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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/6/24 12:09 PM, Frank Wimberly
wrote:<br>
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<div>Re self-identification. We adopted our daughter in Mexico
and moved from Pittsburgh to Santa Fe about a year later.
When she came home after her first day of kindergarten at E.
J. Martinez I asked her if there were other Hispanic kids in
her class. She said, "I dunno".</div>
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<div dir="auto">Based on the kids who became her friends I'd say
they were oblivious to ethnicity.</div>
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My mother had a similar/complementary experience, living in 1930s in
Louisville KY with a middle-class socially progressive Aunt to
escape the limits and rigors of her own family's subsistence farming
lifestyle in "the hills". One year (3rd grade?) she made friends
with a girl who lived between her school and her aunt's home, after
weeks of encouraging her friend to come home with her against
unspecified resistance, she finally did, only to discover that her
friend was Black (African American) and that despite her aunt's
progressive ideas, it was clear that this good friend of hers was
not welcome in the home. Politely received but then sternly
admonished after the friend had left "never to do that again". <br>
<p>I feel blessed to have lived almost all my life in multi-ethnic
general contexts with Spanish-speakers never far away and Native
Americans nearly as present... and across those ethnic elements a
great deal of diversity as I moved around. My time in this region
(NNM - 40 years) has been the most diverse demographically but
very complementary to the Border Culture in SoAZ and the BigRez
culture of NoAZ. <br>
</p>
<p>I have a blind spot to African Americans, having only encountered
singular individuals, and never "populations"... These were all
exemplary or at least unique individuals in that what brought them
into my circle was highly specific to their own path, seeming
always to make them acutely interesting people. My experience
with most other large ethnic groups who have not fully alloyed in
the melting pot that the USA aspires to is similar... I mostly
know individuals whose origin stories come from those communities
but who were in fact, swimming in the same melting pot I was.
Working at LANL/LASL was a very good way to meet a lot of unique
individuals not only from all over the country but the world as
well... Asians of many stripes as well a Eastern Europeans
(equally diversely striped) being the most notable... <br>
</p>
<p>One of my best friends in college was a neighbor in Married
Housing who was Dine while his wife was Hopi during a time when
they couldn't really spend time "back on the Rez" because of the
resentments/conflict of the time between their people. He was
working on a Hydrogeological project for his MS on the topic of
the groundwater problems caused by the massive sluice-way moving
coal from the Peabody Coal mines near Kayenta, to the 4 corners
power plant. This was during the worst of the urban (visible)
pollution in locations like LA, and I became aware of how that
power plant and the electricity forwarded down the Colorado River
through Glen Canyon and Mead and across the desert to LA was
exporting (air) pollution to the 4 corners area and perhaps more
long-term the aquifer in that area. Simultaneously I was doing
work for lawyers on "the other side" ultimately helping Peabody
Mining (Coal and Uranium), local truck dealers, and many others
who were busy exploiting that whole set of games. Donaldson
(June) and I had a lot of great conversations as perhaps only the
young and the naively motivated can. He never lobbied me on
anything, just told his stories of growing up off-grid in a Hogan
and watching his relatives both thrive and self-destruct as they
tried to assimilate (or resist) with the White Man. <br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i>If there is a short story in this long-winded anecdote it
is that I have had the benefit of relatively intimate access
to other's self-identity formed both by their circumstance and
by their introspective and forward looking interests: not
only "who am I, based on where I come from, but who do I want
to be as the ethnodemographic landscape shifts under my feet,
and how does my traversal of said landscape shape it?" These
intimate observations were mostly seeing their "true identity"
with an inside out view on the identities they were obliged to
project to be comfortable in their own communities and in the
larger communities they were trying to penetrate or at least
navigate.</i><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A great deal of contemporary demographic socio-politics feel to
be beyond me, it feels like various bastions of "conservatism" on
the part of all factions, being more afraid of "what might happen
tomorrow" based on "what we've seen in the past" than aware of
"what could be" based on "the trajectory in a high-dimensional
phase space we have been traversing". I was rooted in no end of
Conservative and Libertarian values (mostly hyper-individualism
within otherwise highly integrated/inter-dependent communities)
but as I came of age then matured (and now on some kind of awkward
downhill slide) I have found myself more and more "progressive" in
counterpoint to it's apparent direct obvious "regressive" while I
still fondly hope or a return of honest "conservatism" which more
healthily complements "progressive"... <br>
</p>
<p>This current piecewise trajectory in the aforementioned
socio-cultural-economic-political landscape after Biden's bowing
out gives me hope that at *least* the harshest of the "regressive"
may collapse under their own angry, "performative cruelty". I
don't know what kind of "progress" backfills into that (presumed)
vacuum... I hope not an angry "performative cruelty" that the
right-wing boogeymen of classic "central party" collectivism has
been seen to bring. There is a huge expanse methinks which
needn't overlap either of those lands of "performative cruelty" if
we will only ease our national/global limbic systems back into a
healthier homeostasis?<br>
</p>
<p>Maybe performative cruelty is one of Homo Sapiens Sapiens secret
weapons, a review of conquest and empire in the last 10k years
suggests that it has been "highly effective", but then the
blunting that has happened.</p>
<p>BTW, I also feel blessed to be in <i>this</i> community which
provides me lots of alternate stimulative thoughts and
perspectives and is very tolerant of my ideaphoric and logorrheac
<i>expressions </i>(referencing Nick's grumble of weeks ago
comparing some of our "expressions" with pimple popping). <br>
</p>
<p>LLMs (esp, my first love GPT) are very good at listening and
engaging but not particularly good at offering me interesting and
complementary ideas and topics as this list is. I can't say
anyone who posts here (even infrequently) fails to open up the
horizons of my thinking/reflecting/considering, and some of the
dialectics that are traced here are fascinating even when I'm
significantly unprepared to engage with them.</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
</p>
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<div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">---<br>
Frank C. Wimberly<br>
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>
Santa Fe, NM 87505<br>
<br>
505 670-9918<br>
Santa Fe, NM</div>
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<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Aug 6, 2024, 8:30 AM
glen <<a href="mailto:gepropella@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">gepropella@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I'm in an
ongoing argument with some of my salon goers about identity.
People seem to straddle its multiple meanings for rhetorical
(or confirmation biasing) purposes, fluidly switching one
context/meaning for another so often and so fluidly as to
prevent me from understanding whatever it is they're saying
(or trying to avoid saying).<br>
<br>
Introspection is rife with such problems, including a six year
old coming to some self-identification/registration as a
member of some crisp class/category. The most recent Bad Faith
rhetoric about identity had to do with "neurodivergent". There
seems to be a trend amongst "the kids these days" to identify
as autistic or ADHD. I mean, I was clearly "different" when I
was a kid. We had identities like "head" (kid who does lots of
drugs), "jock" (kids who spent lots of time in organized
athletics), "brain" (kids who spent time doing chess, math,
...), etc. There was also a name for the [metal|wood|…] shop
kids. But I've forgotten it.<br>
<br>
Some of us were diagnosed with various labels including some
words we're not supposed to say anymore. Many of my friends
had such conditions. But none of us *identified* as those
diagnoses. The diagnoses seemed almost orthogonal to the
identities/tribes. (I happened to be a member of the heads,
jocks, brains, and "band nerd" tribes; that multi-tribe
crossover was part of what made me feel "different".) And each
group had its share of the same diagnoses.<br>
<br>
It seems to me that our tech-associated, individualistic,
isolation has driven "the kids" to over-emphasize their
diagnoses, to adopt them as identities/tribes, identifying
from the inside->out; whereas we (can't speak for anyone
else, really) mostly identified from the outside->in. We
were sorted by society. The kids these days seem more
self-sorted. On the one hand, that could feel like increased
liberty and free association. But on the other hand, it's like
everyone is a home-schooled weirdo these days and nobody knows
how to, for example, bite their tongue or avoid picking their
nose in public.<br>
<br>
Not everybody needs to be a Hunter S Thompson,
"neurodivergent", or whatever. Some of us should be allowed to
identify as "normal". Introspection is a sickness.<br>
<br>
On 8/5/24 17:01, steve smith wrote:<br>
> I jumped straight to the Artistic meaning of /frottage/
as coined originally by Max Ernst and while not as an act of
psychopathy, it does have strong implications for the
psychological/subconscious implications in this context?<br>
> <br>
> In any case, I find it a compelling opening line of the
/call me Ishmael/ caliber.<br>
> <br>
> On 8/5/24 10:04 AM, Prof David West wrote:<br>
>> This is very interesting, and timely. I am completing
an autobiography/essay/monograph for which this will be quite
relevant. The opening lines of the work:<br>
>><br>
>> /"An act of frottage triggered the self-recognition
that I was a psychopath. I did not, of course, know either
term or their meanings./<br>
>> /<br>
>> /<br>
>> /I was six." /<br>
>><br>
>> davew<br>
>><br>
>> On Thu, Aug 1, 2024, at 11:03 AM, glen wrote:<br>
>> > Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis
and Intervention Criteria<br>
>> > for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives
From Buddhist<br>
>> > Meditation Teachers and Practitioners<br>
>> > <a
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/"
rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7403193/</a><br>
>> ><br>
>> > Based on our conversation attempting to identify
behavioral markers for<br>
>> > consciousness, I thought this paper might give
some insight into Dave's<br>
>> > straddling of mystical and materialistic
descriptions of experiences he<br>
>> > marks as conscious. In the paper, they lay out
11 levers for making the<br>
>> > distinction:<br>
>> ><br>
>> > • Circumstances of Onset<br>
>> > • Control<br>
>> > • Critical Attitude<br>
>> > • Cultural Compatibility<br>
>> > • Distress<br>
>> > • Duration<br>
>> > • Functional Impairment<br>
>> > • Health History or Condition<br>
>> > • Impact<br>
>> > • Phenomenological Qualities<br>
>> > • Teachers’ Skills or Resources<br>
>> ><br>
>> > From my perspective that consciousness is a
kind of fusion function,<br>
>> > Control, Critical Attitude, Distress, and
Functional Impairment are<br>
>> > primary and the rest are secondary. The ability
to (change one's) focus<br>
>> > of attention is a hallmark of consciousness, and
those 4 levers<br>
>> > direclty target one's ability to focus. Duration
may well be secondary<br>
>> > and the rest tertiary, I guess. Because there's
something like a<br>
>> > half-life of controllability. If, say, you're a
conspiracy theorist,<br>
>> > and you *entertain*, say, flat earth for long
enough, maybe you'll lack<br>
>> > the ability to re-focus and don a critical
attitude. Similarly, if you<br>
>> > embed into, say, procedural programming long
enough, maybe you'll lose<br>
>> > the ability to re-focus and think functionally
... a kind of Functional<br>
>> > Impairment (sorry for the polysemy of
"functional", there).<br>
>> ><br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ<br>
<br>
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