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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: BayerPhi]
#22221423 - 09/11/15 11:19 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I quite enjoy it when Kurt quotes Nietzsche, as he does frequently and with alacrity. I'm a fan.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: mindfckery]
#22221459 - 09/11/15 11:26 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yeah, Genealogy of Morals. It's something in itself.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Hey, I want apologize for any bluntness of my initial response JKSB, and attempt a more relative response. Nietzsche has a particularly "extroverted" sense of value which in one way is incredible, but as DQ well pointed out, it is always with a sense of ease to quote Nietzsche. The man who with a propitious sense of closure, said “I am dynamite”, did not necessarily find an inner peace, I observe.
Yet Nietzsche is on point in this topic. For some reason, acknowledging being in the world, seems so often to be in crudeness or plain shittiness of it, and that is why I think I responded to your post in the first place. Shittiness is always “there”, and I agree with acknowledging that. It is the exemplary crude element, you could say, for a human to draw an association and reflex (aversion to “shittiness”) from. In your last post, you seem to describe it as a potentially essential impression of things:
Quote:
...I think the quote that I added regarding people who are 'shit' is quite a useful tool to carry in this life. When I think of someone as 'shit' - I simply mean when someone acts in a way which is offensive to me. I'm very open to the fact that it could always be me who has the problem, which is why I tend not to take the offensive, but rather withdraw to a space where I can effectively analyse the situation.
While I generally agree with nearly all manners or means of finding distinction and value in the world, as opposed to what is commonly not attempting that, I would at least attempt to argue that negativity (whether you look for it in yourself, or others) can't be considered basically or essentially demonstrative of anything. The notion could be expressed, but in point I agree with Nietzsche that it just doesn't make much sense to base “values” on the bad or negative, even if it is possible. I also think there is more to this though. I think it would be more native to my own philosophical temperament in fact, and perhaps your own as well, to argue this another way.
From a “point” of withdrawal, as you suggest in the quote, it is interesting that there may be so much observation and emphasis on the phenomenal character of our impression of things, even the quality of an impression itself. Maybe it is all the more visceral in meditation. And yet I also observe the object or goal in many meditations, is to cease the said impression in some sense. "Yoga is ceasing the impressions of the mind". That impression is apparently given an immanent distinction in buddhist's pessimism, in a world of suffering: “This one (with right view)... has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing.”
If it were possible to suggest, and follow such notions as this, as points of dialogue, I would say I am less wondering how this negative impression is attributed to this or that, rightly or wrongly, but how consciousness or awareness deals with “shit”.
Spontaneity, action, and distinction in the world, may be considered basic as Nietzsche well argues, which is also something many philosophers miss. Immersed in action, in the physical reflexes for instance, they will tend to blend with “reactions” of the sort I may consider hiccups or mistakes. In action I may see and observe this, but there is always something burning and flowing through action, and I am not stepping back from this and wondering how this or that happened, and I am not going to repeat something from the beginning to get it right necessarily. Maybe all I am is a being of neuro-muscular reflexes, and indeed that includes the more abrasive “reactions” in flow and unity of physical organism. It is all the same “stuff”, although I believe that is less to speak of the nature of “the physical body” (an easy association to make) as the nature of action.
If on the other hand, I have an ideal of peace or stillness as well, I am in this way also observing emotions and thought complexes, and presenting their phenomena to myself this way, and I am doing this perhaps all the more, in more subtlety and awareness, in relief from stillness. Any arising, any burning, is not what I am ultimately looking for in ideal stillness, and yet I am looking and observing like a cat watching a hole in the wall for a mouse. Or maybe the way I would observe is looking for something like a nervous tic or a “knee jerk” reaction that I can give awareness to.
While I find that acknowledging my attitude toward the nature of these impressions is important, and important to be consistent in, what I finally observe is that generally my impression can seem to change significantly. While I get that the impression is of something “there”, I wonder how I attribute this. How do I attribute things like suffering and the general shittiness of things to life? I guess all I have is these roundabout questions...? These considerations are touching and overlapping in some places, in a very complex way (even though that complex may be completely conditional, and simplified, as just awareness for instance).
What I was critical of in drawing an association, was originally, of whether it is possible to base distinctions or values on something bad (the Nietzschean argument), even if badness exists. But I think it must not just be a matter if it is appropriately or inappropriately attributed, and I still wonder where the general idea (the analogy itself) of pessimism towards life, the shit of it comes from. Is it based on some notion of “the lowness” of physical nature, and some notion of seperation of things?
Anyways, I am not saying I disagree with self responsible approaches, as you seem to have described. I think that you are able to examine that essential attribute, and change your opinion on it, has got to be something. I am curious about the "tool" you speak of. Resolving to put up with someone else's shit, or indeed being at any point able to reconsider a judgement that a person literally is shit, (and I mean still have something to do with him) is something I haven't been unlucky enough to grok, perhaps. I am not saying I don't have my own problems, and sense of responsibility, for sure, but I think they have been accidental problems, rather than so essentially based on the character of people.
I have gotten some good whiffs...I think our medical care system in the united states is shit, our people gaurding it, and focusing on pretentious methodological slants and objectification (symptoms) rather than care, and embodied health, is pretty shitty, and I think that politicians arguing for what is appropriate for us is shitty, but its all just kind of like this big giant vague shit, and mostly what I observe is a lack of consciousness, more than conscious evils. I could well be naive, but that is where I am coming from, anyway.
To be able to raise essential questions, and perhaps be wrong, or change my opinion, is something I'd consider to be well and appreciable...
Edited by Kurt (09/13/15 08:47 PM)
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Jokeshopbeard
Humble Student

Registered: 11/30/11
Posts: 26,088
Loc: Deep in the system
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: Kurt]
#22232527 - 09/13/15 04:26 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Thanks for saying Kurt. Do you think you could sum that up in a couple of sentences? I'm sorry to have to ask, but your intellect dazzles me sometimes!
-------------------- Let it be seen that you are nothing. And in knowing that you are nothing... there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain. What can happen to you? Something can happen to the body, but it will either heal or it won't. What's the big deal? Let life knock you to bits. Let life take you apart. Let life destroy you. It will only destroy what you are not. --Jac O'keeffe
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blackdust


Registered: 02/28/09
Posts: 8,327
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Quote:
without creating a great deal of conflict?
How do you halt or handle a manipulator like this?
1. Everybody is a manipulator 2. Conflict is a very natural and normal human experience. I am under the impression that your perception of conflict may carry a negative view. Please, refer to some communication studies on what conflict is and how to deal best with both inter and intra personal conflict situations from a perspective that may fit you better.
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BayerPhi
Always Learning

Registered: 05/28/12
Posts: 1,884
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Quote:
Jokeshopbeard said: Thanks for saying Kurt. Do you think you could sum that up in a couple of sentences? I'm sorry to have to ask, but your intellect dazzles me sometimes!
It's worth breaking it down. Like solving a riddle, my friend.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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I am not sure I will be able to arrive at any fundamental clarity, but at least in what I was saying, I can summarize: I think we begin with our impressions generally, and that is all we seem to have to work with. That would be the summary idea, although understanding those impressions in an organic or practical sense is what I was trying to get at, and that opens to the complications which we are all (surely if we are here talking about this) involved with. That I can't summarize so I guess I am just spitballing.
Another simple thing I observe, is you take a stand on confronting something, whereas many and most people are just relativistic about the same thing. What you are saying seems to me like some solid roots to get at. What is suffering, or what is this seemingly inherent shittiness to life - that stuff that sticks - and where does it come from. How are we really responsible for all this in human life?
I once picked up this book at a used bookstore on Tibetan practice that was, well, impossible to read comprehensively, but at the front of it there was a metaphor that stuck with me. It described a tangled ball of roots. I recall the line now, and found it on the web:
Quote:
A tangle within, a tangle without, people are entangled in a tangle. Gotama, I ask you this: who can untangle this tangle?
I would say that while we can take up the essential problems of existence, maybe we can forget about how to (or to whom to) attribute this problem to in a certain sense. Maybe it is necessary due even to the nature of the problem? Of course that is the hard part, because it seems to be against all suggestible intelligibility to resign a sense of essential responsibility. I don't have any solution, or ultimate clarity to share, in suggesting that, so it might not even be a good method or approach, but for some reason I feel like we are all in the same boat, so this is what I'm throwing out there.
I would stand by one thing in my experience, that with all my problems, I find them related with tendencies of other people, my family and my society, and that is to say, largely in human relationships in general. But in my experience, none of them are ever themselves the essential root of my problems. Definitely it is in having to do with them, that a problem arises, and of course I have met some people who are a mess, or who just seem like trouble.
But as it happened (more in my personal experience) I got some way bigger problems and some perspective, which I am still trying to work out. I am not sure, but I think of it as my nature or fate to deal with a problem, and the way I am mainly doing that (effectively or not) is working on essentially relative conditions. It is definitely not anything that has worked out to be a virtue, but on my lap, and at least I have had that opportunity to see... damn, no one is responsible for this, and not even me, but then everyone is, including me. Does that make sense? I am not sure! But this is how things seem to me if so we're to couch for anything.
Actually I am right in the muck of trying to sort things out again, to find out how this deal came to be. I have recently been projecting a huge and heavy and unjustifiable burden on a girl I dated recently. It wasn't blame, but a projection of responsibility or commitment that was not hers, and I am hoping I have the wisdom to work things out with her, and distance the associations I made without breaking things apart.
Anyway, I'll clarify that my thought is on an undesirable aspect of life, as suffering. Maybe we all look at the same kind of problem, and want to give it a name, and label it, and find out what belongs to who and so on, (sniff-sniffing around) and that of course is necessary, but under the right assumption which is not always so easy to understand, and indeed, maybe constantly addressed.
I don't know if this happens to be true of the nature of reality or whatever, but maybe it is just an image or association, or a tool for insight. I get acknowledging problems, and inherent and deep problems in their origin (or responsibility), but are they something so essential, I wonder? What is suffering? Aren't there often complex, interrelated conditions in play? Well, that I think is the most I can make of this.
I am not sure if I am managing to go in the direction of making sense, but this is my shot. Appreciate the relative interchange though, Jokeshop. I have to work on clarity, surely.
Edited by Kurt (09/13/15 11:48 PM)
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BayerPhi
Always Learning

Registered: 05/28/12
Posts: 1,884
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: Kurt]
#22235559 - 09/14/15 07:21 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Have you visited the Vedas or the Gita, Kurt?
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: BayerPhi]
#22236282 - 09/14/15 11:53 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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If I were still practicing formal astanga yoga, I think I would find my present aspiration in the works of philosophical poetry you've mentioned. Right now I am knee deep in Patanjali, and trying to work with something relatively systematic.
I'd note that Nietzsche and the Gita have a similar premise in acknowledging a life of conflict. Ie. (To the point of the topic) ponderousness and argument on the wrong basis never solved anything, but may just go in circles and conditioned patterns. Appreciate the reminder.
Hopefully JKSB will spur this discussion forward; no dwelling!
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blackdust


Registered: 02/28/09
Posts: 8,327
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: Kurt] 1
#22236334 - 09/14/15 12:08 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I like to use the "conflict is a garden" metaphor for my perspective.
Quote:
Human relationships, especially when conflict has recently been part of the environment, need time to grow slowly, to recover from stress, and to put down roots. We can "harvest" the fruits of careful labor (Kritek 1994, 275)
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: blackdust]
#22237267 - 09/14/15 03:45 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Manipulating is what people do best and we all do it. Some of us are just more blunt and non-discrete about hiding it.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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Raven Gnosis
𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔞


Registered: 02/10/11
Posts: 1,311
Loc: Necoc Yaotl
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: Manipulating is what people do best and we all do it. Some of us are just more blunt and non-discrete about hiding it.
Though I don’t think it’s what we do best, I do agree with everything else implied in this sentiment.
I do manipulate people, sometimes unconsciously too. I try to be compassionate and thoughtful in my conscious ones, though the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It can even be argued that all words and speech we use with one another is in itself inherently manipulative in a manner. Every word I write here giving rise to thoughts and sentiments not your own in your head, whether you hold onto them or not. As it is possible with much of which you may have studied and how that has influenced your perception of self and world, painting the world with colors which may not even truly be there.
“As for the superstitions of the logicians, I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit – namely, that a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, not when ‘I’ want; so that it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think’….” Nietzche, beyond good and evil.
-------------------- To be human is to be fettered, to endure what one is, in perpetuum, no matter what the debility or perversity.
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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"No man ever steps in the same river twice"
Heraclitus
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Raven Gnosis
𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔞


Registered: 02/10/11
Posts: 1,311
Loc: Necoc Yaotl
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Re: Dealing with Manipulators. [Re: Kurt]
#22241769 - 09/15/15 03:03 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Makes me think of Charles Manson.
“That’s a brand new step… Never been done… It’s history. Every step I take now, is history.”
-------------------- To be human is to be fettered, to endure what one is, in perpetuum, no matter what the debility or perversity.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
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Your friend's comment to you reminds me of these popular psychopaths that I came across on Facebook today. Unfortunately, the Knowledge of the Heart is an Intuitive Knowledge, Gnosis, Gyan, Jnana. http://www.ruhanisatsangusa.org/naam/naam-gyan.htm . Your 'friend' (and I use the word loosely if he is what I think he is, at a lower level than the pros in the vid), is simply asking you to believe whatever he tells you, uncritically and without asking questions. Naturally, he expects that any lies and deceptions he comes out with will also be accepted uncritically. This is how highly psychopathic criminal manage to enlist their assistants btw. Jim Jones told his 909 victims to drink poisoned Flavor-Aid (not Kool-Aid) because the enemy was coming to burn them alive with flame-throwers. It was a lie, but they all complied! Red flag my friend, red flag.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
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Raven Gnosis
𝔰𝔢𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔠𝔦𝔡𝔞


Registered: 02/10/11
Posts: 1,311
Loc: Necoc Yaotl
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Quote:
I think he is, at a lower level than the pros in the vid), is simply asking you to believe whatever he tells you, uncritically and without asking questions. Naturally, he expects that any lies and deceptions he comes out with will also be accepted uncritically.
This is exactly what he was implying and why it disgusted me. Since I've made this thread, I've had a couple opportunities to hack at the roots of his thinking with success all while encouraging him to plant in himself seeds of thought which if nurtured, lead to behavior and thinking healthier for himself and those around him.
-------------------- To be human is to be fettered, to endure what one is, in perpetuum, no matter what the debility or perversity.
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