Re: Tom's Obligatory Exit Speech

> > > > It's easy. He just makes them up. Since he has declared all words > > to be lies, he doesn't actually expect anyone to believe what he says and > > considers anyone who *does* believe his words to be a fool. > > Why would anyone waste their time writing things they don't believe, > knowing no one else believes them either?

But he doesn't know that nobody believes them. In fact, he very much wants to be believed. He's hoping there are enough fools around so that he can be treated as their king.

So he's writing things he doesn't believe and that he thinks only a fool would believe. Why would he do this? Low self-esteem, of course. If he can't see himself as any better than a fake, then the best thing to do is find people who can be bamboozled into thinking he's not a fake.

Actually, this would make more sense if slider treated discourse with > comtempt.

Slider does treat discourse with contempt. He approves only of essages which support and flatter him, not messages which challenge his claims. Thus he does not seek discourse. He's lecturing and requesting the occasional "Amen!"

That may be the case. I can't imagine tossing around simplistic > contradicitions qualifies anyone as a guru anymore, though.

That would depend on what qualities he believes a guru should have. Perhaps he believes that a guru is just somebody who tosses around simplistic contradictions. Thus, he would qualify.

A charitable soul would hope there were more to it than the kind of > profundity every undergrad philosophy student assumes toward the > 'ignorant masses'.

It's forlorn hope. Still, I won't discourage it. I'm all for charity.

### - sounds reasonable enough (can go quite a long way on reason:)

### - not necessarily... tom (or anyone of reasonable intelligence) 'could' for instance just possibly be playing devil's advocate in the matter... but then that wouldn't quite explain his now rather obvious indignation + change of stance (e.g. to that of an ''irate' devil's advocate perhaps?:)

i mean, i wouldn't have exactly equated a bunch of name-calling & goading with 'the good argument' that tom claimed at the beginning he likes/wants to have... almost as if it was all only a thin (albeit highly polished) veneer with him - in other words: the veneer now being slightly tarnished, one is tempted to suspect there's a hidden agenda of which the approach with logic was to be used more as a weapon rather than as any more genuine tool to probe further into the nature of perception & reality... at least that's what it became in the end, a weapon i mean (increasingly nasty in fact, and now because all the emotional stabs aren't doing anything, andunless he suddenly holds himself back, it's one step closer to all the more physical threats, trying to poison other people's opinion, hate mail etc, all very typical reactionary stuff really:)

### - his anger & contempt at having logic per se questioned? (a fairly common reaction really) and because tom has ended up in his argument arrogantly parading logic as a general panacea instead of detachedly using/applying it for the limited tool it is... not to mention his many attempts at derailing the actual topic in favour of becoming personally abusive (behaviour which imho isn't even very logical)

i mean, if you're gonna be logical then 'be' logical... 'use' your reason and your logic to climb up, even to the very edge of reason itself (pure reason?) in order to look back & see it all for what it really is... something i would say is just language that people have, in one way or another, succumbed to/have fallen prey to/become indoctrinated into without ever realising it's not the only option...

### - the question here really is whether 'Truth' & 'Ultimate Reality' have anything at all to do with people's rules & traditions and/or the languages such traditions (for example) use to describe/determine them?

i mean, what if so called 'Truth' & 'Ultimate Reality' don't actually 'exist' beyond the mere descriptions/depictions/assumptions of them, and/or were mere + fictional concepts imagined totally from the pov of an increasingly over-active language-gland (smile:) - i mean how would we even know unless we somehow managed to perceive 'beyond' the limitations of an all-ruling reason (language) + then had something to compare/contrast it to afterwards... we wouldn't... we couldn't...

without the experience itself 'everything' we thought would perforce be incorrect/based on necessarily incorrect information... plus if we then somehow start to let ourselves really come to 'believe' in those necessarily incorrect imaginings, then that's where the trouble really begins as we find ourselves increasingly in the grip of an expanding distortion of reality which is all of our own unconscious making! (i.e. succumbing to one's own innate ability + propensity to become brainwashed i suppose :)

It is not as though a rationalist worldview is

### - as i see it we have here 2 basic applications of the one general language: the rational & the semi-rational... the semi-rational just about covering all the religious-type, philosophical approaches + variations... the other tending more towards reason per se (which perforce includes logic)

e.g. the semi rational approach is far less strict and thus allows for a more 'mystical' experience, an overlapping of reality & illusion so to speak, a semi-rational practice wherein 'certain' rules are still adhered to, but in which it conveniently isn't acknowledged they they still tend to colour/limit the perceptual experience to within certain (and/or more loosely then) defined parameters, that 'being' only of the semi-rational, the creative mind is given a bit more leeway so to speak to form 'other' perceptual definitions of reality based say more on faith & conviction of something being true, while at the same time learning to make that become perceptually true for oneself... (an ability we apparently already have and use albeit totally unconsciously, and which is only ever to be invoked under certain pre-defined sociological conditions, and for safety sake only within certain already strictly pre-defined/evolved parameters designed to produce deliberate & particular effects upon perception to create, for example, a generally agreed consensus)

something that's maybe actually fairly easy to understand when it comes to examining say only the semi rational (easy from the pov of the more rational to find holes in, that is :) but actually more difficult when it comes to applying this to rationality and/or reason per se itself... i mean, (and this is where the addicted/attached falls over/runs away in horror) it begs the question of how can we ever work things out if we deprive ourselves of the very tools with which to do so! :)

imho the answer's fairly easy... it's that perhaps we just have to 'stop' trying to work everything out, and thus for example, allow a reality, not born of a necessarily distorting + limiting language to come to us if it wants to... and because we've opened/are opening ourselves to it... (digress to an old joke: did you here about the mathematician with constipation? it was alright though, he eventually worked it all out with a pencil heh :)

### - quite serious actually (smile :) - i.e. one perforce starts off within the confines of language 'trying to be fair' - by being reasonable, by trying to become more objective and thus rounded (after all, one is seeking to acquire a presumed + as yet unknown Truth:) - the only possible path at this juncture being to become ever more reasonable (i.e. ever more 'reasonable' as opposed to just more logical, that is to say: reasonable even about reason itself) - eventually to perhaps even realise that all biases/prejudices are merely a product of a language set that's able to formulate such concepts & ideas in the first place, only to then trap us into them because of their unquestioned use + one's attachment (false identification with) to them...

in other words: turns out it's maybe our 'unquestioned' (unconscious) use of language that eventually traps us, to the exclusion of everything & anything else, into a language-only based interpretation system... at which point, plus armed with that realisation, it becomes then much easier for reason to accept that even reason per se has its strictly defined limits, and that there's a line which it dare not cross...

or rather... it becomes possible at that point to identify a line that if crossed will necessarily involve leaving reason behind to some extent (would involve gradually stepping away from it) - or conversely: in leaving reason behind to some extent (i.e. temporarily suspending it and thereby also all its inherent/learned prejudices/biases etc) one immediately finds oneself already 'across' that line and thus into unknown/new perceptual territory, which, to all extents and perceptual purposes, would have seemed to have been there all along existing quite independently + regardless of what we (as a species i mean) have been maybe getting up to in the mean time, or relative time, or whatever the hell we were thinking + worrying about 'at' the time... :)

### - smile... in querying my behaviour towards someone you have every right to refer to them further, no prob, plus it's not as though we're for example doing it just to annoy tom/wind him up... he's already well winded up :)

### - imho knowing what a person 'mean