Greetings. I am a representative of Dolores: I’ll be the server of the party who is dining out today. The discussion is the Divisions between toast and butter. Ingredients are materials for construction of breakfast. That zeros a focus of attention upon two competitive points of view concerning accountability and responsibility.
Defining ingredients: Toast, butter, jam.
They are listed in the attached conveyance, listing items and units of account in sovereign currency.
Be careful, John. You do that so well it might make some people wonder about you…
Very nice. What irritated me in that thread was his refusal to answer his rationale for what he was saying. Assume that you actually ordered breakfast like that for some reason. Would it be fair of me to ask why you use “representative of Dolores” instead of saying “Hi. I’m Dolores” like every other speaking human being in the world would say?
And if there is a reason, couldn’t you explain it in 5,000 words or fewer? In your own words instead of merely citing others out of context? Just say “I’m not really Dolores. She is a corporate fiction created by the government” or some such thing.
If it was really some game to try to be confusing, I would understand, but these people are serious in their beliefs. You would think that they could begin to explain these beliefs.
…and Albanians?
Around the time of that thread this lovely video popped up. It’s a crazy woman getting arrested by a surprisingly chill cop. Her defense? She’s “a free inhabitant of the land.” She goes on long, babbling rants that make no sense but follow the usual script where she’s beyond the authority of the American justice system, somehow. My favorite part is 4:49:
Cop: You’re under arrest.
Lady: No, I’m not.
Bahahaha. Love the magical thinking.
Josf and her should hook up and build a compound somewhere.
My head hurts.
He starts off by implying something sinister and unforgivably evil happened, and discusses it as if it were common knowledge, without actually defining what his point is.
Then he supports his point, whatever it is, with snippets of opinion pieces from political pundits who lived 250 or so years ago, who definitely had a strong opinion about something, but how their opinions tie with his point is unclear.
He also obliquely makes passive-aggressive criticisms about what a dissenting Doper said as if they were insects, and builds up how their snarkiness will lead to the downfall of society. He then further details how he’s been victimized, but never really answers their points of contention.
I’m still not sure if he’s saying our early form of government was “Criminal Rule.” Or is he saying a particular political faction (that no longer exists today) supported Criminal Rule? Technically, the US broke British law in breaking away to set up a separate government. Is he saying the US should serve time for that? Does he think the British should consider legal action?
“Rule of Law versus Criminal Rule” – does Josf even understand that law is a made thing, a thing invented by human minds, and not something discovered by human minds like mathematics?
Is it true he killed him a BAR when he was only three?
That video is hilarious.
Well, the guy was crazy in one way or another. Loosely speaking, we all have some craziness inside us (as I’m using the term). Extreme cases like Josf may help us to understand it better.
The email that he provided to this message board has the last name of Kelly. The posts in the other forum show somewhat more conversational syntax. So at this point I’m guessing that English is his first language at least.
I think the jargon is used as a shield. Psychologists have a concept known as cognitive dissonance which I loosely relate to the tendency of humans to evade unpleasant thoughts. Josf is pretty invested in his worldview. He uses the jargon because engaging in the debate - or even considering factual correction - threatens his worldview too much. This sort of evasion isn’t uncommon in RL, though again this is an incredibly extreme case.
What’s the appeal? Well some of it is monetary. To some extent outrage provides a charge, a source of satisfaction or at least stimulus. But frankly I’m guessing that these sorts of arguments (debt doesn’t exist!) provide a psychological cover for some deep personal fuckups that some of these folks have committed. They also seem to consider themselves rebels, which has a flavor of romanticism about it. Also, they’re crazy.
Also Josf believes he is fighting the good fight.
Humans have an absolutely amazing ability to lie to themselves, deny reality and even invent new ones. The difference between what we insist has to be true, and what actually is true can cause us all sorts of harm, as our minds try to hide the glaring inconsistencies and outright falsehoods from our conscious self.
Sovereign Citizenship is ‘magical thinking’ in that it insists that there must be some secret mumbo jumbo (as with actual “Magic” or “Magick”), which if you manage to get absolutely right, will allow you to change the rules of actual reality and make them match your self-deceiving ‘desired’ reality.
You can point out the glaring inconsistencies, but their minds will just go “Yes, but I took a left turn at Albuquerque, so that doesn’t apply to me!”
You know, that’s a cop we can all respect. All cops should have to watch that video with the understanding that this is how you deal with an obnoxious but harmless person. We’d seriously have a lot less problems.
Err… Mathematics is also invented. We didn’t discover maths. We defined it.
The fight for what, is the question that many of us have after reading that pile of gibberish.
Total highjack, but…not exactly. There really is an external, independent object – the natural numbers. Just break them into composite numbers and prime numbers: we didn’t “define” that; it’s an intrinsic property of the numbers themselves. We discovered this (fascinating!) fact, and got to work finding further and further subtle implications. The Pythagorean Theorem was not “invented” nor “defined,” but discovered. It was “out there” before we came along, and will continue to be out there after we’re long gone.
The comedic “law of three” is something we invented.
“Three Freemen on the Land walk into a bar…”
Following up with what Trin said, this is a matter of some controversy. Professional mathematicians work on the assumption that they are discovering something. The topic has been discussed in GD.
Measure for Measure: Fair enough, I should have acknowledged that I was defending a point of view held by many, and not defining (hee hee) a certain truth.
They border on the Adriatic.
Their land is mostly mountainous.