posted
One of the greatest things I ever recieved from reading a Card novel was my ideas on Free Will.
We choose everything. Everything. What we do. What we say. How we react.
Nothing is beyond our control.
Noone can force us to do anything.
If we choose to compitulate with someone's threat, plea, request, order, wish, or tantrum. It is only because I trully wanted to.
We have never been forced to do any thing in our lives.
We chose the action we want based on our own control over our fear of the consequenses.
When we understand this and understand why we chose each of the actions we have taken in our lives (and I mean fully understand) then we have a greater chance of understanding ourselves and those around us.
Once we are able to achieve this them we will be able to move towards creating a planet where all can live and be happy and tolerant.
What you're saying is a corruption of the same observations Viktor Frankl made about life. He was a Jewish doctor in a concentration camp, and there he observed that while he had no control over the physical circumstances of his life, he still had a fundamental freedom that all humans possess: the power to choose. In the fraction of a second between stimulus and response, we have the power to choose. It's like a muscle...you have to exercise it. At first, the abilities toward true self control are weak, and instead of action, we have reaction.
But even with perfect self-control, it doesn't mean that nothing is beyond our control. That's absurd.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Thank you, but I can't take credit for it. I keep wanting to read Frankl's book but haven't gotten to it yet. That description comes from Stephen Covey, who was describing Frankl's work. I was summarizing what Covey wrote. Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
If you get around to reading it - and you should, it's wonderful, in a very disturbing way -, I recommend Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom as a very good companion book.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I understand what you are saying but it also a very good example of what I am talking about.
Many people choose to let the Nazi's think they had control over them, while the entire time they we in control over their own actions. They exercised their free will and they kept their dignaty, Humanity, and even hope. When pushed too far, the acted and accepted what punishment they received freely but of their own free will. At the same time many gave up and lost all hope dignity and humanity.
Many people fear death more than they fear a loss of humanity and dignity. How many people compramise who they are out of fear over what the consequenses may be.
posted
I'd like to think that Yebor's post was perfectly complementary to Frankl's work . It happens to be one of my favorite books of all time, and I think his basic premise is central to a lot of the same themes we see in OSC.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
If I turn around and you're twenty feet behind me, pointing a gun, I don't have enough time to react before you shoot me. I can jump away, bang I'm dead. I can charge at you, bang I'm dead. Does that mean I let you shoot me? I chose to die? I don't get it. Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed -- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
-from George Orwell's 1984
I love this quote. It shows that even in the most unimaginably controlling of circumstances, those "few cubic centimetres inside your skull" are still yours.
I read an interesting quote by Bono in U2 at the End of the World about his experiences in Sarajevo. The people there have quite a penchant for dark humor, because, he says, "humor is the ultimate human freedom."
Attitude, humor; these are the things that can never be constrained.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
My free will didn't "get" me into anything. Yours did.
I'm not too light in the skull to understand the premise. I just disagree with it.
So what if I have more options? If you are determined to shoot me and I'm too far away to stop you, or my attempts to stop you do not phase you, then I have no choice but to get shot.
quote:If we choose to compitulate with someone's threat, plea, request, order, wish, or tantrum. It is only because I trully wanted to.
Actually, robey, the reason I refuted what you were saying was to show the absurdity of the above quote.
Most people do not realize they have as many choices as they do in most situations. It takes thought, which in the heat of the moment is pretty darned difficult to come by. If I have a gun pressed to my forehead, I have a lot of choices, but at that moment, it sure isn't going to *feel* like it. To capitulate at that moment and give the guy my money, and possibly my cooperation while he rapes me, doesn't mean I truly wanted it that way. It means that I wanted it more than I wanted to be dead, and I couldn't see any other options at that moment.
In other words, capitulation doesn't equate desire or intent. The danger to what you're saying is a loss of compassion. I truly believe that self-control does a lot for a person's happiness and well being, but I don't believe that when someone is struggling with a bad situation they "wanted it [to be] that way".
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Thats why i said i understood your point jeniwren.
But i also stand firm by the thought that your own choices put you there and instead of looking for the worst and giving up look for the best and strive.
Hell I fail at that all the time
it is a never ending task
But i have to gert off the comps today so i will expounbd ny own views and cite more of what i am striving for tommorow
IE: The BIG PICTURE or How WE CAN START BRINGING ABOUT THE COMPLETION OF THE HUMAN POTENTIAL SO WE AN BE MORE THAN HAIRLESS APES
or something like that
I only try to make us all better and by us all I mean evryone alive today right down the line to everyone alive a billion gadzillion trimpty trillion googgleying years from now
"The King cares only for the kings house" "The kings house is all the world"
I believe we should all act like kings.
Thank you Uncle Orson for Wyrms during my formulative years.
And for everyother work I have read by you.
They make sense to me because they seem true
Posts: 1661 | Registered: Dec 2000
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posted September 15, 2003 01:54 PM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If we choose to compitulate with someone's threat, plea, request, order, wish, or tantrum. It is only because I trully wanted to. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, robey, the reason I refuted what you were saying was to show the absurdity of the above quote."
Jeni I do not believe my quote is absurb.
Sure any idea can be challenged and tested and stressed at the extreme spectrum.
I am simply dealing with everyday life and how we react to each other and the basic situations we find ourselves confronted with everyday.
"posted September 15, 2003 02:29 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So you are building some arcane lattice for justifying being an optimist?
-Bok -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 2169 | Registered: Nov 1999 "
In answer to your question.......no
Member Member # 480
posted September 16, 2003 11:09 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh I see, you're trying to define a rationale for an optimistic existentialist.
Carry on.
-Bok -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 2169 | Registered: Nov 1999
In answer to your statement .....no
Member # 480
posted September 16, 2003 11:14 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What woould it matter. After all, I certainly can't justify you.
-Bok -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 2169 | Registered: Nov 1999
felt like an attack to my I apologize for misunderstanding your true intention.
Member # 480
posted September 16, 2003 11:23 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As you do by trying to get mine. Sorry if you take simple inquisitiveness as attack.
You sure you know which path you're on?
-Bok -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 2169 | Registered: Nov 1999
Oh i haven't once tried to get your's. I was simply and perhaps in a poor way letting you know that your arguments meant very little to me because they felt less than constructive and rather poorly thought out as might a wordy teen use in talking to his parents or teachers who he felt he was superior to. My mistake So sorry Yadda Yadaa yadda
That time I was trying to get your goat see the difference. Bye bye now buh bye buhhhhh byeeee see ya go play with your lincoln logs now
posted
I see, so because you misinterpreted ME, I'm immature.
I'm glad you finally answered some of my earlier questions, but I still think you are spreading a gospel, not proposing an opinion to critique.
Oh and here's a further critique... Some psychological experiments have shown that you will respond to an image or something similar, with SOLELY your low level brain functions, before the higher cognitive sections recognize the situation.
And yes, I will try and look for these experiments. But if this is true, would you admit that this is a blow to your system?
posted
Given enough time and resources, anyone can be broken. Given enough time and resources, anyone can be corrupted.
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posted
It would also be kind of difficult to think for yourself if your brain was in a frying pan. Hmmm...that's poorly exercised - out of date - on back order, etc.
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posted
Jeez, Robey. Way to be a lame-o to Bokonon.
Don't you think you're dismissive attitude was just a smidgeon arrogant and uncalled for? There are better ways to argue than saying, impolitely, "Shoo."
Your sandbox is not the more mature of the two.
Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
The only interesting thing in this thread is the fact that Yebor made a vague reference to the TMNT's.
Posts: 264 | Registered: Jan 2002
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