intransigence of us all

You mean fossilized where you wrote formalized.... Some people get hooked on the form and let it think for them....intelligent people always see through the form to the extent that they are intelligent...

Do you remember in the Republic when the question of youth was brought up...I believe it may have been related to sexuality with the point being that it was a form of madness one escapes with age... Too many drivers let their testosterone control the accelerator...Slow down... The truth doesn't take sides... There is really no point to being all emotional about it, and if you do you sort of miss the point: the truth is impossible to know, but you should know enough to doubt the truth...

I've been there. But megalomania isn't the end of the story. In my opinion, "satanic" individualism ("kill em all" or "f*ck what you think) is a necessary askesis, or phase, or "moment," in development. Buber speaks of this. At some point you arrive at the conclusion that "nothing is true & everything is permitted." And this a dynamic conception of truth, centered around the glory of the atomic self....Jesus is Satan++

(note that I don't believe in any God that isn't human, so I'm speaking symbolically....) & forgive the imposition if this is ill-taken

To labor the fossilization analogy, I don't think we can change our fossilized ideals with some sort of trauma. To remove them one would have to chip them from the bedrock of your self perception. However their influence will always be felt, after all when one chips sopmething out fo a rock they leave a hole. Filling the hole is impossible because of the process of fossilization. One is no longer in their formative years where the conditions to create fossils are so readily atmospheric.

Our forms, religion, government, parties, communities, even families, all of which we grow up with have a place in our self perception...Unless people are willing to see these forms from the outside they will not ever see at all... And this is not a plea for immoral individualism, or even individualism which is inevitably immoral, but for the willingness to examine morality in all its contexts, and to try to understand ones forms as an objective fact in every relationship instead of purely a subjective fact in all our lives...

Its one thing to recognise your failings, to then try to overcome them is almost insurmountable, if not impossible.

I started liking learning from my mistakes. You actually learn to avoid them. Big reward !

for me the forum works Wonders; to X-change ID's & opinions...

What failings? How have you failed? You sound like a normal human being to me.

Psychological studies confirm what successful propagandists, politicians and trial lawyers have always intuitively known: that the "firing order" of most human beings is either ABC or ACB -- Affective (emotions, aesthetics), Cognitive, Behavioral. Rational debate is rarely an agent of persuasion or change -- more often it is simply a rationale for already formed affective opinions.

Rational debate or discourse is interesting for some, and probably for most PF members. Among those with a strong intellectual or cognitive bent, perhaps it can persuade. However, generally speaking, the art of persuasion requires a different set of tools.

If you are genuinely seeking truth or "the good" or "the lesser evil" among conflicting opinions, IMO you have to begin by seeing the world through the culture, aesthetics and emotions of the other guy. You need to "get" where he's coming from vs. starting with the presumption that he is wrong.

If you've studied the issues, are convinced that your view is correct, and simply want to persuade others to adopt your perspective, read Goebbels. Or rhetoric. Or the speeches of successful Southern trial lawyers. Or politicians...

Don't beat yourself up for being human.

BTW: the above paragraph about seeking "the truth" or "the good" does not apply to me. I'm old, I've been around the block a few times already, and besides, I don't have time to go through all that cr... that process.

rebecca

What some Muslims have said is: If you want to change the world, first change yourself...

That should be enough to cure anyone of looking for change, because what you must do to change all people must do in a society if the society would change... And people hate change, and that is why forms often endure long enough to kill their societies, because as long as they work for a few, enough, those few who know the problem cannot move most people toward change, and yet all change involves a change of forms...It does happen with social forms, but very seldom, and often with great violence...