Amen! It is amazing how few people recognize this fact. “If you want to know you got to read.”
What batteries, where? Oh, the ones in your hearing aids.
Nope. He’s just exceedingly dead. He doesn’t vibrate either, but the only way he’s going to radiate light is if you find his remains, pour gasoline on them and apply a match.
And neither Christ nor anything else radiates love, and compassion. That’s just plain nonsensical.
Looks like to me he’s building up to another witnessing episode. He’ll probably start talking about spiritual experiences and NDEs, and how they tell us all these Very Important Things That Science Cannot.
Yes, but:
-So are the cells that compose our bodies
-Swarms don’t care if individual members have to be sacrificed to achieve the Swarm’s goal.
I think if you pass that radiation through a double slit, you’ll discover that it is in fact vibration.
Surely when he’s swimming he convects? That would imply vibration.
Yeah, but Christ don’t swim–he walks on the water. Ergo, no vibration.
Some times it helps to think of light, love and compassion as streams of discrete particles, other times it helps to think of them as continuous waves.
And that’s why it’s not love and compassion he’s radiating; it’s body odor. You’d smell bad too after 2000+ years in a desert without a bath . . .
I will break this to you gently, Jesus is alive and well in the spirit world. I have seen Him, I went to a class He taught on forgiveness. Yep, He radiates light, love, and compassion.
Have you ever watched a flight of ducks or geese, flying a perfect V formation, then all at once they turn at the same instant, beautiful. I have read some theories, but it is unknown how they can do that. Oh, yes, all birds can do it.
How dogs and cats can find their way home from miles away through land they have never seen. I read the story of a family who lost their dog on vacation in Florida, the dog returned a year later to their home almost a thousand miles away.
And just last week I met Darth Vader and he taught me how to use the Force to strangle my enemies. And he radiated so much coolness that I scraped some up and put it in a jug for safekeeping.
Self organization. They watch each other, and follow simple rules that cause them to maintain a formation. Or at least, that’s how it appears.
I’d guess they simply watch the bird in front of them and move accordingly. Their reactions are quicker than your eyesight, a helpful skill when you have to fly.
If you see a really large flock of birds, like thousands of birds - Mississauga used toi have these huge, almost impossible large flocks of sparrows or finches or some little bird, and I was fascinated by them - it’s painfully obvious they do not move in unison, that the back of the formation turns after the front does.
The hell, I am the box.
coberst, when you say “improve performance within a group,” do you mean improve an individual’s performance in some greater project as a result of being in a group, or improve an individual’s performance as it relates to being a member of a group?
BG I for one appreciate your reference.
[list=a]
[li]It is only by virtue of operating within groups that humans are able to surpass the limits of their individual brains. As an individual learning on my own I am less than the earliest savage. As part of a society and a culture I have access to the results of thousands of years of math, science, poetry, art, theater, philosophy, and even iPhones. Culture never occurs in isolation; it is a social undertaking. By being part of the organized group an individual does not descend rungs of civilization; civilization consists of rungs of organized groups.[/li][li]As has been pointed out, my neurons follow simple algorithms yet a sentience is emergent of them that they are unaware of. May that hive or ant colony have a sentience emergent of its members that we are unable to communcate with? Might society have an uber-sentience as foreign to our comprehension as our minds are to our neurons? How would we know? Certainly great minds have speculated that it is all in how the information is processed. As Hofstadter would say it, all lies in how much the processing involves self-referential “strange loops.” BG’s global mind reference is but one manifestation of that conceptualization.[/li][li]By all means transcend the limits of a restricted education. Expose yourself to myriad of ideas and be critical of all of your preconceptions as well as those of others, even those that have been revealed truths. Duh. But the responsibility for curiousity is ultimately upon your shoulders, not your teachers.[/li][/list]
I mean that we need to recognize just how badly individual behavior becomes when in certain groups. We are aware of the dramatic changes that take place in individuals when they become members of political or racial groups. Ideology changes mature intelligent humans into barbarians.
What is the nature of the ‘group mind’, i.e. the mental changes such individuals undergo as a result of becoming a group?
A bond develops much like cells which constitute a living body—group mind is more of an unconscious than a conscious force—there are motives for action that elude conscious attention—distinctiveness and individuality become group behavior based upon unconscious motives—there develops a sentiment of invincible power, anonymous and irresponsible attitudes–repressions of unconscious forces under normal situations are ignored—conscience which results from social anxiety disappear.
Contagion sets in—hypnotic order becomes prevalent—individuals sacrifice personal interest for the group interest.
Suggestibility, of which contagion is a symptom, leads to the lose of conscious personality—the individual follows suggestions for actions totally contradictory to person conscience—hypnotic like fascination sets in—will and discernment vanishes—direction is taken from the leader in an hypnotic like manner—the conscious personality disappears.
“Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—a creature acting by instinct. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”
There is a lowering of intellectual ability “pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children…A group is credulous and easily influenced”—the improbable seldom exists—they think in images—feelings are very simple and exaggerated—the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty—extremes are prevalent, antipathy becomes hate and suspicion becomes certainty.
Force is king—force is respected and obeyed without question—kindness is weakness—tradition is triumphant—words have a magical power—supernatural powers are easily accepted—groups never thirst for truth, they demand illusions—the unreal receives precedence over the real—the group is an obedient herd—prestige is a source for domination, however it “is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure”.
Repeating the same quotes fails to bring clarity to your point.
Being part of a group leads to loss of a conscious personality? The evidence for this statement is what exactly? I am part of many groups and continue to experience my conscious self as much as I ever do. A Nazi concentration camp guard may have commited horrible atrocities but I have never heard tell that they lost their sense of self in the process. At its core the process of his conforming to the standards of his society is not much different than my conforming to my secular humanist ones or Lekatt’s fundamentalist ones.
Now I admire a good non-conformist as much as the next guy. But a functional non-conformist still stays within certain bounds of the group.
What do we call someone in our society who functions without any regard to conforming to group norms? A sociopath more often than not. Now of course groups, cultures and societies can be pathologic. Could always be that you are experiencing reality and everyone else is merely sharing the same delusions. You never really know, do you?
Bottom line is that we are usually hardwired to make our delusions fit those of our surrounding culture. More often than not these shared beliefs about reality constrain our violence more than promote it. They allow us to sacrifice our own apparent self-interest for the betterment of the group (and by so doing usually recieve more substantial benefit to ourselves in the longer run, or at least to our progeny). Of course this tendency can be misapplied and our capacity for violence and for self destructive actions released. But the key factor then is not the being part of a group, but the dysfunctionality of that particular group. One particular example is mob mentality and perhaps that is the point that you are trying to get at.
Is that what you are trying to ask? - When does a group become a mob? How do you stop mob mentality from commencing? If so those have the potential to be interesting discussions … maybe you can try to phrase it again without just repeating the same catch-phrases.
DSeid
The group in ‘group psychology’ is ideology. In describing the characteristics of group behavior I am describing primarily what ideology does to human behavior.
The Economy—The Market—Family Values—War on Terrorism—War on Drugs—Support the Troops—Freedom—Democracy—Under God—Pro-life—Pro-choice–Universal notions concocted to maneuver and to manipulate by appearing to represent the interest of the whole mass of the people.
What is the source for these Universal Notions? Do these notions grow like wild flowers? Do these notions form like raindrops and fall to earth to nourish and to refresh all citizens? Are these notions universally benign and beneficial?
Such Universal Notions have a human source and are devised to promote the interests of that source. I suspect that all such notions and many others more mundane have a common source—ideology.
Ideology makes the world-go-round and we know less than nothing about ideology because knowing only that which is erroneous is equivalent to knowing less-than-nothing.
Of special interest to me is the college course outline and content placed on the Internet by the college professor for students of a particular college course. At no significant financial cost one can, through the Internet, take advantage of a college course outline at home. One particular example of such a course “Ideology & Discourse” can be found at discourse-in-society.org.
I can think of few domains of knowledge more important for a person attempting to understand her or his world than ideology.
I suspect many people confuse the content of ideology with the content of philosophy. It is not unusual for someone to question another’s philosophy or worldview when in fact it is the ideology of the person that is the correct question.
Psychology and sociology have generally decided to use the word ‘belief’ to replace a more ambiguous word ‘idea’ and ‘thoughts’ of any kind; I shall follow that same practice in this thread.
In keeping with this attitude and the course of study “Ideology and Discourse: A Multidisplinary Introduction” I shall use the following definition:
Ideologies are the fundamental beliefs of a group and its members.
This definition was chosen by the author to replace an often used meaning of ideology as ‘false consciousness’ or ‘misguided beliefs’. This more general definition will permit a more rational consideration of this domain of knowledge identified as ‘Ideology’.
The word ‘ideology’ has a very negative connotation in political discourse and thus in discourse in general. This apriori negative attitude makes it impossible to give rational consideration to this very important concept. Perhaps the first thing that a person must do to gain knowledge about this important concept is to erase this negative attitude, which has been a result of social osmosis in so many people.
Social discourse plays an essential role in why we adopt ideology, what we know about it and how ideology becomes the most important sociocentric influence in our life. Discourse plays a fundamental role in the nature of ideology and thus discourse is an important consideration in the study of the nature of ideology.
Ideology and discourse is a multidiscipline subject of study. One must approach it from most of the domains of knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences. “However, we shall reduce this large number of potential disciplines to three main clusters, namely those involved in the study of Discourse, Cognition and Society.”
Virtually all people agree that ideology is about the beliefs of a collective of people. “Ideologies consist of shared, social beliefs, and not of personal opinions…Ideologies are about life and death, birth and reproduction…they are about people and their health in relation to their environment…they are about class…about having power…about the redistribution of wealth and resources…they are about gender…about race and ethnicity.”
There is an enormous amount of knowledge accepted by an enormous number of people without any consideration. This vast domain of beliefs has been labeled sociocultural ‘common ground’ of a group or a culture. There are also a great number of beliefs that are not shared by all and need to be asserted or defended.
Ideologies are considered to be ‘basic beliefs’ in that these beliefs form the foundation upon which other beliefs are accepted or rejected. Norms and values are considered to be basic beliefs; they organize our attitudes and actions. Some of these norms and values that are part of every community become translated into basic beliefs of an ideology, therein lies there strength. It is these “group-related and interest defined interpretation of values that form the building blocks of ideological beliefs.”
Let me see if I understand you.
Members in a group share some common beliefs as fundamental truths. Examples could be “democracy good” or “religious tolerance good” or “Christ loves me” or “Group X is subhuman and should be exterminated.”
Individuals learn these beliefs by a process of aculturation through interaction with other memebers of the group … as you say, social discourse.
Your on-line professor likes to call those shared beliefs “ideology” and likes the phrase social discourse, etc. Fine. Academics have to make simple things wordy, its what they do.
Basic stuff so far. Societies are cooperative ventures. They can only exist by having its members working together with some common ground of shared goals and rules. This is true whether the basic shared beliefs are those of Sparta, Athens, ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany, modern America, or an Islamic caliphate. The shared worldview may be one that I find to be false or even evil, or noble and good and true, but it is in either case required for the group to exist.
Where you lose me is when you then conclude that this process of forming a set of shared societal beliefs is stepping down societal rungs and tantamount to violence - when you state that being a member of a group that accepts shared beliefs is entering a hypnotic state with the loss of a conscious self. This simply does not follow. Can you clarify without resorting to repeating quotes that sound, well, ideologically driven, as if they are revealed truth?