why i don't blog much lately
By diana on Jul 24, 2012 | In poly-ticks, the atheist files, capricious bloviations
my theories, all both of them
1. I've developed a social life.
I apologize to you all. I can quit at any time, though. I'm just doing it because, well, I enjoy it.
I've come to sincerely like many of the people here, and to enjoy their company. I play backgammon, hang out at Bahar's carpet shop, and I go out on Friday nights, find a nice place on the Kordon*, have a nice meal, and enjoy the company of others.
* The Kordon is where the Bay of Izmir meets the city.
When I do this, though, I'm suddenly socially fulfilled and find I have little or nothing to talk at length about, and no energy to develop my ideas on paper even when I do. What I'm saying is, blogging is just another form of autoeroticism and I've been having so much metaphorical sex that I simply haven't had the urge.
2. In the interest of mental health, I've been walking away from serious conversations.
I've spent a lot of time asking myself why I argue with people. I mean, what's my goal?
I want to communicate, but argument doesn't really communicate anything constructive, at least to the combatants. To take it farther, I want to communicate what? I want to communicate the truth as I see it, and therein lies the trap, because the person I'm arguing with also wants to communicate the truth as they see it, and neither of us is really trying to understand the other. I'm tired of it.
So more and more, I find myself reading the opinions of others and not saying anything. I may very much disagree, but two things: (1) my chances of understanding their position, even a little, is diminished by my engaging them, and (2) most people simply aren't interested in exchanging ideas, anyway, and I truly feel most of the time that I'm talking to the wind.
This is not to say I won't engage anyone. I'm just noticing a direct correlation between my nonresponse to people's assertions and my personal happiness.
Or as Robert Heinlein once wrote, "It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired."
And I am tired. I'm tired of trying to explain calculus to people who never learned to add and subtract, and that's what it feels like to try to have a reasoned discussion with people who have no grasp of logic but have been told what to believe so often that they take their basic beliefs as axioms. I admit I don't know how to break through the armor of faith.*
* "Belief because you want to believe," by biblical definition, which means I'm trying to find a chink not in the Armor of God, but in the Armor of Ignorance.
Sam Harris addressed this problem most eloquently when he said, "Most people cannot be argued out of their beliefs because they were not argued into them to begin with."
I'm not just talking religion. I'm including politics here, which people generally are--if anything--more passionate about than they are about their religions, at least in the west.
So what's the point? Somebody needs to keep fighting the good fight, but I don't think many people do it, from either side. I'm just as disgusted with most of the Democrat sound bytes/arguments I see as I am with the Republican ones. This isn't because I think neither side has merit; both sides have merit. The problem is, humanity is not black and white. We are not 1's and 0's. We're all the fractions in between, and sound bytes reduce our complexity to the misleading simplicity of black and white.
But we live in a sound byte world. That is the reality. I don't know how to compete with that.
Reality is not a sound byte.
d
9 comments
How social and yet zen at the same time.
Sounds like you are having a good life and the only way it could be improved is to have your wife with you too, not thousands of kilometres away.
I missed your posts but then we need to remember that even if someone doesn’t contact us through a disseminating media, they still exist having a fulfilling and full life.
L.
Diana,
Good for you for geting a life! It gives me hope that I might get one some day.
I’d never heard Heinlein’s remark about mature wisdom before. I suspect my tiredness is genuine though. I’m still waiting to grow up. At the rate I’m going, I probably won’t live long enough to become mature, let alone wise.
I heard an engineering axiom the other day that came to mind as I read about you giving up on fruitless debates: “If you’re arguing to defend your decision, you’ve already lost.” (This is specific to user interface design. If you have to explain it to other engineers, average users will never figure it out.) There are times when a debate between immovable opinions is edifying for those who witness it, but it’s still a lot of work.
Dave
Thanks, y’all. I wouldn’t say my life is fulfilling at this point, but I do get out and spend time with people.
Dave, you are mature, and if you didn’t learn it, you must have been born that way, my friend.
On the other hand, immaturity is the fountain of youth. ;)
d
On the other hand, immaturity is the fountain of youth.
Diana,
That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard all day. Thanks!
By the way, it looks like my daughter may know one of your former students. The cousin of one of her co-workers graduated from the AFA this year.
Dave
Yeah? Name? Many of my kids did indeed graduate this year. :)
d
One day we’ll all have Google Glasses and chips in our brains or some shit and REALLY be in each others lives. I ain’t worried that keeping in touch with other people is going to get any harder at least, (and I am a bit sick of all the fucking typing at this stage). So go have your life, and we’ll no doubt be seeing each other in Google-Borg neuralspace or some crap like that in the future.
As for why you argue, it’s simple. Assuming you start from a position of intellectual honesty, you’re telling other people what you believe to be an accurate view of reality in the hopes that you find someone “smarter than you” who can see the flaws in your reasoning so you can correct it, (like you did for me what feels like ages ago). If you’re just trying to win arguments with people dumber than you, (or people who are intellectually dishonest), there’s nothing to gain either way.
All things being equal, you’ll benefit each other to some degree most of the time. But if you’re smarter than most, (or have become rigid in your thinking because you win the rhetorical debate and defend your sacred cows with enough ease to fool even yourself), then that leaves nothing but scraps to feed on.
You’re still not as smart as you think you are by the way. You still believe a bunch of the standard-NATO Leftist just-asserted-as-fact moralistic bullshit, (Harris *retch*, Heinlein … a little more promising). But either way you’ve got an accurate enough view of reality to get by IRL, and most people OTI are just going to waste your time. So go, do. The internet isn’t going anywhere. Maybe everyone will catch up one day when we plug all the Christians into the Google-Matrix and expose their brains to … well … actual thoughts.
Notice I don’t post as much as I sorta still want to either - especially on those intellectual kiddie-pool atheist message boards. I’m actually putting what I learned to practical use IRL.
Some shit you’ll never really know the answer to, even though you know there is some ultimate answer, but you’ll only get one shot to make some decisions in your lifespan either way. So take your best educated guess and put your nickel down.
Neither the over-examined life or the unexamined life are going to be the best options for most people. Although I’m personally sympathetic to their motivations, I’d hope even those orange toga-wearing numbnuts who sit halfway up the face of K2 meditating in the hope of becoming enlightened come down at some point and put their mystical “wisdom” to some kind of use. They might still believe spinning-circles-in-their-own-head bullshit, but at least they’ve got some chance of getting laid.
At any rate, if the internet is bumming you out, then it’s probably because you feel somehow obligated because of all the time you’ve spent here in the past, half-fought battles still in progress, etc.
Meh. Screw it. You don’t owe anybody anything.
Hey, Neil. :)
Always a pleasure to hear from you.
I agree with all, except for the “you aren’t as smart as you think you are” comment. It’s routinely been my experience that I’m much smarter than I think I am. The catch is, I’ve never thought I was all that smart. Knowing that, I’m routinely surprised when I accomplish things that I didn’t think I was smart enough to do.
I know, I know. It’s just a figure of speech. But I had a response to it, anyway. ;)
d
PS. Then sometimes, I’m not as smart as I think I am, too. I get stuff wrong but I’m hardheaded; it takes research and patience to set me right.
Then sometimes, sharing a quote from a person doesn’t imply agreement with everything that person says, does, believes, or stands for, too. ;)
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