Cant we all just get along?

I don't intend this to be a gripe about the mods. I know they're doing their jobs the best they know how and I respect that.

With that said.

Can we all agree to go a little easier on eachother in a discussion. Maybe grow a little thicker skin and try to discuss out way through our frustrations w/o running to the mods. How about realizing that others who may name call and flame bait are just airing their frustrations as well. Perhaps if we learn to work through our frustrations instead of diming on eachother we may better work together. We are all supposed to be on the same side here.

Last I checked this site contained over 90,000 members. What a great opportunity to engage in candid conversation and perhaps trade a few barbs here and there. There is a sizable audience and an opportunity to get some issues off your chest while having it read.

Who could ask for better?

There is nothing more disheartening than watching people, who are supposed to be on the same side, dime eachother out left and right. I'm not one to think that we are going to fix this thing by posting to a message board but is a great resource for getting your voice heard.

I hate having to hash through threads constantly reading;

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YADDAYADDAYADDAYADDAYADDAYADDA

Isn't it bad enough we catch enough crap from the right? How about a little tolerance to allow others to air ourselves out a bit? We may not agree on everything but could we at least agree on that?

Whats the worst that could come of it?

The left is fractured enough in this country.

Just kidding.

I agree. A little civility goes a long way.

be allowed because it defeats the entire purpose of this being a civil place to debate ideas, educate and "strategery" ways to defeat republicans.

I look at like taking a second to pick up some litter.

Sometimes it offers me better opportunities to reach some people. At least I know they are frustrated and are voicing it.

It's much better than having them fake politness to me.

Nine times out of ten the name calling that I recieve isnt about me. It's about some form of frustration or struggle with an issue.

I dont minds people calling me names. I am pretty tolerable about that stuff and allow for everything in the book to be tossed in my direction. Sometimes people are trying to voice constructive critisism other times they are being jerks. I think running for mod intervention just adds more fuel to the fire.

I'm suprised sometimes how easy is is to turn something around when the individual resorts to name calling. It's much for difficult to swing them on an issue when they have to fake civil discourse.

;)

Boston) ;)

Dont have a Bostonians heart.

Although Ive been here for 12 years.

when the individual resorts to name-calling they've already lost the debate. Easy to ignore.

Yeah, fake politeness is passive-aggressive. With that, it's also better to bow out than lock horns.

It's all about flexibility--that's one thing conservative thinkers don't have and can't understand.

Rodney King?

Trolls! Trolls everywhere! Trolls!

(trolls)

That the thing we cherish here, the tool we use to pretend to communicate, is the mind. The mind is not a concrete or tangible thing. It appears to be an outgrowth for survival, but yet, it may be something other. I don't know and I am not sure if anyone of us really does for absolutely-fucking-sure.

All that should be clear that, if it was an outgrowth of the transcendent organism, it is certainly a multi-million year old bio-computer that has been subsumed by culture for its own, larger, focused, profitable sake.

From that understanding we can see that what may have been a simple gesture to sweep dead leaves over the body to keep it warm has expanded and mutated into this. A simple gesture with a bone may have, with memory and some simple reason, turned into better kills and, eventually weapons. I don't really care about the "religious" or moralistic ramifications or if my own assumptions, at this stage, are only relative reflections on the abstract implications of said.

All that seems to be obvious is that the mind and its thoughts are, demonstrably so, about oneupmanship. I find it sad that so many sensitive people who interact online don't see that fact and ascertain, quickly, the nature of the mythical mind that is being used here and there.

You might hold a god as your symbolic ring-pass-naught. Or, you may hold MIND as such. It makes no difference to me because both can be seen, in many ways, as the same in the realm of human experience and interactions.

Those who can see that the mind is merely an extension or reflection of the sword then see that, no matter how it is now held up on its high and holy phenomenal throne, it has certain attributes that cannot be ignored or denied, no matter how much romanticism and fondness is applied in order to substantiate it. Oh, and of course, you are at loss as to what else might be able to supplant the mind with its logic, reason, and philosophy, etc. Well, if you consider all things spiritual as a part of the scenario of what we call, and bow to, as mind, then it may be more obvious.

You use your mind, in every way, shape, and form, to somehow outdo your fellows, no matter what kind of gauze or ointments you apply in the process. Mind is a weapon on every front. For instance, you go to college to outdo and supersede those who cannot or will not. You are using the mind to compete and subjugate. If this is not obvious yet, then you have not come to mandalic reasoning where you see that plain and simple truth of truths.

While this is not at all a full and deep treatise on the premise I have presented, for some of you, it is a resounding and essential, (though rather unsettling) fact that underscores much of the tumultuous phenomena still prevalent in a world where mind has stood up to predominate in the face of religious dogmas, and yet, has seemed to present the very same enigmas , confusion, and inequities as before.

Catch on and, perhaps, then, something REAL can happen. It is a path of thorns and the beats of different drummers.

Only a smll dozens of you are ready to inuit that. But if a large percentage of you could find this spark that you already have and nobody could ever give you, then your dreams would already be a card from the post office telling you that you need to schedule the next delivery. Nothing else will do in times like these. This is OUR time, after all.

I certainly do not use my mind in EVERY way to somehow outdo my fellows. The mind can be a weapon, a perhaps most often is, but any weapon is also a tool - even a nuclear bomb, in theory, as in the movie Armageddon. With a hammer I can crack a skull, or I can build a house for somebody. I theorize that all communication is a variation of two basic messages - either "let me help" or "do something for me". I hope this helps clear away some of your cynicism and despair, but I also think it is pretty clear that I have outdone you :woohoo: :P

You have proved my point! That is, if you obtained nothing from using your housebuilding skills when you erected it.

I do not have housebuilding skills. If I did, I could outdo those who cannot huild there own homes and then use that to obtain compensation.

I don't think that people who consider themselves intelligent should hide in a cloud of obscurity about the facts about mind when it is honestly observed without prejudice and self-protection.

I apologize if I implied that oneupmanship is merely a negative thing. No mater how you one-up you fellow person, you only do it for a result that improves your own situation, one way or another. However, like the sword of analysis, the mind is not the totally beneficent, altruistic entity that those who have mastered it imply.

If there is no transcendence of mind-at-large, then atom bombs and ultimate destruction are the implied outcome and the end of the goal. When the mind is seen for what it is by our very integral and ubiquitous concisions at large, then ... something MIGHT happen. Otherwise, all bets are off for me.

What we are going to tend to fail to see it is what in plain sight and even deeper than the sight of sense. It is what everything has come to call our attention to and impells us to look away from. It is what and where we least expect it. That, to me, is where the frustrations of the situations and oucomes we observe have their place and source.

Whoops, wrong story.

You seem to be following or echoing the philosophy that reduces all human actions to selfishness. Thus a person who helps a struggling old lady with her groceries is not really a nice person, but just being selfish and doing that act in order to make themself feel good. Thus they are no less selfish than another person who knocks the old lady down and plays kickball with her groceries because that makes them feel good. On the surface there seems to be some truth to that, but it makes for a meaningless unity. There still is the qualitative distinction between those who feel good by helping and those who feel good by harming.

To say that a carpenter who gets paid for their housebuilding skills is outdoing their customer in the same sense as a person who goes "bang bang" with their silver hammer on their neighbor's head in order to obtain the treasure stored in mason jars and buried deep beneath a stone is the same meaningless unity which ignores the difference between creation and destruction, between helping and using.

So to return to the beginning, as I was sitting by the side of the road with some 40 pounds of groceries to carry some eight miles home (unfortunately having only a small backpack, I was carrying 70% of the load with my puny arms), having only crossed about half the distance, and a man driving the other way asked if I needed help. I said "no I am fine, but I've got a long, long way to go". You could say that he outdid me by obtaining my thanks or by getting an ego boost of feeling like a hero, etc., but my gain from the exchange seems just as large to me, not only of not having to drag my tired a$$ another four miles home, but also of having a cool story that I can use to outdo some dude years later on the internets. "Yes, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of, glory days."

Would not a self have self interest? Or is there some other kind or definition of a self I do not know of?

Is not getting anything, even a good feeling or even a future, spiritual reward, a result of selfishnesses? The premise seems to be that selfishness is wrong or bad in itself.

Why reduce the compensation to the material in order to validate a presumption that anything by an individual is done without a "selfish" purpose? Did Mother Teresa do her work because it filled her with feeling of revulsion and made huge boils appear on her skin for every orphan she aided? Did Mahatma Ghandi get nothing at all from his efforts?

What I am talking about here, and is easy to miss, is the scope and idea of self versus more relative issues that tend to engulf the personal ideation into more myopic and exclusive conceptualizations that border on idealism versus a factual matter.

We do what we do, regardless of the suffering or results, because it satisfies something with that most scared aspect of what we are and experience in our lives. That is still "selfish". It can be a selfishness that includes all of our Humanity and even our Universe. In that case it can be called Divine or transcendental, but there, it breaks our notions of mere, petty, selfish oneupmanship and exploitation, doesn't it?

Rather than argue what is selfish or "unselfish" (a term that most often applys to convenient, moralistic equations) think about what you think about what is of the self and what is not. From there you can see that there are no bounds to this equation. As long as you have a "self" that implies some form of it and maybe, its self preservation in relation to others in a limited sphere of resources. How much you expand yourself and allow others, the environment, and even the entire Universe into your comprehension, should tell you how rational your response, in the form of sharing, giving, relating, allowing, giving up, accepting, uniting, etc., is required, necessary, and self-fulfilling.

There is no reason, whatsoever, that being selfish, in the most ultimate sense, cannot be ultimately and primordially, all-inclusive, to me.

To say that the self has a self interest becomes meaningless if everything is defined as self interest. This whole redefinition was concocted by selfish a$$holes who wanted to justify their selfishness and scoff at do-gooders.

It just defies all logic to say that "stealing money from widows and orphans is selfish" but "giving money to widows and orphans is also selfish" that both are acting from self-interest. To make selfishness all inclusive is just to render the word meaningless and to bypass those "convenient, moralistic equations" with the end result of finding high falutin reasons for acting like an a$$hole.

"Is not getting anything, even a good feeling or even a future, spiritual reward, a result of selfishnesses? The premise seems to be that selfishness is wrong or bad in itself."

Defining selfishness as bad is the point. "Getting" something is not selfishness - taking something is.

You blame the person who "drops the dime" or "runs to the mods" as the one who is too thin skinned to get along. Sometimes they may be at fault, if they are the type to aggravate a person until that person crosses the line and then 'sic the cops on them'. Often it is the person who retaliates who gets called for the penalty. But I would put more blame on the author of a deleted post than on the person who reports it - they have, whether they think they are justified or not, crossed the line and broken the rules. Rather than there target needing a thicker skin, I would say that they need to be slower to anger and slower to slip into personal attacks instead of discussion. "It is they who do the killing!"

forget it.