The Feminization of Mankind

[Satyr]

Stupidity

“Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.” - Bertrand Russell

Stupidity is turning into this age’s defining individual asset.
A necessary ingredient for a more normal, modern, life-style where your achievement is ordained by your willingness to accept what is given without openly casting aspersions upon its validity or wavering before its demands.

The benefits of thoughtlessness are celebrated, nay, worshiped in our culture, as charming adolescent buffoonery and fashionable defiance. Celebrated in a world that is obsessed with youthfulness and with the ostentation of uniqueness.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, is vituperated, as un-cool and snobbish, or as a killjoy to the endless pursuit for elusive happiness.

“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking too much can only lead you into more worries, more despair, whereas the dumb, enjoy the blissful cheerfulness of mental retardation.
All that matters is immediate gratification and hedonistic escapism, in a system that sells it with ostentatious abundance.
The western superorganisms’s life blood, capital flow, thrives on the rejuvenating injections of unfulfilled expectation.

What else is life good for, for the nihilistic mind that has lost all sense of self and now finds it in consumption and momentary orgasmic releases of repressed energies?
Happiness is this culture’s evasive mythology. A hazy oasis in the distant hot sands, shimmering with promise, but never delivering the goods.

What else could it have been in a universe that exhibits no static state and life is etched in unceasing degrees of dissatisfaction?

Would not total satiation deliver an end to action? Yes, ungratified need is the driving force of life; its conscious interpretation of its own temporality.

But all of this is only possible when there exists a paternalistic system, there, protecting little girls and boys against the more dire consequences of their own errors and their endearing naiveté.

The system becomes parent to its citizenry and this only amplifies the conditions that maintain the populace in a perpetual state of adolescence.
Common sense practices, like living within one’s means, or not risking too much in harebrain activities and get-rich quick schemes, have to be taught to, hypothetical, adults who exhibit the credulity of infants high on sugar.
The idea that if something sounds too good to be true it is, most likely, not true, escapes their pampered dispositions.

Their anxiety laden hopefulness will have none of this dose of icy pragmatism.
They could not cope, on these hot desert sands, without it.

Thousands of self-help books sold to those that have to be told that spending more than you earn is a recipe for disaster and the only way to lose weight is to take in less calories than you burn.
The exploitation of stupidity.

Television programming is now offering daily updates on how to deal with the disastrous repercussions of what it has promoted, as part of the system it serves; moderation, communicated by the very instrument of raging consumerism; millions of mindless automatons given advice by the same “experts” that sunk them in the quagmire they now try to crawl out of.
The height of tragic comedy played out in real time.

But what do you expect when the system has stripped the individual of all self-respect and sheltered it from a reality it has little experience with?

Government steps in to protect its citizenry from its own idiocy, by providing social safety-nets and enforcing rules that are meant to place limits to witless activities.
The herd must be exploited but not to the point of debilitating exhaustion. The system self-corrects, as its greed and hunger is pulled back and some respite is given to the citizenry it bleeds dry.

*****

The sheltering effect of the system does not only result in the absence of any experience with discomfort, making the individual more vulnerable to any slight degree of it, but it also eradicates the worse consequences of error and so promotes a more brassy, unjustifiably, arrogant personality, thinking of itself as invulnerable to a world it has a paltry comprehension of.

A personality that conveniently, also, serves the State’s need for mindless, obedient, active participants.

“Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.” - William Gaddis

Manipulation is guaranteed when dependence is cemented.

Once the full extent of reality is excluded, fear made into an anathema, and need is easily satisfied, the mind loses all habituation with the indifferent, frugality of nature. It can no longer tolerate anything above a certain level of discomfort and with the sloe maintenance of anxiety it is made malleable to influence.
Where fear causes cautious efficiency in natural environment, in manmade ones its, relative, absence, results in imprudent incompetence.

Children, raised taking for granted their own safety and well-being, become convinced that this is due to some intrinsic quality they possess, some transcending privilege they have a “right” to, rather than it being given to them by a community that will demand its investment back tenfold, at a later time.
Children are raised to feel invulnerable. They are told that there are no barriers to what they can accomplish, no predetermined limitations to their qualities, as long as they adhere to communal rules.
A deficiency in self-discipline and respect, is the result.

Where there is no great cost, there is no great fear.
Where there is no fear there is no caution.
Where there is no caution there is no respect.

But the world cares not about such human contrivances. In the end a cruel awakening awaits these eternal children, as disillusionment ensues when reality fails to concern itself with their inflated hopes and exaggerated dreams.

“As if there were safety in stupidity alone.” - Henry David Thoreau

At this point, they are ripe for the picking.
Dejected and defeated they await the slightest glimmer of hope to latch onto.

*****

If, as we have said, intelligence is a projection of self into the unknown, as a preemptive assessment that prepares and more efficiently focuses energies, then stupidity is the mental equivalent of shortsightedness, consciousness contained within a not too distant event horizon, where anything beyond it does not affect its peace because it is simply oblivious to it.

Information overload, certainly makes it stressful to deal with all the probabilities awareness opens up.
Especially in this day and age with its abundance of information, bombarding consciousness constantly, the mind is hard-pressed to distinguish relevant from irrelevant knowledge and reliable from unreliable sources.

The normal recourse is to run from it, into the comforting embrace of ignorance. A self-inflicted blindness.

“Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

But this, in itself, is no response to its challenge. Denial and ignorance can only save you from the knowledge of the inevitable, but not from it.

In the eastern traditions this mindlessness has been raised to the status of holy communion with the essence of existence.
The self-hypnotized brain senses its own temporality, with no substantive core, as a return to a source, and an escape from the consciousness of its own existence.
If consciousness is a discriminating, rejecting and resisting method of distinguishing self amongst multiplicity, unconsciousness becomes a release from the continual effort this entails.
In that moment of thoughtlessness the mind is partially unburdened from its sense of existence and feels the unconscious flow it has sprang from.

The relief is addictive and rejuvenating. Abandoning self, and denying reality, surrenders the mind to the inevitable end; accepting it as unavoidable.
The empowering lucidity of indifference.

The ego and the world that has made it possible is annihilated with a simple act of denial – a twist in perspective.
But the effect is imaginary. A perspective cannot alter reality, unless it first perceives it accurately, accepts it as what it is, and then engages it actively, utilizing this understanding to manipulate it.

The devout denier is still maintained and only the consciousness of reality is inebriated into numbness.
Being unaware of a danger does not make one immune to it, in fact it makes one all the more susceptible.

The “selfless” one reaffirms the self, and the world, with every breathe, every heartbeat and with every acceptance of nourishment and hydration.
His essence is continually resisting disintegration, fighting off external threats and maintaining its boundaries.
Words are exposed as duplicitous when actions contradict them.

The “enlightened one’s” denial is hypocritical if not plainly ineffectual.
The very denial of ego is an act of ego, as the very act of selflessness is an act of self – the self manifesting itself in the time/space continuum as will.
Choice is only possible through this temporal process of congruent energies. The denial of self is, ironically, possible by the emergence of self.
Without it choice is superfluous.

The only thing really denied is awareness, consciousness, which can only increase care and the stress this results in.
The mind is, merely, denied its fullness. It is rendered partially comatose to avoid the ramifications of perception.

The objective of this spiritual compulsion is to dilute the sense of self back into the flux.
To return back to the state before birth and degrade existence as a counterfeit interlude.

Nihilism permeates from these premises, as a desirable death-wish.
Stupidity is made into a spiritual awakening; a rebirth.

Many flock to it for salvation.
They were never meant to survive, and their inability to cope validates this uncomfortable truth.


The Factor of Risk

“The average man's judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.” - Edgar Watson Howe

Risk is abhorred by nature.
The path-of-least-resistance is part of universal law.
Rivers flow along it, winds are directed by it, mountains crumble because of it.

Existing, alone, is risky enough, without adding to it. Even a simple act contains some element of danger, and so the natural inclination is one of minimizing the probabilities of chance upon existence.
Order is this minimization.

The majestic lion, when it hunts, hunts the easiest prey. It, too, does not push its luck, when a mere fracture can mean its end.

Nature’s more impecunious environments demands a more cautious temperament. It is only in the safe, sheltering, superfluous environmental conditions of manmade systems where risk-taking is considered a venerated activity, and this only because these environments depend on constant overturn and the mindless activities of its members.

Only a wilful act, aware of some possible future larger payback or its senses dulled by some hormonal effect, can choose a path contrary to this rule.
This is what offers an advantage to intelligence and consciousness.

Yet, risk taking is part of natural selection.
When risk is undertaken in nature it is at a high price. A price, often, demanded by the impact of the libido upon the mind that becomes possessed by its madness.
An unconscious compromise towards then inevitability of death.

The seasonal head-butting competitions of mountain goats can go on for days on end, forcing the male to neglect his, much needed, nourishment, in preparation for the coming, more austere, winter conditions.
The male peacock carries a conspicuous burdensome display of its prowess, increasing its vulnerability to external threats.

All this due to the agitation of the procreative impulse and the necessity of proving yourself genetically worthy to the opposite sex.
No reasonable mind would endure such hardships or forsake its own short future for the sake of a momentary release or for the uncertain rewards of posterity.
The entire act, in fact, is highly irrational.

“Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex … More fittingly than the fair sex, women could be called the unaesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the plastic arts do they possess any real feeling of receptivity: if they affect to do so, it is merely mimicry in service of their effort to please.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Keeping this in mind, the frequency and exaltation of risk takers in our culture can be more fully appreciated.
The underlying motive is one of sexual fulfilment, even when the male is attached to a female, by holy matrimony.

But not all is so cut and dry.
There is an alternative motive for the capitalistic system, in particular, to promote risk-takers and gamblers.
Without them the flow of capital would dwindle to a drizzle, where downpours are desired.

Promoting the sexiness of it, through pop-culture, and playing upon the intrinsic procreative and empowering aspects of it, the system ensures a steady stream of players.
The allowance of upward economic mobility is like the publication of lottery winners who, against great odds, are marketed as proof that the system works.

The gambler ignores the odds and uses those few instances of wins, made famous, to maintain his obsession with the game. But the gambler rarely leaves a winner, in the end. Even when he does win he does not stop playing the game. The odds are stacked against him because the house never loses - without the housed there is no game.

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.” - Ambrose Bierce

But things are not as dire as all that.
Where in the wild a slight mistake, a risk unsuccessfully taken, a foolhardy endeavor can spell death, here the risk taker is not as bold as he pretends to be.
The fighter that enters into the rink knows that, no matter what, there’s an entire structure waiting to take care of him.
He may fail, he may lose, but it is highly unlikely that he will pay the ultimate price for his gamble.

The audacious investor, as well, risks what he can afford to lose, knowing that even if all goes to hell, he will not go without food or water or shelter.

This behavior is all for show, usually practiced in staged events under controlled conditions.
Guided by censored libido or by the ennui sheltering environments produce in abundance, the individual enters into activities that offer the imitation of nature’s unpredictable brutality, seeking a reconnection with something more real – more profound.

These surrogate methods are meant to offer a platform for the mind to unleash its full potential, to maintain its sharpness, when safe, trivial, predictability has blunted its wits; it is meant to give an action a weightiness it lacks in everyday life, where even sex has lost its original substance.

Finally, the display of hyper-masculine machismo is really a display of sheltered certainty.
These same children, trying to prove their prowess, would not dare even to think doing what they do, without the knowledge that there’s a system there to take care of them and cushion their fall if all goes wrong.

Without it they would either excuse themselves or perish, like the idiots that they are.

[Satyr]

Epilogue

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.


Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

- Dylan, Thomas

Given all that has been said, so far, it is relatively clear that the “perfect” type of social participant is the feminine one and all of the traits that go along with it as a condition of its necessity.

It is clear that the increasing need to integrate heterogeneous, multifarious, populations into one cohesive, malleable and stable whole makes it necessary to diminish the aspects of individuation that confronts conformity as insufferable and an affront on individual dignity and the free expression of self.
That the other threatens us or challenges us or causes us distress, is not a convenient justification to dismiss it as evil or as unnecessary, because it suits our own interests and satisfies our own needs.

Truth knows of no wants but only demands an acknowledgment of its presence.
Truth not stringent but as flexible as the world purports it to be; truth that challenges us to keep-up or fall-back as its fatality.
Truth that forces us to maintain a flexible mind, constantly interpreting and adjusting to its aloofness.

The imposition of a rigid ideal is not realistic but a hopeful projection of our own desirable ending to an existential process that exhibits no such end and no purpose.
Our charge, if we are to accept one, is to keep up with its recalcitrant presence and our individual interpretations, our perspectives, are to be judges by how well they adhere to its obdurate provocation.

Perspectivism is not an argument to preserve our own established beliefs, it is a trial we must present ourselves as worthy of.

The underlying premise, throughout this essay, is that the world does not bend to our will, unless we first perceive our own place within it and admit to our own misgivings; it is unaffected by declarations and simplistic denials, based on hope rather than an honest assessment of reality.
The world exists before our emergence and continues after our downfall. It is unconcerned with our preferences and our dismissals of its premises, but only submits to our resolve, when we fully comprehend it and use this understanding to bend it to our will.
Our will being our focused energies upon a desirable object/objective.

Human ideals represent direction, vague signposts that define our character but are never, ever, attained. The sequential effects determining the substance of our expectations and the viability of our hopes.

My motive is not to hurt anyone or to cause anyone distress; I am not out for cheap attention by using controversy to garner underserved consideration. My motive is only towards a reality I am ignorant of and that I explore as a matter of my own self-interests.
In presenting my views publicly there is no desire to be followed or to be accepted as a teacher, a leader, or an authority, replacing pre-existing ones, but only an honest desire to test myself against the perceptions of others and to offer my thoughts to the edifying examination of scepticism.

In my haste, my style may seem uncompromising or insufficient, but this is of a secondary concern. What cannot be doubted is that my words are honest and direct…or that they are my own, no matter what resemblances or agreement they may find in the opinions of others.
They have not been constructed through imitation, but only through inspiration, and not through regurgitation, but only through quotation as a supportive element to my own deliberations.

*****

The idea that ideals and ideas are only as good as their rhetoric or their hypothetical promises, is ludicrous and naïve.
How perfection applies theoretically is rarely how it is practiced pragmatically.
The component of the human condition is, almost, always absent from any speculative application of theory to practice.

How we wish human beings should or could behave is different from how they, actually, are behaving, despite words paying lip-service to theoretical hopes.

If your expectations are consistently dumbfounded and your visions surprised by reality, then you should not seek the reason in the imperfection of the world, but in the imperfection of your interpretations and expectations of the world.
If you find yourself constantly readjusting your opinions to your altering self-interests or to your forced adaptation to a reality that does not easily yield to your wants, then you should not take this as evidence of your open-mindedness and objectivity, but as evidence of your continuing error in successfully deciphering your own sensual translations of the world as it is, rather than as you hope it would be.
An error produced, if by northing else, by your own emotional reactions to a world that does not care about them.

The bottom-line is that our perspectives are only as good as their ability to explain the world around us and offer us insights as to predict its patterns, rather than by how well their reflect our own desires and how they make us feel.

Using this decisive factor my own perspectives should be judged as useful or not. Their adherence to modern, popular myths and feel-good opinions should not be used to determine their validity.
An opinion is either timeless, in that it holds true across cultural and temporal conditions, or it is not, and so it is only relevant within the context of current mythologies and cultural movements, as they are shaped by environmental conditions.

*****

Unavoidably sex must be discarded as primal or else one must submit to the premises that make sexual behaviour pleasurable.
One cannot throw away the aspects that are unflattering or undesirable, while retaining the aspects that are flattering and desirable, without admitting to the influence of subjective thinking and compartmentalization.

What constitutes sexual intercourse as gratifying must, also, be determined as being responsible for our displeasures and as sources for our ingratitude.

The strategy of differentiating between appearance and essence is a metaphysical standpoint that not only relies on duality but that, also, offers a comforting appeasement to our existential angst, that must offer us pause and conclude in scepticism.

The fundamental position of everything that has been said is that nothing apparent is duplicitous or hidden but that, only, our interpretations of it are more or less accurate and useful or that they are not.
The pragmatic application of these interpretations determines their validity, and their helpfulness, in predicting future behaviours and occurrences, determines their accuracy.

The levelling of mankind continues.


February 5, 2009

[Arising_uk]

You two 'know' each other? In cahoots so to speak?
p.s.
doesn't this lot make the original post supurfluous? Or is it the other way round?

[Satyr]

You two 'know' each other? In cahoots so to speak?

Yes, he's my minion.

[realunoriginal]

Yes, he's my minion.

Are you sure it's not the other way around Old Boy?

[realunoriginal]

You two 'know' each other? In cahoots so to speak?
p.s.
doesn't this lot make the original post supurfluous? Or is it the other way round?

No, but seriously-speaking, Satyr has taught & trained me a great many things concerning Philosophy-proper. He has given me words to observations I have witnessed since I was young; he has exposed the frauds for what they are. He has corrected my reasoning when my ignorance & idealism led me astray. In essence, all he has done for me is nothing that he does not do for himself. I sought; I found. I knew where I was going from the beginning; I just did not expect the middle and end, so-to-speak.

And I plan to carry my knowledge with me. Satyr added to my philosophies, and in time, I may or may not add to his.

That is all between him & I, if you inquire to know. The Feminization of Man is confirmed through me.

[Arising_uk]

Yes, he's my minion.

[Satyr]

If you keep laughing... utopia may come to be.

How I envy the stupid.

[Arising_uk]

You don't think your comment was funny given this?

No, but seriously-speaking, Satyr has taught & trained me a great many things concerning Philosophy-proper. He has given me words to observations I have witnessed since I was young; he has exposed the frauds for what they are. He has corrected my reasoning when my ignorance & idealism led me astray. In essence, all he has done for me is nothing that he does not do for himself. I sought; I found. I knew where I was going from the beginning; I just did not expect the middle and end, so-to-speak.

And I plan to carry my knowledge with me. Satyr added to my philosophies, and in time, I may or may not add to his.

That is all between him & I, if you inquire to know. The Feminization of Man is confirmed through me.

Especially given your stance and the content of your words.

Which makes this bit "The Feminization of Man is confirmed through me." a ROFL moment.

[sumploke]

Hi Satyr,

You have to unpack your arguments so 'we' can understand your reasoning. So far your statements read like a news report describing things. Also, it would be nice if you referenced, since you are making radical claims or borrowing 'definitions.'

So your definition here:

Definitions:

Male/Female – The terms refer to a biologically determined sexual type that has evolved for specific biological functions. Each type will exhibit the characteristics essential for carrying out this biological function, to varying degrees, and so will also display the thinking and demeanour that will help in carrying out its primary reason for evolving as a identification marker.
Masculine and feminine attitudes are definitely not limited to any sex, as there are many biological males that exhibit very feminine dispositions and biological females that display masculine ones, but the original intent for the evolution of sex, as a reproductive method, predisposes each sexual type towards the attitudes indicative of their biological type.

Should I, we, assume you are some sort of scientist? If you are show us the research - how you came to these conclusions. If you are not, then link the research.

[Satyr]

You require research to tell you what male/female types are and why they evolve?

It is unfortunate that modern day minds have been shaped, stunted, to be so dependent upon external authorities that they cannot imagine thinking anything outside the establishment. They cannot utter a single word, make a single thought, come up with a single deduction or definition without having to validate it against a "reliable source".

My only source is reality, which is amply available to me.

Where religion has fallen back science becomes this age's scripture, and statistics become the hope, the preachers sermon.
Hell, you can shape a statistical responses by shaping the questions asked....or not asked...and how they are asked.

What part of the definition confuses you?
The part that states that sex evolved to reproduce an organism's genes or the reasoning that follows claiming that these types would evolve the appropriate traits to carry out this function?
Do you require a scientist to tell you this because you've stopped using your own brain?

Do you also require a scientific paper to tell you why wings evolved in birds?

I gather you've never read a philosophical work.
Science is the branch of philosophy that attempted to support philosophical reasoning with pragmatic effects and sensually based evidence.

As such in some areas where specialized tools are needed, experts are consulted to enhance our limited sensual awareness....in all other areas your own senses should be consulted first and foremost and your own mind can do the work.

If you cannot do this then you have no place on a forum pretentiously named "Philosophy Now".
Perhaps all you can do is share the opinions of others and then debate over who understood correctly or has more reliable information.
In that case you are a sophist.

The definition stands as it pertains to the thesis that follows.
If you have such a hard time accepting that one, which is pretty straight forward and logical, then I can only imagine your retractions to some of my later definitions and then my positions based on them.

Doesn't matter, really.
I mean you are free, obviously, to follow the current cultural and most popular social beliefs, as men and women have done since time immemorial, and you can reference the authorities your age and your culture provides you as being the most reliable.
In the east preachers still stand as authorities on reality.

In past ages the Church was such an institutionalized authority, thinking on the behalf of millions of inferior and easily institutionalized minds.
Today, the quality of the mental faculties of the masses has not altered, it has only been inculcated with different, more current, social and cultural mythologies and new institutions are provided to disseminate the appropriate information in the appropriate ways.

Even in philosophy this trend has seeped through. What constitutes philosophizing today, is repeating and positioning one's self in reference to another's thinking....and so one does not debate reality, directly, referencing others only in support or in challenge, as was once done in the agora....but one simply repeats verbatim his understanding of an other's positions, claiming a more correct interpretation of another's interpretation of reality.

Reality twice removed.
Reality engaged through a mediator.
If one is to doubt his own senses and motives then what should he do when facing the other's deductions?

This I call institutionalization.
A wall around the mind where only a few doors are allowed to access the outside.

A regimented world where nobody is permitted to leave or enter without the "correct" paperwork, and where the "correct" language must be used in the "correct" way.
Some would call it "stringent" and, in this case, the philosophy professor is automatically a thinker par excellence, just as the art teacher is the quintessential artist.

Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that you do not own your own opinions.
Can't help you.

[sumploke]

Hi Satyr,

I have to admit that is an interesting response, and I appreciate some of the ideas there. So you want me to believe you arrived at this conclusion: ‘Each type will exhibit the characteristics essential for carrying out this biological function,’ by yourself, without out first knowing what science is? That some how from reality you observed biological cells evolve?

But let’s say you had the powers to simply ‘observe’ these developments. How then did you manage to use the term ‘biological’ to describe them? Perhaps, you may have learnt them in your ‘reality?’

But I’m no advocate for science, which itself is problematic.

What part of the definition confuses you?

The definition never confused me, I just wanted to draw your attention to ‘definition.’ It’s merely a definition of something, being a definition, its been selected, its not the its a[/a] definition, and it’s a definition through the scientific discourse.

So when you say:

The part that states that sex evolved to reproduce an organism's genes or the reasoning that follows claiming that these types would evolve the appropriate traits to carry out this function?

Surely you are simply repeating what you read. Not very original is it? Perhaps that’s why I asked whether you were a scientist to see if that statement was ‘original’ in a certain sense, but its not. And yet you accuse people of not coming up with original ideas.

There are no origin or original ideas, to believe that is to believe a logocentric discourse.

With the rest of what you wrote, which seems to be a patchwork of poststructuralist discourse, I can safely say you don’t really get what you are reading, since you seem to be arguing that culture is some ‘evil’ thing, and forgetting that culture itself undermines itself. You don’t exist in a vacuum outside the dominant discourse looking in. Yes ‘linguistic syntax’ orders us – and we are subjected to it, but it also un-orders us, as with the case of deconstructionism.

Perhaps the most troubling thing is that it seems all this ‘reading’ has made you arrogant - calling people stupid etc, but perhaps your just joking around - doesn't matter - since for stupid to be insulting I, Others, have to first take you 'seriously/not seriously.' And I have a feeling that Satyr is one of many.

[Satyr]

Hi Satyr,

I have to admit that is an interesting response, and I appreciate some of the ideas there. So you want me to believe you arrived at this conclusion: ‘Each type will exhibit the characteristics essential for carrying out this biological function,’ by yourself, without out first knowing what science is? That some how from reality you observed biological cells evolve?

We all receive information from mutiple areas.
If this information has to be chewed up for you, and given a meaning, then waht is yuor role in this?
A mindless mouthpiece?

I ask again:
You require science to tell you why the sexes exist or can you manage to piece together this, simple fact, on your own?

But let’s say you had the powers to simply ‘observe’ these developments. How then did you manage to use the term ‘biological’ to describe them?

I use the terms available and which will facilitate communication.

We all exist within this environment and are bombarded by information from birth.

Perhaps, you may have learnt them in your ‘reality?’

There is only one reality.

Perhaps in your delusions the sexes exist as aesthetic meaningless figures.
Nature is superfluous after all, right?

But I’m no advocate for science, which itself is problematic.

But then you demand scientific validation?
You are either a hypocrite or confused.

Do you propose another reason for the sexes existing or for sex existing?

The definition never confused me, I just wanted to draw your attention to ‘definition.’ It’s merely a definition of something, being a definition, its been selected, its not the its a[/a] definition, and it’s a definition through the scientific discourse.

It's a definition of a phenomenon, based on reasoning and referencing sources in support.

So when you say:

The part that states that sex evolved to reproduce an organism's genes or the reasoning that follows claiming that these types would evolve the appropriate traits to carry out this function?

Surely you are simply repeating what you read. Not very original is it?

Did I claim originality?

Tell me is there such a thing as uniqueness or is everything a derivative of what preexisted?

Perhaps that’s why I asked whether you were a scientist to see if that statement was ‘original’ in a certain sense, but its not. And yet you accuse people of not coming up with original ideas.

I accuse people of not thinking for themselves and simply repeating with no understanding,.
Furthermore, that my opinions were derived through personal efforts is not negated by the fact that others have reached similar conclusion.
The truth can be found via different avenues.

There's a difference between repeating information verbatim, like a computer spewing out programmed knowledge, and coming to one's own conclusions, using one's own observations and then finding others that agree, as an additional support.

Like now...a quote by Schopenhauer, one of my many mentors:

• Thus a man who thinks for himself only subsequently becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions when they serve merely to confirm him therein and to encourage him.
The book-philosopher, on the other hand, starts from those authorities in that he constructs for himself an entire system from the opinions of others which he has collected in the course of his reading.

Do you require a graph that validates this statement scientifically or can you mange on your own?

There are no origin or original ideas, to believe that is to believe a logocentric discourse.

Bravo!!!
There is a reality being interpenetrated and shared via the logos.

The abstraction, the simplification, is an artificial absolute....confusing many that the absolute exists...and it is this that the word symbolizes and is shared in discourse.

All interpretations are not equally valid, since not all minds are equally aware and analytical and courageous and honest.
What is interpreted is fluid and so intelligence is the preemption of this fluidity using the imagination...projection.
Pattern recognition, incorporated into mental models.

With the rest of what you wrote, which seems to be a patchwork of poststructuralist discourse, I can safely say you don’t really get what you are reading, since you seem to be arguing that culture is some ‘evil’ thing, and forgetting that culture itself undermines itself.

culture is a super-organism imposing itself upon a weaker organism.

Like all unities it is affected by attrition...and decadence is its fate.
the culture never undermines itself....the members forced to be integrated undermine it because they posses a will far too powerful to be indoctrinated like a bee or an ant within a whole quite so easily.
As a result the sueprorganism, the system, thrives on specialization and stupidity - selective knowledge and an inability to think outside institutional sources.

You don’t exist in a vacuum outside the dominant discourse looking in. Yes ‘linguistic syntax’ orders us – and we are subjected to it, but it also un-orders us, as with the case of deconstructionism.

Self-consciuosness is this cutting away from the rest so as to see it from the clarifying distance of objectivity.

My mind, if it is interested in finding a more precise interpretation of reality, must remain disciplined and unemotionally involved in the subject being observed and analyzed.
This is how superior consciuosness and self-consciousness comes to be.

Never absolutely so, since no absolutes are possible, but a degree, a higher degree, of indifference.

Perhaps the most troubling thing is that it seems all this ‘reading’ has made you arrogant - calling people stupid etc, but perhaps your just joking around - doesn't matter - since for stupid to be insulting I, Others, have to first take you 'seriously/not seriously.' And I have a feeling that Satyr is one of many.

My "arrogance" is a product of being confronted with simpletons claiming they have made some rational challenge to my positions when all they offer is emotionally derived reactions based on current cultural and social norms.

I react in kind....
By the way, the term stupid or retard or simpleton is not only meant to insult, bu it is an honest judgment of the post-modern mind.

The reasons for it, are explained in my thesis...but I have hinted at it.

The system, the suoperorganism, requires harmonious coexistence and so it trains/educates minds to function as specialized, unthinking, and so not resisting, automatons, regurgitating its values....which serve its needs, and which deny any distinction which contradict social cohesion.

As such a sexist, racist is the epitome of the unwanted social pariah and love and tolerance....passivity....the system's greatest virtue.

In essence the system is nihilistic as it annihilates the individual so as to construct a higher SELF....the God or the Ideal man.

[Satyr]

A book I just started reading by Jean Baudrillard:

Seduction.

Just from the opening chapters I run across this:

Introduction
Today the exorcism is more violent and systematic. We are entering the era of final solutions; for example, that of the sexual revolution, of the production and management of all liminal and subliminal pleasures, the micro=processing of desire, with the woman who produces herself as woman, and as sex, being the last avatar. Ending seduction.
Or else the triumph of a soft seduction, a white, diffuse feminization and eroticization of all reactions in an elevated social universe.

The Ectliptic of Sex
Nothing is less certain today than sex, behind the liberation of its discourse. And nothing is less certain than desire, behind the proliferation of its image.
In matters of sex, the proliferation is approaching total loss.
Here lies the secret of ever increasing production of sex and its signs, and the hyperrealism of sexual pleasure, particularly feminine pleasure. The principle of uncertainty has extended to sexual reason, as well as political and economic reason.
The state of sex's liberation is also that of its indetermination. No more want, no more prohibitions, and no more limits: it is the loss of every referential principle. economic reason is sustained only by penury; it is put into question with the realization of its objective, the abolition of the specter of penury.
Desire too is sustained only by want. When desire is entirely on the side of demand, when it is operationalized without restrictions, it loses its imaginary and, therefore, its reality; it appears everywhere, but in generalized simulation. It is the ghost of desire that haunts the defunct reality of sex. Sex is everywhere, except in sexuality (Barthes).
In sexual mythology, the transition towards the feminine is contemporaneous with the passage from the determination to general indetermination. The feminine is not substituted for the masculine as one sex for another, according to some structural inversion. It is substituted as the end of the determinate representation of sex, as the flotation the law that regulates the difference between the sexes. The ascent of the feminine corresponds to both the apogee of sexual pleasure and the catastrophe relative to sex's reality principle.
and so it is femininity that is gripping, in the present and fatal situation of sex's hyperreality - as it was yesterday, but in direct contrast, in irony and seduction.

* * *
Freud was right: there is but one sexuality, one libido - and it is masculine. Sexuality has a strong, discriminative structure centered on the phallus, castration, the Name-of-the-Father, and repression. There is none other. There is no use dreaming of some non-phallic, unlocked, unmarked sexuality. There is no use seeking, from within this structure, to have the feminine pass through to the other side, or cross terms. Either the structure remains the same, with the female being entirely absorbed by the male, or else it collapses, and there is no longer either female or male - the degree zero of the structure. This is very much what is happening today: erotic polyvalence, the infinite potentiality of desire, different connections, diffractions, libidinal intensities - all mutiple variants of a liberatory alternative coming from the frontiers of a psychoanalysis free of Freud, or from the frontiers of desire free of psychoanalysis. Behind the effervescence of the paradigm of sex, everything is converging towards non-differentiation of the structure and its potential neutralization.

The danger of the sexual revolution for the female is that she will be enclosed within the structure that condemns her to either discrimination when the structure is strong, or a derisory triumph within a weakened structure.

There is an alternative to sex and to power, one that psychoanalysis cannot know because its axioms are sexual. And yes, this alternative is undoubtedly of the order of the feminine, understood outside the opposition masculine/feminine, that opposition being essentially masculine in intention, and incapable of being overturned without ceasing to exist.
This strength of the feminine is that of seduction.

What does the women's movement oppose to the phallocratic structure? Autonomy, difference, a specificity of desire and pleasure, a different relation to the female body, a speech, a writing - but never seduction. They are ashamed of seduction, as implying an artificial presentation of the body, or a life of vassalage and prostitution. They do not understand that seduction represents mastery over the symbolic universe, while power represents only mastery of the real universe. The sovereignty of seduction is incommensurable with the possessions of political or sexual power.

There is a strange, fierce complicity between the feminist movement and the order of truth. for seduction is resisted and rejected as a misappropriation of women's true being, a truth that in the last instance is to be inscribed in their bodies and desires. In one stroke the immense privilege of having never acceded to truth or meaning, and of having remained absolute masters of the realm of appearances. The capacity immanent to seduction to deny things their truth and turn it into a game, the pure play of appearances, and thereby foil all systems of power and meaning with a mere turn of the hand. The ability to turn appearances in on themselves, to play on the body's appearances, rather than with the depths of desire. Now all appearances are reversible...only at a level of appearances are systems fragile and vulnerable...meaning is vulnerable only to enchantment. One must be incredibly blind to deny the sole force that is equal and superior to all others, since with a simple play of the strategy of appearances, it turns them upside down.

It is not quite the feminine as surface that is opposed to the masculine as depth, but the feminine as indistinctness of surface and depth. Or as indifference to the authentic and the artificial. Joan Riviere, in "Femininite sans mascarade" (La Pstchoanalyse no. 7), makes a fundamental claim - one that contains within it all seduction: "Whether femininity be authentic or superficial, it is fundamentally the same thing."

This can be said only of the feminine. The masculine, by contrast, possesses unfailing powers of discrimination and absolute criteria for pronouncing the truth. The masculine is certain, the feminine is insoluble.

Now, surprisingly, this proposition, that in the feminine the very distinction between authenticity and artifice is without foundation, also defines the space of simulation. Here too one cannot distinguish between reality and its models, there being no other reality than the secreted by the simulative models, just as there is no other femininity than that of appearances.
Simulation too is insoluble.

[Morpheus]

Feminisation of Man? Neigh Satan lad, weep not. You'll soon be singing like Andreas - and his balls remain perfectly formed so I'm told

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1EVeWDr ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;