status quo assumed preferable

[TiddyBaby]

This is way off the subject, but the homeostasis and the introduction of virus into the system.
I only took one microbiology, course... And in the scheme of things, I've never figured out the purpose of the virus.
It does nothing but create death. (well, OK,... it does create itself over and over,... so it does make some sense of life)
Is it just suppose to be natures way for population control? The funny result of overpopulating the host organism, via restructuring the host cell to reproduce more virus to attack more cells to kill the host. Of course, my bad, in applying human traits or design to the intent of virus.

[Flint]

@skysidhe: I've always had trouble interpretting your posting style. My perception, right now, is that you are exhibiting hostility towards me. I hope that's not the case, because I always liked you. You seem like a thoughtful person, but I recall getting these sort of hostile (my perception) messages from you on my board, and it always baffled me. Are we still having a polite conversation? I said "I assumed the answer would be percieved as implied" meaning I assumed that the reader would percieve my implied answer "no, a society will benefit from valuing diversity" - I guess this makes my question a rhetorical question. I clearly said I assumed the reader's perception - which I clearly am not making any claims of having direct knowledge of.

[Torrere]

Originally Posted by Flint

You revealed an internal paradox to my hypothetical query which did, in fact, render it "moot" if taken at face value.

If we did not take your statement at face value we would be forced to misinterpret it.

[skysidhe]

oh my gawd...don't get parinoid. Any precieved tone is comming from inside you due to what you have heard from others. Words don't have sound ????

How can I be any MORE hostile than any other person you have known?. wow.


anyway I don't know how to convince you?? I can post kissy faces??
wanna call me?? I have a great voice. Mellow and calm.


any way

I am trying to have an intellectual conversation. Please note I edited my thoughts. I too am confused by your posting style as well.

There are inconsistencys so what you sense is a desire to understand. Like a dog with a bone. I am not very smart so when I asked you to dummy it down I meant it!



Thank you for using the word rhetorical. That says it all.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The act of categorizing humans into groups with defined characteristics is one of the uglier aspects of bigotry.

It's also a basic survival skill. Time dictates how far you sort, like walking down a street you scan the other people looking for clues. You see 2 people carrying baseball bats, so you put them into a category. One has a ball, glove and cleats over his shoulder and the other is dressed in scruffy leathers with a bandanna covering his lower face. so now you subdivide into probably benign and probably dangerous categories

OK, that's extreme but you see how we all do it, all the time. Speaking of time, if you have more of it, you further categorize and with enough time you get every person so sub-sub-sub categorized that everyone is unique and has to have their own category.

It's when you run out of time (or interest) that you leave people hanging in clumps and never get them into individuals.

[skysidhe]

@ TiddyBaby

Isn't that cancer???


Anyway. I will let you brains talk and get out of flints way. I trip over big words :P

.....and maybe my stupid way of talking is the pea to flints princess ???



didn't mean to hinder your fun , or make you think I was making growly faces.

[Flint]

@skysidhe: Good answer. I will use that as an understading of how we can interact in a way that will benefit us both. Maybe the most difficult relationships can be the most rewarding because they challenge you to go outside the comfort zone?

As a quick and unsolicited update on where I am at right now: married, baby on the way, just bought my first house. I have a day job as a system administrator, and I have been getting back out and playing gigs (drums) as well as going back to school after ten years. Very busy. So, what about you? Tell me something about you.

[skysidhe]

Originally Posted by Flint

Maybe the most difficult relationships can be the most rewarding because they challenge you to go outside the comfort zone?

umm no? I haven't found difficult people to be rewarding in real life or the internet. Quite to the contrary.......case in point. IF that were true I probably
left many an ager highly rewarded. :P


hehehe I like that thought. They benefited from my sarcastic wit aye
and pretentous assholeness.

mmmuhuh ok. hehehe I somehow doubt it.

Just as here You see there cannot be a double standard. A difficult relationship is difficult . Period. I'm ok with the reality of that.


No disrespect intended. Please don't interpret me any differently than say.....someone else much more volitile.

[tw]

This was posted in a previous discussion entitled Why didn't Hollywood save New Orleans?

Show me where the president did one action to demonstrate he was not racist. Not one reason exists to believe this is an accusation of racism. To believe otherwise is to take what was posted completely out of context. It is a simple statement. Show me one action by George Jr during this New Orleans disaster that could demonstrate he was not a racist. It is a simple question of logic that requires a simple answer in logic. Show me.

It was just that; nothing more. Every intent of that post was in that post. And yet review so many responses. So many wanted to read into that post a hidden agenda. I don't do that. I am the world's worst politician because I speak bluntly; consider political correctness akin to what others consider evil. If I had a hidden agenda in that post, I would have posted it - bluntly. There was no hidden agenda. And yet others could not admit that post only asked what it asked.

I am struck by same responses to Flint's post. You and I don't care what he may have posted anywhere else, when replying here. He asked a simply question - nothing more - nothing less. He asked:

Is the ultimate goal of society to oppose diversity?

No one answered a simple question. Many instead asked for an 'agenda'. With so many responses, where did one ever answer the original question – without personal biases - emotions - attached to their response?

The answer: No. A society that opposes diversity dies. Death is not the purpose of society. It is why societies that oppose diversity - that endorse hate, racial purity, intolerance, commandants from dictators, and that stifle its most valuable asset - the little people - are therefore dying societies. It is why containment works so well and why preemption is not productive.

What was the secret to Rome? Rome endorsed and assimilated diversity. What made Islam so dominant up to the 1400s? Same tolerance to diversity. A tolerance limited only by certain and specific principles that provided that society with a common fabric.

The purpose of society is to permit diversity - as much diversity as society can tolerate. Some answers to his question demonstrated intolerance - such as assuming a hidden agenda. Such biases -such as assuming a hidden agenda - only undermine the purpose of a successful society. BTW, reasons that justify a hidden agenda also imply a sick society. He asked a simply question and did not even receive a simply answer - without hidden agendas.

[Torrere]

Originally Posted by tw

He asked ". . . Is the ultimate goal of society to oppose diversity?"

No one answered a simple question. Many instead asked for an 'agenda'. With so many responses, where did one ever answer the original question – without personal biases - emotions - attached to their response?

First of all, you lie. He asked the question in nine words and Lumberjim answered it with a thousand and seven words. Beestie and Elspode also answered the question.

The trouble is that it is very difficult to write about a simple question given with no examples. If you want to be able to write any sort of substantial response to the question, you must have a model in your head. You have to be thinking of some society -- of Rome, of 15th century Spain, of America, of Texas, of the High School football team -- which either acted to preserve, to embrace, to oppose, or to assimilate diversity.

From there, you use your knowledge of the model to build an argument, and fold that argument, I hope, into a clear and well written response.

If two people argue, and each person understands a different, contradictory model, they talk past each other. The argument goes nowhere and becomes stupid.

So someone has to introduce a model, as tw did and flint did not. The choice of model determines where the argument will go, if someone is hoping to win. Hellenistic Greece would be an excellent example for someone who wished to argue that merging cultures bring prosperity. The example of 15th century Spain, when King Ferdinand drove out the Moslems and endorsed Colombus, might make for a good argument for the prosperity of an undivided state.

Neither is particularly good for understanding or answering Flint's incredibly broad and somewhat ambiguous question.

I think that a good model might come from Physics. Consider a volume of high temperature air. Each molecule has high energy and high, albiet random, momentum. If you insert a mass of cold air, then the two types of air, cold and hot, will interact and circulate tempestuously. Ultimately, the entire volume of air will have uniform temperature.

All sorts of things could complicate this model, and it doesn't necessarily translate well to societies. It doesn't deal with the possibility that societies tend to develop, and that if two societies are isolated they will develop along divergent paths.

That brings along another ambiguity in Flint's question: what is the scale? Is he talking about the world? Is he talking about America? Is he talking about New Orleans? Is he talking about my math study group?

Having written all of this, I think that his original post was a passive-aggressive way of implicating the established group at the Cellar of being insular. If this was his real question, and he really wanted us to discuss it, he should have come out and said so.

One last thing: I think that Lumberjim's response was incredibly eloquent.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Torrere

First of all, you lie. He asked the question in nine words and Lumberjim answered it with a thousand and seven words. Beestie and Elspode also answered the question.

Reviewing those posts again, maybe there was an attempt at an anwser. I certainly still cannot see it in a few responses. A kid splashing in a mud puddle makes about as much sense to me as the 'kid pissing on a statue' and calling it the purpose of life - a philosophy whose real purpose is to insult. I watched those english teachers dish out 'Paul was barefoot and therefore dead' from the Abbey Road album. To me, classic junk philosophy intended to insult. But on second thought, and after literally rereading those particular replies about 10 times, maybe there was an attempt to actually reply to Flint.

Models are only examples. Examples so that a concept is provided something concrete; so that the reader can compare his interpretation to an example/model; so that the reader can confirm he properly understood the author's intent. Those models were not intended to limit the scope of Flint's question which I regard as intentionally vague. If Flint intended something more specific, he can limit the scope of his question. If Flint intended his question to have scale, then he would have put numbers or limiting examples to it.

Having said that, I still don't understand how society has a "level". And I don't understand why "I find your question somehow strange and out of place." is relevant. Like the 'pissing kid', and like those english teachers who could not understand why 'Paul was not dead', I again see little relevant in such replies.

Marichiko provided a definition - something to work with. It did not answer the question, but the definition proves useful - one step to providing an answer. Elspode did same by providing a framework; a structure to better define where to seek an answer. My post should not have implied Elspode post belongs in a category of subjectively irrelevant interpretations.

Meanwhile, "If two people argue, and each person understands a different, contradictory model, they talk past each other. The argument goes nowhere and becomes stupid." is why perspective causes two people to answer correctly and yet provide 'apparently incompatible' answers. Wars have been fought over less. Which is why I am still looking at that answer about 'levels' and about "the ebb and flow of things". And yet still see nothing but 'a kid pissing on a statue' philosophy or a hidden message that 'Paul is dead'.

Bravo, Torrere, I feel that YOUR response was incredibly eloquent!

Given Flint's history on the board and the vagueness of his question, it is no surprise that he has gotten the response he has. In fact, many of the responses were far more well thought out than his original question.

I notice, also, that he has not taken much part in the debate his own OP inspired (perhaps because AG is functioning again, or so we are told?).

If one wishes to look at the laws of physics and the natural world, all systems tend to seek a status of equilibrium - that is to conserve energy. A chemical reaction that is thrown out of equilibrium by a change on one side of the equation or the other will quickly work toward becoming in balance again. Human society is no different.

The original residents of Colorado found their state thrown into dis-equilibrium with the sudden influx of outsiders who drove up property values, and at the same time voted in laws that were at odds with the well being of the residents of the state - the TABOR amendment (tax payer's bill of rights) is the most blatant example of this. TABOR was pushed into law mainly by the influx of Californians who were weary of the tax burden in their home state of California and opposed paying any taxes what so ever in their new state of Colorado.

The result has been chaos on every level of government in the state of Colorado. The division of motor vehicles is understaffed forcing people to wait literally 4- 6 hours for something as simple as a renewal of their driver's license. The courts are over burdened and under staffed. Our system of higher education has taken many hard hits, and some of our universities are in peril of losing their accreditation thanks to underfunded libraries and teaching staff. The list goes on.

People who live here have responded by putting "Native" with a map of Colorado on their bumpers, jokes such as the one I posted earlier, and the great Texan/Colorado tomato war, where participants bombard each other with ripe or rotten tomatoes (and sometimes hard green ones).

One way or the other, Colorado will reach equilibrium again. Either the new comers will realize that the laws they have voted in have made Colorado a less than wonderful place to live, and act with other Colorado voters to repeal them (this has already begun to happen to a certain extent in our most recent election), or else they will leave for greener pastures and those remaining will clean up the mess they leave behind.

The influx of AG-ers into the Cellar is little different than the influx of Texans and Californians into Colorado. In both instances the new comers were met with suspicion and hostility. Things were discovered to work off this mutual animosity in more healthy ways like the great tomato war which is actually quite funny. Native Coloradoans have gradually become more open to new thoughts, and the newcomers seem to be learning that they weren't right about EVERYTHING.

Colorado has dealt with heterogeneity by slowly turning it into homogeneity. I think most other societies are no different.

[Flint]

"I don't see anything hostile in my post."

@skysidhe: I apologize for my perception, then. But you edited it since I replied, I haven't even read the whole thing.

[skysidhe]

I edited it = I corrected my crappy punctuation and spelling. ( just for you )

The only thing I deleted was
"I don't see anything hostile in my post."

The post in question is still there. Smiley face and alll. Just like it was the first time.


Congradulations on all that. Your lifes progression the way you want it too.

I am happy. In a great townhouse. Have a new car. Made a great friend when the music was still alive and we see each other every year.

I have two parttime jobs and a new puppy. He is 6 months old and sooo cute! One day I will post a picture of him and we can all decide what his bread is.

I was told he was a pom but a pom he is not! You'll laugh when you see his picture. No pomeranian there

I got to go for now....take care

[lumberjim]

lots of double speak in your posts, flint. you wouldn't be trying to impress us with the depth of your thoughts now, would you?

Originally Posted by Flint

The two states you describe remind me of one of the driving forces in my life, which is to nullify, to the highest degree possible, the level of inevitable chaos by over-reaching for an impossible to atain level of logical order, the result of which turns out to be somewhere in the middle.

truly dizzying

sidhe, it's no wonder you're struggling to wrap your mind around it.