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Thu 22 Nov, 2007 04:21 am
exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation.
A negative persona is an attitude of non-acceptance.
Do you accept, reject, or hold judgment regarding my claim?
So it appears to you that many young people consider that being negative is being cool. What an ignorant generalization that is. Clearly you either haven't met any of these "negative" young people, to find out why they think negatively about things, or you have, but you didn't pay any attention to what they had to say, and did it not come to your attention that some of these "young people" as you put it, may be depressed, and not just being negative to be "cool". The only thing I would agree with in your argument is what you said at the end, "Everyone is ignorant of almost anything".
Coberst started another thread earlier, in which he alleged that argument is war, and advanced this silly thesis there. Coberst is not interested in anything you have to say if you do not accept his dicta on philosophy and the meaning of life. He posts his drivel all over the internet, and it is almost universally rejected because of the rigidity of his thinking, the poverty of his education, and his unwillingness to debate the terms of any thesis he puts forward. Lately, he has taken to whining about the fact that he gets no more respect online than his narrow-minded and unbending thoughts deserve. Don't be surprised that he now attempts to condemn "young people" as a class--the odds are good that he now believes that he gets no respect because he old and wise, and his critics are young an foolish. At this forum, however, i know that there are at least four stern critics of his who are in their late forties or in their fifties. I'm sure he has branded us all young fools, because that would be more gratifying thought than that what he posts is actually the drivel that it patently is.
coberst,
Isn't your thesis just a convoluted restatement of the view that "absolute truth" does not exist. i.e. that truth is always relative ?
fresco wrote:coberst,
Isn't your thesis just a convoluted restatement of the view that "absolute truth" does not exist. i.e. that truth is always relative ?
I don't think so. This post is an attempt to make people focus upon the bad habit of making judgments on little or no knowledge. The fact that we cannot know anything with certainty needs to be made clear because our culture confuses individuals into thinking that they can know with certainty. I see no connection.
Which "people" ? Anybody who calls themeself "philosopher" may have their pet themes (you certainly do) but they would not be on this forum (or your others) if they were not prepared test the integrity of those themes.
Perhaps you should address your comments to the billions of "people" who see their religion as "absolute truth"...a phenomenon which clearly indicates to me a pyscho-social need for "truth". Your "vision" of some hypothetical population with a "punk attitude" might merely be a local manifestion of such a need.
The substance of Chuck's first post here is concerned with the matter of getting married to an error of judgement and getting stuck with it for life as ego protection.
Gerard Manley Hopkins covered it in one of his letters. No doubt many others have also dealt with it.
It is a very common failing I'm afraid since movies and TV taught everybody how to act out roles.
i have to agree with fresco's latest post on this one.
this isn't really about us, nor about them, coberst.
Hey, if you can supply the means I will address the billions!
Re: Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning
coberst wrote:everyone is ignorant of almost everything.
That's about as negative and inhibiting a statement as you'll find. It's another indication that most of your posts are unwittingly autobiographical.
Since I never got an answer on your other thread, I'll ask again: Does the problem lie primarily with "young people"? As your post amply demonstrates, there are older A2Kers who spend almost all of their time on here berating contemporary society for their intellectual laziness, criticizing institutions of higher learning for their (unsubstantiated) flaws, and even preemptively chastizing people for not having library cards in their wallets. I'd be curious to hear what advice you would prescribe to such relentlessly negative older folks who apparently share the belief with young people that being negative is cool.
Re: Negative persona (mask) inhibits learning
Shapeless wrote:coberst wrote:everyone is ignorant of almost everything.
That's about as negative and inhibiting a statement as you'll find. It's another indication that most of your posts are unwittingly autobiographical.
Since I never got an answer on your other thread, I'll ask again: Does the problem lie primarily with "young people"? As your post amply demonstrates, there are older A2Kers who spend almost all of their time on here berating contemporary society for their intellectual laziness, criticizing institutions of higher learning for their (unsubstantiated) flaws, and even preemptively chastizing people for not having library cards in their wallets. I'd be curious to hear what advice you would prescribe to such relentlessly negative older folks who apparently share the belief with young people that being negative is cool.
I do not think older people display the degree of negativity as does the young because the young are really preening before their peers. Older folks may retain that degree of negativity but they do not display it, possibly because their peers do not think it is cool.
I give the same adice to every person young or old. I have been posting on Internet forums for 4 years and never had the occassion to observe many older folks displaying negativity of this nature. It is not always obvious what age the responder might be.
Coberst wrote:I have been posting on Internet forums for 4 years and never had the occassion to observe many older folks displaying negativity of this nature.
Allow me to jog your memory. You don't have to look far on A2K to find older folks
berating contemporary society for their intellectual laziness,
criticizing institutions of higher learning for their (unsubstantiated) flaws, and even
preemptively chastizing people for not having library cards in their wallets. As you undoubtedly don't need me to tell you, these links are merely repeats of threads that the poster has been hawking persistently for four years.
How do you reconcile your belief that older folks are more reserved with these ostentatious displays of negativity?
Guess I do not have as good a memory as you do.
If you like. Anyway, back to the question: how do you reconcile your belief that older folks are more reserved with these ostentatious displays of negativity? Do these examples make you reconsider your claims in this thread?
Shapless
No. My judgment is based upon much evidence. You can always find events that do not fit the normal.
It comes as a great relief to hear about your "evidence," since your reluctance to present evidence was the subject of heated debate on the previous thread and you didn't lift a finger to defend yourself. But we can put that behind us. I'm sure we would all be interested to hear about this evidence that young people are more negative than older people. Present away.
Interestingly the adage "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" seems to invert the expectancy here !
Shapeless wrote:It comes as a great relief to hear about your "evidence," since your reluctance to present evidence was the subject of heated debate on the previous thread and you didn't lift a finger to defend yourself. But we can put that behind us. I'm sure we would all be interested to hear about this evidence that young people are more negative than older people. Present away.
My evidence is based on observation and judgment. I am a father of 5 and a grandfather of 7.
Added to this is 4 years of posting on Internet forums, which has provided me with an enormous close contact with this attitude that to be negative is to be cool. However, this is not the only reason I see so much negative behavior on the Internet. Evidence indicates that many people just want to respond and when they face a matter about which they are ignorant they do the negative route. If the OP says X is true then the X is false is an easy response that does not display so obviously a response without foundation.
Shapeless will just love that !
Coberst, can't you see the distinct possibility that "the young" is actually "the young coberst" before he went to the "CT bootcamp" (your metaphor), and you are inflicting on us your rationalisation of the emergence of the (born again) "September Scholar" (again your metaphor)?
i would submit to shapeless and fresco the philosophy that "the more you push someone who resists when pushed, the more he will resist and the more pointless the exchange will be" or is that mere psychology?
there's got to be a way for this campaign of coberst's (and the campaign of his contemporaries on this forum) to be more fruitful. if coberst is (allegedly) incapable of such practical thought, i'd urge, only for the well-being and intellectual development of those that deal with coberst in the future, for those more skilled with philosophical thinking to find some way to help coberst out, if such a thing is possible.
otherwise it will just be pissing back and forth, which was (in other words) the complaint made by both sides, correct? of course if this is all in good fun (it is as far as i'm concerned) then carry on, the rest is just this idea i had.
i'm not claiming to be up to the task, personally. i do what i think i'm up to, which at least increases as time goes on.
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