Iambiguous self-talk

K: normally I don’t engage with you Ecmuandu, but today I shall…

take a word like love… what that word means to you and what that word
means to me are two, different and distinct things… that is my point…
it has nothing to do with being profound, see I don’t even know what
you mean by the use of that word… what does “profound” mean?

what does the word “tree” mean? my idea of “tree” may or may not
be what you refer to as a “tree”…it might take many questions and still
we might not agree as to what a “tree” is…

language is very imprecise because it can mean different things to different
people…that is why I object to any philosophy that makes as its center piece,
language…

take for example, the word… life… even scientist can’t agree as to
how to define what life is…how would you might define life isn’t
necessarily how I would define life…

now you might think it has to do with being accountable, but I don’t
even see accountability as being an issue in regards to language…
so, who is right?

neither one of us can say for certain, and that is the point…

Kropotkin

What happened [to the best of my recollection] was this…

John [not his real name] became angry at me because I took that existential leap [as a Marxist/feminist] and supported Mary [not her real name] and her choice to abort her fetus. At the same time, my own politics was beginning to shift away from the radical left towards a more noncommittal frame of mind rooted not only in my reaction to William Barrett’s Irrational Man but in reaction to the points raised by George Novacks in his book Existentialism vs. Marxism. Even though [as I recall] he argued from the opposite point of view.

The friendship dissolved.

As for Mary, she had moved back to live with her family in Berlin, New Hampshire. But by then I had met the woman who would become my wife. She in turn was a fierce leftist/feminist. And sure enough my trajectory deeper into existentialism would become a thorn in the side of our relationship as well. I still recall a fierce argument we had over abortion in our Langley Road apartment. I was beginning to construe the unborn as babies…that killing them was justified only because of the conflicting good embedded in the politics of a woman’s right to choose. Also, the points raised by John in regard to men in these contexts. She didn’t take kindly to it. She was still a thoroughgoing objectivist. One was either “one of them” or they could fuck off.

In any event, the specifics of any context of this sort is subsumed in the points I raised on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

In other words, focusing in on the existential relationship between moral and political value judgments and the trajectory of the lives that we live. The part I ascribe to dasein.

How about you? Let’s examine your own intertwined trajectory here in regard to abortion.

After all, this relationship can only be fully explored to the extent that “I” is grappled with both philosophically and experientially.

Or so it still seems to me.

Okay, but, unlike you, I don’t have a “condition”. :wink:

You know, whatever that means.

My condition is that I’ve lived a supernatural life for about 12-13 years straight now. I can assure you, that other than all my wild tales, I’m extremely rational from anyone’s perspective when it comes to discussion.

Iambiguous, has it ever occurred to you what life would look like to you if everyone on this earth used YOUR lines against you, as they were mercilessly tormenting you?

Well, thanks.

It would be interesting to hear Mary’s thoughts on it in retrospect.

I don’t have an “intertwined trajectory in regard to abortion”.

I am content: Iamb cannot follow a simple request, but uses it to try to transform the thread off topic so it is one of his threads. The phenomenon of Iamb remains consistant even if a new angle is taken.

Some of the incredible strangeness in the thread so far:
Peter: there is no more information I could possibly get about Iamb’s being fractured and fragmented. I cannot know what it is like more than the sentence I quoted in the OP. It is like Peter’s being hearing impaired. That is also something I cannot learn anything more about.
I could not learn, for example,
if there is a tinnitus-type factor involved in his hearing impairment or not.
If this impairment remains consistent throughout the day or changes and how.
If it affects the higher or lower frequencies more
If it is degenerative and what portions of sound degenerate over time?
If background noise is a large or small factor and if this affects how he meets with and communicates with other people.
If he experiences simply a lack of ability to hear or if there are competitive noises – perhaps created neurologically.
If he has always had this impairment. If he has not always had it then he may be able to give descriptions of what changed when his hearing became impaired. If it was congenital, then perhaps he was told what differences there are between his hearing and non-impaired hearing. IOW the types of things a doctor might tell a parent about what their child with the impairment may have trouble with and what they might expect to experience.

But no, I already know all I could possibly know about his hearing impairment and any further discussion is utterly useless because I will never know what it is like for him, from the inside of the experience.

But that’s merely strangeness number 2.
Let’s look at it in context, however.
Iambigious is always asking why Phyllo or why we are not as fragmented and fractured as him? Well, Peter should long ago have told Imabiguous that he can never know this.
WHERE has Peter been all these years?
Why is Peter defending Iamb from precisely the kinds of questions and critique Iamb aims at other people? Why did he never leap to our defense when Iamb tells people, including us, but further including large numbers of participants here, their explanations are in the clouds or like ‘serious philosophers’ (a pejorative term for him), or mere contraptions? IOW how did he Rip Van Winkle his way in here and never managed to notice that I am only asking Iamb to do what he has asked and criticized his explanation using Iamb’s criteria.

And why hasn’t he told Iamb already in this thread that he can never know why our experiences are different? No, it is only we or perhaps just me who need this lecture, sort of along the lines of ‘what it is like to be a bat’

Iamb has been accusing people for a decade of not explaining their personal experiences to his liking AND
Adding to this then accusing them of comforting themselves with this ‘up in the clouds’ type description and other imind reading assertions.
Peter somehow missed all this.
And Prometheus just tags in because he is on Iamb’s team. He has the same beliefs or thinks he does.

Iamb himself responds to the request by saying that the best thing to do here is for OTHER people to present their moral beliefs on an issue.

IOW like a virus he tries to get the thread to reproduce his threads. Other people talking about their beliefs
Has nothing at all to do with my questions.
Iamb does not have the integrity to just say, no I don’t want to answer. And he doesn’t have the integrity to answer precisely the type of questions he asks others, often labeling their self-descriptions in insulting ways at the same time.
Of course this is briefly frustrating, but then…it really demonstrates that Iamb’s narcissism and solipsism is as functionally impervious as any I have ever encountered. I may have let some discussion partners down over the years, but I can head into the winter years of life content that I did not let him down. I approached with a wide range of attitudes and angles and if there was a chance for him to notice anything at all about himself, I may have missed it, but not for wont of trying.

The irony - a word he was more interested in before - is that it would actually help him to clarify in concrete terms what he means with that sentence…

Why?

Because he claims to want to know why other people are not so fragmented and fractured. Well, to answer that, the more clarity we have about his meaning of those terms, the better off we all would be.

If he is interested in what he claims to be interested in.

If he is.

If.

Perhaps it is a symptom of his being fractured and fragmented. Some of his fragmented are not interested in learning anything at all and they sabotage his conscious intent.

Poor thing.

Come on, the only way someone cannot have one is if they have little or no understanding of what an abortion is; or if they have had little or no personal experience with it.

Most of us here will have an ample understanding of what it is. And even if they have not had any personal experience with it in their life, they have probably formed an opinion about it based on all of the many times they come into contact with others who have experienced it personally, or given how often it makes headlines in the media.

So, most here have probably formed an opinion about the morality of it.

My contention then is that this opinion is derived existentially from the political prejudices they have come to embody given the constellation of particular experiences they have lived through…intertwined in their attempts to think it through using, among other things, the tools of philosophy.

And until and unless philosophers [or others] come up with a frame of mind that all rational people are obligated to share, I take my own subjective leap to dasein as the most likely explanation for why someone believes this and not that.

But: in no way, shape or form do I argue that my own assessment here is any less subsumed in my own assessment here than yours is.

Unless of course I’m wrong. :wink:

So, from my frame of mind, you do have an “intertwined trajectory in regard to abortion”. You just choose not to share it.

Note to others…

Is there anything really new here?

Also, is there a particularly potent point here that he raises which you feel I am obligated to address?

Anything at all?

duplicate post…

Although my point does bear repeating. :wink:

This is the way that you talk. This how you talk to yourself. This is the narrative that you create.

I don’t talk like this.

When I talk as I usually do, then you are astonished by what I say.

So, no I don’t have an “intertwined trajectory”.

The same goes for “comfort and consolation”. It’s your way of viewing others.

Simply unbelievable!

1] Does someone or does someone not have an opinion about the morality of abortion?

2] Have they or have they not lived a life and had experiences that contributed to that opinion?

3] Have they or have they not encountered information, knowledge and ideas that contributed to that opinion?

4] Is or is not their opinion about the morality of abortion going to be the embodiment of both?

Now, how is this not applicable to you? And how is the manner in which you “talk” about it different from mine? What on earth does that even mean?

Finally, the way I think about the morality of abortion leaves me feeling fractured and fragmented in what “here and now” I have thought myself into believing is an essentially meaningless No God world that will end for “I” in oblivion.

So, how comforting and consoling do you imagine that is?

All I have ever asked of you is to intertwine your own lived experiences with your own access to ideas about morality here and now and immortality there and then by providing us with the equivalent of my own trajectory in the OP here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

Instead, you hem and haw and offer one or another lame excuse for why this is not for you.

Just as I said. :laughing:

I have opinions about it.

I don’t write an “intertwined trajectory” narrative around my opinions.

I have no idea. I’m as baffled about the practical aspects of your “fractured and fragmented” state as KT is.

Right. I’m supposed to write about it exactly as you expect. If I write differently, then it’s “general”, “abstract” and “we’ll need a context, of course”. Or it’s “huh?” and “what on earth does it mean?”.

Ironically, when I wrote about contexts, it was still not up to your expectations.

Then we’re stuck.

We have different expectations rooted in different ways of thinking about human morality and immortality: given human interactions in either a God or a No God world.

Or whatever the equivalent of God is for Buddhists.

Of course, you could change your expectations.

I’ll let you know. And I’m counting on you to do the same. :laughing:

Okay. Give it some serious thought. You have a lot to gain and little to lose.

Phyllo:

The issue of abortion leaves him feelling fractured and fragmented. I still find that odd. I can certainly understand having mixed feelings, or being unsure about whether abortion is alright (in general or in certain instances). I can imagine this causing some anxiety - that one cannot decide or settle the issue for oneself.

I don’t however know what, in this case, fractured and fragmented means. He mentions ‘here and now’. Is it all the time? Or let’s say he checks CNN online or actually reads a physical newspaper over breakfast and see an article on abortion. Does he then feel fragmented and fractured and what is that phrase referring to. He has often spoken about not having an ‘i’. That seems like a similar thing to this F & F state. Is there a real depersonalization?

How is what he experiences different from someone who is simply unsure and wishes they could draw a firm moral conclusion about abortion, but cannot.

If he has a coffee with someone does he feel fragmented and fractured or does the abortion issue fade into the background and d uring that social time does he feel more or less like a whole person? IOW is it only when he is thinking of the issue or is he fragmented and fractured all the time?

Of course those beliefs he mentions are unlikely to be comforting, but a lot of the beliefs he expresses here and the dynamics with others could be very comforting. The way he thinks about other people and what he calls their intellectual contraptions…that can be comforting - iow he keeps telling himself that if people are less fragmented than he is
it is because they are irrationally using intellectual contraptions, whereas he is facing the abyss or some other self-myth.

Having as a criterion that he will not engage in meditation, therapy or any other ‘path/approach’ unless all rational people should be convinced to engage by an online rational argument

can be comforting because it seems like a rational justification for not challenging himself.

That he thinks there is no afterlife I believe does both him. That particular belief is not comforting to him, but this belief is surrounded by a bunch of other beliefs and also interpersonal dynamics that seems most certainly comforting to him.

I suppose that his reasoning goes something like this:

I think that abortion is wrong for some reasons.

I think that abortion is right for other reasons.

I can’t make that go away.

I don’t have a fixed set of values, judgements and evaluations which make one option clearly correct.

I should have that. I would have comfort and consolation if I did.

Who am I? What do I believe? What should I believe?

I feel fractured and fragmented.

Sure. All rather understandible. But to me unclear. ‘Fragmented’ and ‘fractured’ are very dramatic words. Presumably right now there is no abortion choice close to him. IOW he does not for personal reasons right now need to weigh in on a romantic partner or family member’s decision to abort or not. So it is not pressing in that sense.

‘I have strong mixed feelings.’ ‘It truly bothers me that I cannot find a way to resolve this issue.’

Sentences like that I understand in relation to the issue.

If he had a girlfriend right now who was considering an abortion and he felt torn on the issue, I could begin to understand F & F, more at least.

And to be fair it is not a one issue thing, even if what I quoted above might lead one to believe that. I assume he is F & F because he does not know how to resolve a wide range of moral issues, not just the abortion one. Fine, it certainly can be disturbing to feel like one has no way to resolve moral issues WHILE AT THE SAME TIME one feels on must do this - (for moral reasons??? for non-moral reasons???).

But right now I have no idea if this means he walks around most of the time feeling F & F. Or it comes up when he thinks about an issue like abortion.

If the latter then to me he is being melodramatic. To posit his psyche as fragmented and fractured, rather than some other more mundane and concrete way of describing his reaction.

In any context where value judgments clash. He lives in the US I think so if that counts as a context, then there is an ongoing clash between value judgments on the issue. But it’s not really his context anymore. There are political contexts. Of course it is not his job to reconcile these value clashes. One immediate reaction is that if those dramatics words ‘F&F’ really account for his internal state well, then he should withdraw from contexts, if he can, where these values are clashing. Online discussions of those issues, for example. Just out of self-care. Perhaps also start to see what the justification is for the pressure he is putting on himself.

Notice how in his response to you issues like a lack of God and whether there is an afterlife get conflated with conflicting goods.

Obviously God might reconcile conflicting goods. But here he is suffering F & F due to conflicting goods and always trying to get people to prove one side or the other. That is not going to help him figure out the afterlife.

Sitting around thinking about abortion and other value clashes is not going to help him understand the afterlife.

There are two really quite different issues - will his self continue or will it end? and how can be use reason to demonstrate the correct moral attitude on all issues?

He claims that the latter is enough to fracture and fragment him. Not just bother him. Not just something that can, on occasion, raise anxiety or frustration. But ongoing he is F&F. And by the way those terms are the kind of self-description used by people in psychotic breaks. Now we all have different meanings with descriptions of internal states, but he is steadfast in that self-description and uses it instead of more mundane, less melodramatic terms.

And yet, he wants to discuss abortion with everyone.

Right. Abortion is just an example that we should all be able to discuss. He is F&F with respect to all choices in morality.

And I think that it originates in his binary thinking. He wants the choices to fit nicely and cleanly into two boxes. And they don’t.