Is Tara Stiles Dangerous?

Rebel Yoga (NY Times Article)

Body image issues, yoga, and Tara Stiles is a sell-out

I’m sort of puzzled. I can understand people wanting to overcome body image issues, but what’s with the anger? Superficially at least (I clicked on the “Tara Stiles on Youtube” link at the beginning of the NYT article, and I read the “Body image issues…” post), it seems like Tara understands spirituality better than her critics. Is that being superficial? Or is the person who seems meaner in fact meaner and the person who seems nicer in fact nicer?

By the way, I read about the woman who wrote the post in that second link, and she is recovering from a “violent physical assault on the 29th September 2005”. I don’t take that lightly in the least. However, she says “It is possible to heal from PTSD and depression”, and I agree, but is nurturing anger and hostility a trustworthy way to go about doing this?

I’ve never heard of either of these women (let alone the people who leave comments on their websites) prior to yesterday, and they’re no more or less interesting in themselves than any other two people. But I’m interested in the dilemma I’ve presented here - is niceness always nice, and is meanness always mean? If not, how do we not fool ourselves? It’s easy to imagine a really shitty world, where everyone goes around thinking they’ve got to be “cruel to be kind”…

Yoga has been cheapened and commercialized ever since it came from India, this is nothing new.

It is part of the social contract that certain situations require a specific emotional response which is not neccessarily valid. For example, regardless of how much you might hate an individual, you don’t tell his spouse that you are happy that he died. Regardless of how true it is, I don’t tell my wife that she could lose five pounds. However, that same social contract requires the truth in other specific situations. I don’t think this really addresses your OP, but it does give us a point to jump from…

“contract”? what are you talking about?

The implied agreement between members of a society.

wow, i really have no clue

If I am difficult to understand (and you wouldn’t be the first to be confounded trying to grasp what I mean, I tend to speak/write as if everyone knows what I am thinking as well as what I say/write) then I will be happy to try and explian my opinion in more depth. However, I need an idea where the fault with what I wrote is.

Well, you’re not talking about reality at all. There’s no contract. You just made it up. You say I don’t tell the man’s spouse that I am happy that he died because there’s a non-existent contract. There are a lot of reasons I don’t tell her that, but that’s not one of them.

Actually, Jean-Jacques Rousseau made up the Social Contract Theory. I think his theory can be expanded to include individual interactions.

mhm.
still has nothing to do with reality.
there’s no contract.

all sorts of implicit and unspoken agreements are necessarry to keep society functioning - i don’t see that there’s any reason one can’t refer to them collectively as a contract

I don’t know what the reasons you have are. These are mine.

1. There is nothing for me to gain from speaking ill of the dead.

2. There is nothing for me to gain from causing emotional harm to someone who is already grieving.

3. If the inverse had occured (I had died and someone who hated me was speaking to my spouse,) I would not want them to cause her emotional harm by speaking ill of me.

4. My mother would smack the piss right out of me if she found out that I did something so callous.

5. My father would help.

These all boil down to the same basic principle. There is an implied agreement between members of a society which governs actions. This social contract can be examined and demonstrated in quite a few social psychological expierements. Specifically the works of Stanley Milgram in dealing with questions of authority and with interpersonal relationships demonstrate the deeply ingrained nature of the implied social contract.

That having been said, not every being adheres to the implied rules of behavior. Sociopaths, for example, do not acknowledge the rights of fellow citizens and thus act with licence as opposed to liberty when dealing with others.

i do’nt see how those things are an “implied agreement”
not everyone doesn’t do those anyway, so those people obviously dont’ feel like they made that agreement.

there’s no evidence for this agreement.
it’s just made up, man.
it’s propaganda to justify the state.

Every morning a Christian walks out onto her porch and exclaims, “Thank you Lord for this day.”

Every morning her neighbor exclaims, “There is no God.”

This goes on for years.

One morning, the Christian exclaims, “I have no money for food, but you will provide. Thank you Lord for this day.”

That evening, her neighbor goes to the store and buys groceries. He places them on the porch.

In the morning, she walks out onto the porch to see bag and bags of food.

She exclaims, “Thank you Lord for what you have provided.”

Her neighbor, who was watching from his yard, yells out, “I told you that there was no God, I bought them.”

To which she exclaims, “And you made the devil pay for them.”

Much like the issue of theism and non theism demonstrated above, there is no middle ground that we can work from. If you offered a counter point that was more developed than “it doesn’t exist” then I might be able to site an example. However, if you need a undeniable certainty, then you are in the wrong area. Social sciences, to include Psychology and Philosophy, are not mathmatical constructs where every rule works in every situation for every person. At best we can speak in terms of a majority (over 50%) or an extreme majority (over 75%) (While it might be in use elsewhere, I made up the term extreme majority.) I can give you an incredible example of what the majority did, which should not hold true for every person.

Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of approximatly 12 witnesses. (The newspapers at the time reported it to be 38, but that was an incredible exageration.) The total time of the attack was approximatly 30 minutes. The police were called, on seperate occassions. The first time (during the initial attack) it was only reported as a mugging. The second time, was after the murder was completed. This situation is an example of the bystander effect. Would every person watching a murder react with apathy? Hopefully not, but apparantly a majority would.

Interesting take
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/a-fascinating-intersection-of-true-crime-psychology-and-media-misinformation/

More developed than “it doesn’t exist”? Why does it need to be more developed? It doesn’t exist. Like…that’s factual. What I’m asking for is some idea that’s more developed FROM YOU than just positing some clearly non-existent “contract.”

It is hard to argue your factual statement since you refuse to put any sort of counter argument. So I conceed that you win. Not that you’re right, but that I no longer have the inclination to walk into the same brick wall.

I’ve given examples. I’ve referenced research into the area.

You’ve countered with, “it doesn’t exist.”

I can’t argue against utter refusal.

So you win.

Congradulations.

But I am curious, since we live in a universe without rules which goven our interactions, what is keeping any society from devolving into a fully dystopian environment?

thanks

I added this after, so I wanted to make sure you got a chance to read it.

But I am curious, since we live in a universe without rules which goven our interactions, what is keeping any society from devolving into a fully dystopian environment?

lots of things. sympathy / empathy for fellow humans. guilt. fear of punishment.