So here's another take:
Quote Originally Posted by babe View Post
Well, obviously you're too wrapped up in your special sensitivities guided by political correctness to just pass on some blatant sexist humor to tolerate the lower classes of folks like me. I've had my share of women in my life who are all wrapped up in their need to get acceptable results from their men, and I'll laugh at them and say "I don't give a damn" when I need to. Just to keep myself on task with an edge of sanity.
I think it is fundamentally intolerant of human beings to actually expect to educate and instruct other people who somehow fail to understand all you think you do. You have the process of coping with the problems in life inverted. You should work on your own failings and try to understand others and leave them the hell alone.
My higher criticism of Gone With The Wind pretty much reflects the girlfriend I had who cried when she watch that movie with me almost fifty years ago. I've never known what to think of women, really. I just think it doesn't pay to dance to their music, so to speak. I try to be nice, and will usually not bother them with my views unless it just gets so bad that if I don't say something I might forget myself and stomp on their little toes on purpose. That's what's so useful about the "I don't give a damn" strategy. . . . . it is a clear way out of an intolerable maze of crossed interpretations of reality and futile gestures of civility, with minimal damage.
Today's crop of intolerant bigots who pride themselves on being "progressive" are little different from yesterday's crop of intolerant bigots who prided themselves on being "right" somehow in some manner justifying their impositions of their ways on other people. The Ku Klux Klan mobs and the communist thugs who ransacked Russia in the 1920s running farmers out of their homes and seizing the land for "collectives" were of a common human sort. We have always used some ideal to justify our hate and abuse of others. Progressives and gays are no exceptions.
Hate is never going to be ruled out of existence by any crusaders with delusions of grandeur who believe they can make the world. . . and humans. . . . better.
Hate arises in the human heart with every idea of how to make the world better whether in terms of collective or personal aims. We cannot love without hate. You cannot make a mountain higher without digging a valley deeper. It's a yin/yang sort of thing perhaps. I cannot love the American experiment in human liberty without hating the dear old castles of Europe my ancestors lived in, and the feudal order of human society. You cannot love love your delusional ideals of a better world remade in progressive mantras without hating rednecks cruising the Southern woods with their hounds, guns, and fishing poles. You cannot think you are better somehow without thinking others are worse.
And I can't escape my own contradictions, either.
That's why the capacity to just leave other people alone is necessary to a good friendship with anyone. I might actually love ladies of culture and refinement who resort to the strategies of Scarlet O'hara for a lot of reasons or other human motives just as much as I hate them, but the fact is I will not succeed in any lasting or decent way if I try to change them somehow. That's why it can help to just say "I don't give a damn" and lecture to myself about why I can live without actually having to try to do something about it.
I believe the ideals of the American experiment in human liberty worked better for mankind than either the old feudal system of Europe or the new feudal system of progressive elitism/socialism now being "benevolently" imposed on the poor stupid humans you can't stand. I believe the fundamental right to think, speak, and feel is essential to people's capacity to achieve any of their individual goals, and that there is no better organization of society that can be achieved on a collective community, state, national or global level than can be achieved by putting premium value on "societal" goals, because the personal or individual ideals are closer to the reality of what we are.
Some have observed that all politics are local. . . but the more accurate statement is "All politics are personal". I'm just enough of globalist myself to love ideas about a "better world" somehow, but I realize people whose methods involve reshaping other people are never going to make it a better world. I can hammer away with my words on others, but unless I find something that others will choose to make their own, it's just useless ramblings of delusional mental exercise. . . . .
I've seen some examples of people whose ideals sorta took them over and pushed out personal interests and concerns even for their own welfare. Communist and even progressive ideologues can do that as well as any religious zealot. I've seen idealists go over the rim en masse for all kinds of causes seen as "for the good of others" or "to save the planet", and in almost every crusade of this sort, if you look for them, you'll see people using the movement for some personal gain. . . and in fact. . . . whipping up the sentiments via media or organizations to maximize their personal power and profit.
Alexander Solzhenitzsyn's observations on Russia led him to religiously believe the common Russian was the fundamental unit of goodness, a goodness that exists in fact only at the personal level, in the individual human soul. I think it is a universal truth, a human truth. It's the nature of human beings. No collective or social level of organization can rise above the free will or virtue of what people are as individuals.
Respect for that basic human free will is the best ideal we have ever conceived, or ever will conceive. Every ideal that tries to reshape basic human free will is an attempt to impose bondage on mankind.
Love people, hate people, love them and hate them at the same time, but leave them the hell alone.
And that, my dear, is precisely why I need to say "I don't give a damn."
This is pure crap.
This is the way I took ECTAP's response, and frankly, I thought that was a very reasonable response just as it stood. . . . .
probably, for the sake of friendship or something, the part about it being a joke was meant to just not hurt my little intzy wintzy feelings. . . . .
To be honest babe, sometimes I indeed don't understand some parts of your write ups but this time, it isn't the case. Actually, with time and getting more familiar with your writing and thinking(at least the reflections of your thinking) style, I'm having less difficulties with your precious crap. No phun intended.
Now, for one of your main points in this last pages, the personal freedom or for a slightly different manner, the individual freedom theme, I can say that I'm not surprised a bit by what you have written. Because I know your general opinions less or more by now. But you may be surprised by the fact that the very notions of the personal/individual independence and the latitude that should be the norm in the relationships of any people in any society, were my main reasons to leave the environment of my upbringing and the people that were really very important in my life. I'm talking about a life changing intellectual/spiritual course and it was the main motive of it. If you remember in another conversation, I've said that I've chosen an individual path for myself and left my sect even though they were much more permissive and open-minded community than the majority of the religious communities.
Actually this was what I have written exactly:
Today I've chosen a different way and proclaimed myself as a free soul and I want to be not linked to any one or any being but God.
Yes they were good people, they were liberal in their own ways but one of their main concepts was, "Us > Me". Or "We > I" etc. That notion almost always brings the re-shaping of others lives, even though it suggests and intends the good of every individual and the entire community in its essence. And as you stated in your posts repeatedly, it only fires a desire in an individuals mind: "Leave me alone!"
From this point maybe I could tie to an answer for one of your questions.
What I'm wondering is. . . in Turkey or in other areas with large Moslem populations. . . . is there any current fascination with ideals that are based on individual uniqueness and individual accountability for ideas and actions????
Of course there is this poignant charm of the real freedom being present and effective in anywhere in the world, so it exists here too. There are many groups(I know it's an irony) from many different backgrounds that pursue for a state that they can be as they are, as they want to be. There are non-religious and liberal groups as well as some weird extreme communities and even, again ironically and quite interestingly there are religious groups that want to have more freedom in their lives. But the common incumbency that they all share is kinda funny, they have to be together, they have to be a group for standing up for their ideals, the goal of individual independence. From the lands of America, this irony would seem somewhat blurry. But it's a real burden for this folks and not all of them can carry it. Most of them escape from it and just move to other lands with more freedom and most of the rest of them would do the same if they could. At this point, an objection or an expostulation rather, naturally arises against your disturbance by the "better world" ideals and activities. Depending on the society that you live in, one can be fine with reshaping other peoples lives, or his/her own life, at least to a degree and as long as the reshaping is aiming the individual freedom itself.
For instance, I live in such a country, that a pianist can be convicted with imprisonment for his ideas, same for the college students, journalists and writers etc. Women have tremendous difficulties in society and it is worsening and not going to get better any soon, unfortunately. Overall economic situation is not good and people can't even provide their basic needs, health and education being at the outset. Peoples daily lives are being restricted by the most stupid laws and it is starting to be a monitored life almost.
And as you know, there are other countries that make mine seem like a heaven. They wont have any qualms for stoning a young woman to death or beheading men with swords in front of 80 thousand people in stadiums for the sake of justice.
Since "I don't give a damn", in my opinion, is a fundamental right of a person in every time and place, I would still fine with it. But, in this type of societies it becomes quite a luxury in my conscience.
Again, as I said somewhere in this thread, I was ready to some life-reshaping by joining the Taksim protests if it weren't for my father. I don't know, maybe people can't see the big picture clearly and don't feel horrible for trying to change other peoples lifes when there is clearly the need of it. But when the motives are genuine, how can you blame them?
Btw, I might/would still want changes and I'd be for it even if I were living in America or Sweden or Denmark etc. Because those are the places of a special kind of freedom that I call "chicken freedom" in my terminology. Because, besides the hidden deep problems in those lands, there is this illusion of freedom that the majority of the people are in fact no much different than the poor chickens in the one foot battery cages in the poultry farms. Especially whenever I see people shopping in big supermarkets, this analogy makes me smile in a sad way.
Anyway, I'm derailing it a bit and can't write smooth as you do any way, so let me finish with one last thing.
For me, it was a Kurdish ex-sunni writer that obfuscated my mind and encouraged me to think independently and made me aware of the critical thinking. He too wasn't aware of the importance of individual uniqueness and the real freedom that comes from it until his late 20ies but in a very tough life-changing course, he chose his own way of thinking, own beliefs and own path, to be, later, changing other peoples minds and lives with his life story. Maybe this kind of reshaping of lifes is the healthiest one. No dictating, no influencing but encouraging people towards their independence.
