led us to believe a false thing, without ever actually telling us the false thing they intend us to believe. How can you doubt something you haven’t even been told? Still, you can be induced to believe many things you haven’t been told. And, why would you doubt these things you believe, but have not been told?
At a young age I had a friend who always responded to my enigmatic questions by asking why don’t chickens pee?
All embodied creatures usually poop and pee through their posteriors.
It took me some time to learn that chickens excrete both poop and pee together.
Sounds like our ruling class, only the shit and piss comes commingled through their speech.
Chickens here, chickens there, chickens everywhere, squawking til they all come home to roost.
“Some say that Israel/Palestine is complicated. It’s not. European Zionists colonized Palestine through violent means. Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote that Palestinians were no better than the Sioux, that Zionists were 500 years ahead of them. And that was only the beginning.“ -Dennis Perrin on X
Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Iron Wall” by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotisnky (November 4, 1923)
“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.
The Balfour Declaration was published in London in November 1917. The establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine depended on a compliant Palestinian population and the British were eager to conciliate wherever possible. Orders were issued to be “carefully friendly to the Arab tribes” from east of the Jordan River, as they fought with the Sharif of Mecca against the Ottomans. These Arabs were to be treated with the greatest consideration, all payments to them were made in cash and all friction was to be avoided. Politically, Britain needed Feisal’s support and Feisal needed British military support and the British encouraged the people to look to Feisal and the Hashemites as their new rulers.
Zionist leader Weizmann and King Faisal met and agreed to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. The wishes of the Palestinian Arabs were to be ignored, and, indeed, both men seem to have held the Palestinian Arabs in considerable disdain. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support close Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish.
I see Atrios of Eschaton dismissing Robert F Kennedy’s candidacy by citing a Gail Collins NYT op-ed dismissing Robert F Kennedy’s candidacy.
I take no brief myself for Kennedy, but I also wouldn’t dismiss him like this. If you are going to do political commentary, I think you are ethically obligated to engage with what the candidate says.
There was a time when Atrios would have been a severe critic of the kind of arch, all-knowing political commentary and analysis engaged in by the likes of Gail Collins.
But, there is an ample stock of stale cliches that can trotted out about the self-defeating futility of third-party candidacy, all no doubt wise and true but also conveniently erasing any need to engage with why this candidate? why this candidate’s issues? and why now?
When you have such of stock of cliches, why deal with the painful prospect of Trump v Biden? Or the apparent inability of the political system to cope with much of anything: the election of a House speaker, the Maui fires, inflation and falling wages, skyrocketing federal debt, Israel’s outbreak of madness, the war in Ukraine and the political crisis enveloping Europe, not to mention the apparent determination of the senile Biden to make everything everywhere worse. In other words why write about anything that matters?
I myself do not believe that the west is urinating out of ammuntion. That does not make any sense. I do not have any hard evidence that reports on US and European rates of ammunition production are to low to meet the needs of the war in Ukraine are false. i only consider this, this war between has not only be predicited for a long time by public commentators, it has been planned for a long time by all the military forces potentially involved. Running low on ammuntion would be an amiture mistake.
Also for the Americans to consider the Israeli front as being more important than the Ukrainian front would also be an amature mistake.
Of course huge numbers of people still do not believe that the political system in the US is subordinate to the military structure. Therefore they would think that the amature mistakes can be made because theoretically under the orthodox believe that Generals follow orders, the advice of the Generals could not be heeded and the Generals may be ordered to do something that they really do not want to do. But that way of thinking is just another outer layer of the doll.
Ok my believe that the Ukraine battleground is more important than the Israeli battleground is based upon the assumption that this part of the war is not really neccessary to firmly anchor Saudi Arabia again in the western camp. I would think that Saudi Arabia could be brought to heel with one assassination. But perhaps that assumption is wrong.
But even if we or I conclude that the Ukraine theater is more important the the middle eastern theater at the moment i can not see how that will help anyone predict what the US and its allies are likely to do in response to the two conflicts. Maybe someone else can see how that might be helpful. Any takeers or Faekers?
Shit I did not see that comment that no Palestine commitments should be posted here until after I hit that send button. But then again because this comment looks at the overall conflict between the US and its western allies and the eastern bloc of challengers perhaps it does belong here after All.
mago
What’s this?
An Open Thread posted on a Thursday?’
I’ll bite.
I know a few spiritual aspirants who buy the mainstream lies. The PMC, as they’re called in certain circles.
It’s tedious.
If you’re a dog, a cat or a denizen of Gaza you’re at your overlord’s mercy.
However, animals will receive preferred treatment even when neglected.
Enigmatic, I know.
Calling our brown skinned brothers and sisters animals is denigrating to both animals and humans.
Barbaric behavior fueled by ignorance.
Tis a sad state of affairs.
NR
This quote is about ten years old now, but I find it more relevant than ever today. Shared in case it’s of interest to anyone else.
Chuck Mire
Thanks, NR!
I found this link – On questioning doubt:
https://talosprinciple.fandom.com/wiki/Questioning_doubt_conf.txt
bruce wilder
I have made the point several times that arguments in the ordinary sense (as contrasted to a logician’s special senses) take the form of hypnotic trance induction. The argument’s form seduces the reader or listener into a state of distracted receptiveness and suggestions and emotional associations follow.
I doubt that doubt alone will earn you much truth. The truth may very well not be “out there”.
Propagandists know the magic words and rituals of their business. They know how to push our buttons, to get us riled up, to get us to agree with all sorts of nonsense and to think and believe things that are not true without even the bother of telling us lies. Doubt is no proof against someone who has led us to believe a false thing, without ever actually telling us the false thing they intend us to believe. How can you doubt something you haven’t even been told? Still, you can be induced to believe many things you haven’t been told. And, why would you doubt these things you believe, but have not been told?
Just don’t be thinking of any pink elephants now.
mago
At a young age I had a friend who always responded to my enigmatic questions by asking why don’t chickens pee?
All embodied creatures usually poop and pee through their posteriors.
It took me some time to learn that chickens excrete both poop and pee together.
Sounds like our ruling class, only the shit and piss comes commingled through their speech.
Chickens here, chickens there, chickens everywhere, squawking til they all come home to roost.
Richard Holsworth
“Some say that Israel/Palestine is complicated. It’s not. European Zionists colonized Palestine through violent means. Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote that Palestinians were no better than the Sioux, that Zionists were 500 years ahead of them. And that was only the beginning.“ -Dennis Perrin on X
Texts Concerning Zionism: “The Iron Wall” by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotisnky (November 4, 1923)
“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.
That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope…” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
The Balfour Declaration was published in London in November 1917. The establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine depended on a compliant Palestinian population and the British were eager to conciliate wherever possible. Orders were issued to be “carefully friendly to the Arab tribes” from east of the Jordan River, as they fought with the Sharif of Mecca against the Ottomans. These Arabs were to be treated with the greatest consideration, all payments to them were made in cash and all friction was to be avoided. Politically, Britain needed Feisal’s support and Feisal needed British military support and the British encouraged the people to look to Feisal and the Hashemites as their new rulers.
Zionist leader Weizmann and King Faisal met and agreed to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. The wishes of the Palestinian Arabs were to be ignored, and, indeed, both men seem to have held the Palestinian Arabs in considerable disdain. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support close Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish.
bruce wilder
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2023/10/who-cares.html
I see Atrios of Eschaton dismissing Robert F Kennedy’s candidacy by citing a Gail Collins NYT op-ed dismissing Robert F Kennedy’s candidacy.
I take no brief myself for Kennedy, but I also wouldn’t dismiss him like this. If you are going to do political commentary, I think you are ethically obligated to engage with what the candidate says.
There was a time when Atrios would have been a severe critic of the kind of arch, all-knowing political commentary and analysis engaged in by the likes of Gail Collins.
But, there is an ample stock of stale cliches that can trotted out about the self-defeating futility of third-party candidacy, all no doubt wise and true but also conveniently erasing any need to engage with why this candidate? why this candidate’s issues? and why now?
When you have such of stock of cliches, why deal with the painful prospect of Trump v Biden? Or the apparent inability of the political system to cope with much of anything: the election of a House speaker, the Maui fires, inflation and falling wages, skyrocketing federal debt, Israel’s outbreak of madness, the war in Ukraine and the political crisis enveloping Europe, not to mention the apparent determination of the senile Biden to make everything everywhere worse. In other words why write about anything that matters?
mago
Ya gotta eat buckwheat if you want to understand Russians.
As enigmático as I can get.
Not expecting these words to be read, I freely post them.
Curt Kastens
I myself do not believe that the west is urinating out of ammuntion. That does not make any sense. I do not have any hard evidence that reports on US and European rates of ammunition production are to low to meet the needs of the war in Ukraine are false. i only consider this, this war between has not only be predicited for a long time by public commentators, it has been planned for a long time by all the military forces potentially involved. Running low on ammuntion would be an amiture mistake.
Also for the Americans to consider the Israeli front as being more important than the Ukrainian front would also be an amature mistake.
Of course huge numbers of people still do not believe that the political system in the US is subordinate to the military structure. Therefore they would think that the amature mistakes can be made because theoretically under the orthodox believe that Generals follow orders, the advice of the Generals could not be heeded and the Generals may be ordered to do something that they really do not want to do. But that way of thinking is just another outer layer of the doll.
Ok my believe that the Ukraine battleground is more important than the Israeli battleground is based upon the assumption that this part of the war is not really neccessary to firmly anchor Saudi Arabia again in the western camp. I would think that Saudi Arabia could be brought to heel with one assassination. But perhaps that assumption is wrong.
But even if we or I conclude that the Ukraine theater is more important the the middle eastern theater at the moment i can not see how that will help anyone predict what the US and its allies are likely to do in response to the two conflicts. Maybe someone else can see how that might be helpful. Any takeers or Faekers?
Curt Kastens
Shit I did not see that comment that no Palestine commitments should be posted here until after I hit that send button. But then again because this comment looks at the overall conflict between the US and its western allies and the eastern bloc of challengers perhaps it does belong here after All.