[FRIAM] Your personal truth

[steve smith]

Jochen  wrote:
>
> Please excuse me if I have accidentally set off an eternal loop of 
> thought from which there is no escape (although what if consciousness 
> is such an eternal, strange loop for which there is no solution?
>
At a certain level/dimension of abstraction, how could it be otherwise?
>
> Gilbert Ryle says in "The concept of mind" that the "self" belongs to 
> the things which remain confusing no matter how you look at it: 
> "Should I, or should I not, put my knowing self down on my list of the 
> sorts of things that I can have knowledge of? If I say no, it seems to 
> reduce my knowing self to a theoretically infertile mystery, yet if I 
> say yes, it seems to reduce the fishing-net to one of the fishes which 
> it itself catches")
>
Perhaps Deacon's "absential"... or/and the remainder/residue in the 
long-division of fractional representation of an irrational number? 
Always some cud left to chew.
>
> I was trying similar to Victor Klemperer to understand the evil that 
> haunts us. At the core evil is selfishness, but why are people so 
> easily deceived by it? As you know Klemperer was a German linguist who 
> tried to understand the Nazis by examining their language (in his LTI 
> book) and their actions (in his diaries). He used the tool which he 
> knew best, which was language.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
>
I've read the diaries, thanks for this additional reference.  It 
provides much-needed/appreciated parallax on how he processed his 
multi-year ordeal from the onset of open anti-semitism to the recovery 
after the allied invasion.
>
> If there is a (wannabe) dictator at the top who is deceiving us, how 
> he is doing it, is the deception somehow visible in his language, and 
> what role do emotions play in the bigger picture as a mechanism of 
> deception and control?
>
>
> Donald Trump for example seems to judge everything if it is good or 
> bad for him personally. Everything is always about him. He seems to be 
> unable to discuss things in an objective way, and his speeches are 
> full of subjective descriptions, from simple judgements to heavy 
> insults. Things around him are either terrific or terrible, tremendous 
> or tedious, awesome or awful, great or ghastly, huge or tiny, etc.
>
And this may be key to his appeal to the many whose own 
conception/perception of the big world is equally (if more naively and 
less consequentially) narcissistic?  I do think that a fundamental 
risk/flaw to both Democracy and Capitalism is the narcissistic POV...   
something the West and much of the rest of the world (who 
follows/apes/mimics/envies) the bountiful concentrations that such 
egocentric pursuits can yield (temporarily)
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/how-to-talk-trump/550934/
>
thanks for the reference.
>
> As you you know Hitler was full of emotions in his speeches too. In 
> his speeches he talked himself regularly into a rage. Demagogues 
> almost embody negative emotions. The rage and hate towards the 
> perceived opponent, and the shame of the own situation soon to be 
> replaced by pride, as Arlie Russell Hochschild describes in her latest 
> book "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right"
>
> https://speakoutsocialists.org/book-review-stolen-pride-loss-shame-and-the-rise-of-the-right/
>
>
Great riff/perspective,

  Thanks!

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