Besides, science isn't always precise, is it? And mathematics, well, it's primarily abstract.
How long does it take an adult human to figure out that you really cannot put God in that small of a box? I know, your mileage may vary.
Anyway, GSC readers may be interested in Pavlovitz' book as a doctrinal discussion. But clearly, he blows the foundation out of Victor's foundational class. He blows Victor's culture of deception completely out of the water.
This looks interesting to me. As usual, a promising recommendation, Rocky.
Wasn't victor's phrase: scientific accuracy and mathematical precision? Either way, you can't put God in that small of a box. Well, you can. But it won't help you. And it won't fit, anyway. You know, the way a hand fits...
This looks interesting to me. As usual, a promising recommendation, Rocky.
Wasn't victor's phrase: scientific accuracy and mathematical precision? Either way, you can't put God in that small of a box. Well, you can. But it won't help you. And it won't fit, anyway. You know, the way a hand fits...
His phrase was "with a mathematical exactness and with a scientific precision."
One thing about mathematics is that it is not studied in the real world, it's studied in the imaginary world of numbers. (Don't believe me? Then demonstrate the square root of negative 1.) Physics, chemistry, and biology all take place in the real world (with some calculations), and are subject to reality ruining experiments and so on. Since math exists separate from reality, there's no "sampling error" or anything like that to interfere. There's some ideas that float around some intellectuals that math and theoretical physics (the imagining stuff) are SUPERIOR to science you can encounter in your life because they are "pure". Personally, I consider the obverse to be true- that the science we actually USE to be superior than imaginings that may never go anywhere for us. But, that's all OPINIONS about existing areas of study. Naturally, there's all sorts of perspectives, opinions, and biases.
So, mathematics can be exact because it is conceptual and is a manipulation of ideas.
Interestingly enough, we can discuss ideas of God and so on, with about as much relevance to the world we live in (and arguably as much importance.) But, that's all ideas, and not relevant when discussing our lives and any experience. Philosophers have certainly done so for millenia and have drawn a comfortable paycheck doing so. Likewise, there's been any number of theologians (self-appointed and otherwise) who have drawn such a comfortable paycheck, vpw included.
So, coming back to the thread's subject.....
vpw wanted a living where he could tell people what to do AND draw a handsome paycheck doing so, preferably one with little labor and lots of job security. So, he considered entertainment and business management, and put them aside to go into religion. (It's been argued that he went into all 3, eventually.) When vpw finally got encountered the hippies (once they existed), he put on his full act, and convinced them that he was some great one, and got them to respect him under the premise that he studied about God and taught about God. Once he had them hooked, he slowly reeled them in more and more, and was bossy and authoritative around them in private, turning into a tyrant when it was REALLY private. He taught his inner circle to imitate him, and they taught others to imitate them. So, in twi, there was considerable education to be a jerk and to be bossy, depending on where you were in the group and what year it was.
Oddly enough, your chances of escaping jerk training were worse AFTER vpw died. BEFORE he died, you had to be on-grounds somewhere (a "root locale") to get the training, since he kept it close at hand. After vpw died, a few years later, a lot of things were coming to light, and lcm decided to be twice the jerk and boss that vpw was rather than try and address any of the problems. So, lcm demanded an oath of loyalty to follow him blindly (when someone asked him directly, he confirmed this.) The immediate result was a refusal of most of the leadership in the US refusing to do so- resulting in lcm firing all of them- resulting in 80% of the twi rank-and-file leaving WITH them all in one year. What was left in twi was the 20% most likely to follow lcm off of a cliff- and all the moderating influences were gone. So, the jerk training was spread across twi with nobody putting the brakes on it locally any more. (Seriously, in the Bronx, when twi sent someone bossy, they were treated courteously to their faces, and ignored most of the time, until they left and were promptly forgotten. Yes, EL, I'm thinking of you here.) When lcm pulled his power play and canned ALL the NY leadership we respected- and I mean ALL, the only ones left were respected by family but not rank-and-file otherwise- we left with them. They had earned our respect, lcm had not.
(As a sign of how empty we left twi at the time, I could have jumped from "local chair-warmer" to "branch coordinator" when it was all done. If I had been older, I might have had a shot at grabbing "territory coordinator" = which WAS grabbed by someone who went from "local chair-warmer" to "territory coordinator". I know because he'd warmed a chair next to mine from time to time. )
So, yes, jerk-training was a thing at twi- and all indications are that it still is. This leopard has not changed his spots.
vpw wanted a living where he could tell people what to do AND draw a handsome paycheck doing so, preferably one with little labor and lots of job security. So, he considered entertainment and business management, and put them aside to go into religion. (It's been argued that he went into all 3, eventually.)
I would argue that he did indeed go into all three.
17 hours ago, WordWolf said:
So, yes, jerk-training was a thing at twi- and all indications are that it still is. This leopard has not changed his spots.
I must confess that I so agreed with your entire post that it would have been useless for me to quote all of it.
Btw, remember the Einstein quote:
Quote
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
It makes so much more sense to me now (not that it didn't make sense before) that I think of mathematics as entirely based on abstract ideas. I love that you cited the imaginary number "square root of -1." But now I realize all of math is imaginary concepts that are used to represent or describe, most of the time, real things.
I think they trained us to be jerks by example, but I think it could have been avoided. I did not agree with everything everyone taught, but I respected the hell out of a lot of these Corps trained "jerks."
Ill readily admit I was a gigantic jerk up until about the year 2000. I followed the example of others who had been around longer than me and were way corps. Not everybody is a jerk. I actually held the Bible in higher esteem than anything way leadership had to say. And that started on my apprentice year, the year 2000. Personally, I did everything in my power to treat people with love and respect. I wasn't perfect at it and I probably stepped on a few toes along the way, but if someone said something to me I would be as meek as possible to them and do all I could to apologize for my faults. My main concern to this day is standing approved before God and not men.
The paradox, as I remember it, was that we were taught that WE were the "called out," the special ones because we had the "rightly-divided" truth. Yes, I remember reading and hearing about the two greatest commandments. But, again, for me, it wasn't until the early 1990s that I began thinking in terms of introspection.
M. Scott Peck taught me, when I read his main work, The Road Less Traveled, to reflect on what I was thinking and doing. It wasn't until years later, and screwing up my marriage because of the male-dominated social orthodoxy that I even started to figure it out. The curtain didn't come up all at once to enlighten me about my psychological problems. It was a process. A journey I'm still on.
Wierwille's crappy example, unfortunately taught me more than his crappy class did.
That's why I appreciate people like Pavlovitz, Stephanie Foo (author of What My Bones Know), Brene Brown (Atlas of the Heart) and MANY others. Like Penworks, like Skyrider, and other current denizens of GSC.
So, my conclusion, is that we very emphatically WERE taught by both dogma/doctrine and by example to be major jerks. And I was one of them. Thankfully, I never attained a powerful status or position in TWI or I have to now figure that I would have many more people to whom I would have to make amends.
Being so damn sure of knowing what's right about God, or any related spiritual matter... well, going back to the OP for this thread, I believe Pavlovitz seriously understated the point. But I guess his use of a particular figure of speech in that regard can underscore the importance of it.
The difference now is that I'm not a 19-year old know-it-all airman trying to sell a class.
I hope others lend their insight on this subject even though this post feels like a closing argument.
On 7/2/2022 at 7:07 PM, Rocky said:
Surety is a nice idea, but it's highly overrated. There's a dangerous hubris involved in claiming any kind of moral authority or precise theological clarity other than "Here's the best guess I can make based on the available information--though I very well may be wrong."
...It wasn't until years later, and screwing up my marriage because of the male-dominated social orthodoxy that I even started to figure it out. The curtain didn't come up all at once to enlighten me about my psychological problems. It was a process.. .
The purpose of marriage is to move The Word. God sends revelation the head of the marriage first.
I'm not sure this message that being male is wrong is helpful. Question the institution that serves no purpose and is built to fail.
I'm not clearer on this than the idea that it sounds like. You feel a male oriented (Knowing who the father is) social order caused you to destroy your marriage.
I'm not clearer on this than the idea that it sounds like. You feel a male oriented (Knowing who the father is) social order caused you to destroy your marriage.
This thread isn't about psychoanalyzing me, but thanks for asking for clarification anyway.
B) The closer in you were in twi, the more you were taught this (by example and by lecture.)
C) Some of us, post-twi, have tried to learn better behavior since leaving.
D) Some of us, post-twi, haven't tried very hard (generally, those who insist there were no real problems under vpw._
E) vpw, among other things, was a self-professed "expert" at all sorts of things that he didn't understand as much as he claimed to, and as much as he believed.
F) vpw taught, by example, and others he taught, passed along ALSO by example, to be a self-professed "expert" at all sorts of things. (The closer in you were in twi, the more you learned this.)
G) Some of us have tried to unlearn that since leaving twi, some of us have not.
It's kinda been bugging me that . . . LCMs behavior for example . . . aren't more and more people behaving like him anyway? Makes the lawsuit look moot. If everyone's bad, nobody is bad.
I have in my hand at the moment, a book by John Pavlovitz, titled "If God is Love, Don't be a Jerk."
John is a former pastor who outgrew what he was taught about God. On page 39,
Besides, science isn't always precise, is it? And mathematics, well, it's primarily abstract.
How long does it take an adult human to figure out that you really cannot put God in that small of a box? I know, your mileage may vary.
Anyway, GSC readers may be interested in Pavlovitz' book as a doctrinal discussion. But clearly, he blows the foundation out of Victor's foundational class. He blows Victor's culture of deception completely out of the water.
Rocky, as always you bring fascinating food for thought to Grease Spot Café – not just the intriguing books you mention but also your own ideas...I put If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk by Pavlovitz on my Amazon wish list.
I had to Google some definitions of phenotype and genotype after reading this quote: Abstract: We examine the self-deceptive aspects of religion and nationalism. By embracing various religious or political ideals, regardless of their truth, our ancestors could have enhanced their confidence, solidified their social ties, and manipulated their reproductive rivals. This use of culture as one’s extended phenotype may increase the spread of misinformation and create global webs of deception and self-deception. From Research Gate: culture of deception
And that led me to some interesting subtopics that I thought may relate to this thread. One of the hits from Googling “extended phenotype” was a book by Richard Dawkins. “The Extended Phenotype is a 1982 book by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author introduced a biological concept of the same name. The main idea is that phenotype should not be limited to biological processes such as protein biosynthesis or tissue growth, but extended to include all effects that a gene has on its environment, inside or outside the body of the individual organism…
…Dawkins suggests that there are three forms of extended phenotype. The first is the capacity of animals to modify their environment using architectural constructions. Dawkins cited as examples caddis houses and beaver dams. The second is manipulating other organisms. Dawkins points out that animal morphology, and ultimately animal behaviour, may be advantageous not to the animal itself but, for instance, to a parasite which afflicts it – "parasite manipulation". This refers to the capacity, found in several groups of parasites, to modify the behaviour of the host to increase the parasite's own fitness…” from Wiki: the extended phenotype
I can see how the first form of extended phenotype Dawkins talks about correlates to the “use of culture as one’s extended phenotype may increase the spread of misinformation and create global webs of deception and self-deception” from Research Gate article.
Dawkins’ second form of extended phenotype - manipulating OTHER organisms – really got my attention…Dawkins makes mention that this process may be advantageous not to the animal itself but, for instance, to a parasite which afflicts it - "parasite manipulation" referring to the capacity, found in some groups of parasites, to modify the behavior of the host to increase the parasite's own fitness…Yikes ! That made me think of a certain cult-leader (his initials are vpw) and his malignant narcissism - “Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.” From Wiki malignant narcissism Ever the parasite, certain cult-leaders eat away at the healthy relationships of family and friends – like vampires sucking the vital essence out of others for their own sustenance.
As Rocky, Raf and WordWolf pointed out, we were taught to be jerks by the “great” example provided by cult-leaders. Many of us deeply admired the vampire on stage for his charisma and supposed supernatural powers to get things done. As the proverb goes - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – which means one imitates someone else because one admires that person or values what that person is doing.
Probably one of the biggest reasons I went into the way corps was that I was so captivated by wierwille’s persona, legends and myths ( see Wiki: Difference Between Legend and Myth ) and figured the way corps program was the fastest way to catch lightning in a bottle…much to my dismay the corps program was the fastest way to become a porta-potty of wierwille’s bull$hit…going forth as jerk-leaders and jerk-workers to invade other folks’ boundaries – because getting all up in other folks’ business is definitely the concern, interest and need of exemplary-way-corps-vampires…their motto – It is Written – We Suck!
My comments might be too cerebral for some folks…so I’ll end on this. I Googled “calling someone a jerk” and among other things found this: A jerk is a mean, rude, selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate, snooty, pushy, uncaring, narcissistic, manipulative, self-centered, holier-than-thou, egotistical and good-for-nothing individual who treats people with disrespect…The way they behave makes others feel as though they are being belittled…Needless to say, nobody likes a person who is a jerk and/or a bully. From Quora: What is a jerk? Why do some people call others jerks?
Edited by T-Bone I said to my editor “don’t jerk me around. Quite goofing off and fix these dammmb tipe-0-s”
I had to Google some definitions of phenotype and genotype
So did I. I'm thankful for dictionaries.
1 hour ago, T-Bone said:
much to my dismay the corps program was the fastest way to become a porta-potty of wierwille’s bull$hit…going forth as jerk-leaders and jerk-workers to invade other folks’ boundaries – because getting all up in other folks’ business [bidness] is definitely the concern, interest and need of exemplary-way-corps-vampires…their motto – It is Written
Now, THAT is down right eloquent. Btw, I did read your entire post/comment this time, T-Bone.
Quote
A jerk is a mean, rude, selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate, snooty, pushy, uncaring, narcissistic, manipulative, self-centered, holier-than-thou, egotistical and good-for-nothing individual who treats people with disrespect…The way they behave makes others feel as though they are being belittled…Needless to say, nobody likes a person who is a jerk and/or a bully
Wow, if that doesn't hit the nail right on the head, I don't know what would. And here I thought Pavlovitz was just using a euphemism to be nice. Of course, when I first heard about his book (it actually took my local public library FOUR months after ordering it, to get it on the shelf) I thought of some less kind words that might also apply.
Here's another salient book that further blows the lid off of whether Victor EVER had insight from God.
Beside the fact that we were the only people who were RIGHT [all the time, about everything] and that we were in complete and total denial about our emotions... here's more of what we missed out on and that stunted our emotional and social growth and maturity.
UC Berkeley psych professor Dacher Keltner, working with Pixar director Pete Docter...
Quote
Keltner taught Docter and his team the functions of each major emotion: Fear keeps you safe. Anger protects you from being taken advantage of. And Sadness--what does Sadness do?
Keltner explained that Sadness triggers compassion. It brings people together...
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WordWolf
One thing about mathematics is that it is not studied in the real world, it's studied in the imaginary world of numbers. (Don't believe me? Then demonstrate the square root of negative 1.) Physic
Raf
I think they trained us to be jerks by example, but I think it could have been avoided. I did not agree with everything everyone taught, but I respected the hell out of a lot of these Corps trained "j
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Bolshevik
In simple response to the thread title, yes.
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Rocky
Of course... please elaborate. We know the thread title poses a rhetorical question, which answers itself. I'm confident you have some pithy insight.
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Bolshevik
We were taught not to go beyond thinking critically . . . About others.
The Way existed for vpw's needs.
Through use of . . . everything The Way taught, the only way to exalt vpw was to suppress everyone else.
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Nathan_Jr
This looks interesting to me. As usual, a promising recommendation, Rocky.
Wasn't victor's phrase: scientific accuracy and mathematical precision? Either way, you can't put God in that small of a box. Well, you can. But it won't help you. And it won't fit, anyway. You know, the way a hand fits...
Edited by Nathan_Jr...in a glove
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WordWolf
His phrase was "with a mathematical exactness and with a scientific precision."
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WordWolf
One thing about mathematics is that it is not studied in the real world, it's studied in the imaginary world of numbers. (Don't believe me? Then demonstrate the square root of negative 1.) Physics, chemistry, and biology all take place in the real world (with some calculations), and are subject to reality ruining experiments and so on. Since math exists separate from reality, there's no "sampling error" or anything like that to interfere. There's some ideas that float around some intellectuals that math and theoretical physics (the imagining stuff) are SUPERIOR to science you can encounter in your life because they are "pure". Personally, I consider the obverse to be true- that the science we actually USE to be superior than imaginings that may never go anywhere for us. But, that's all OPINIONS about existing areas of study. Naturally, there's all sorts of perspectives, opinions, and biases.
So, mathematics can be exact because it is conceptual and is a manipulation of ideas.
Interestingly enough, we can discuss ideas of God and so on, with about as much relevance to the world we live in (and arguably as much importance.) But, that's all ideas, and not relevant when discussing our lives and any experience. Philosophers have certainly done so for millenia and have drawn a comfortable paycheck doing so. Likewise, there's been any number of theologians (self-appointed and otherwise) who have drawn such a comfortable paycheck, vpw included.
So, coming back to the thread's subject.....
vpw wanted a living where he could tell people what to do AND draw a handsome paycheck doing so, preferably one with little labor and lots of job security. So, he considered entertainment and business management, and put them aside to go into religion. (It's been argued that he went into all 3, eventually.) When vpw finally got encountered the hippies (once they existed), he put on his full act, and convinced them that he was some great one, and got them to respect him under the premise that he studied about God and taught about God. Once he had them hooked, he slowly reeled them in more and more, and was bossy and authoritative around them in private, turning into a tyrant when it was REALLY private. He taught his inner circle to imitate him, and they taught others to imitate them. So, in twi, there was considerable education to be a jerk and to be bossy, depending on where you were in the group and what year it was.
Oddly enough, your chances of escaping jerk training were worse AFTER vpw died. BEFORE he died, you had to be on-grounds somewhere (a "root locale") to get the training, since he kept it close at hand. After vpw died, a few years later, a lot of things were coming to light, and lcm decided to be twice the jerk and boss that vpw was rather than try and address any of the problems. So, lcm demanded an oath of loyalty to follow him blindly (when someone asked him directly, he confirmed this.) The immediate result was a refusal of most of the leadership in the US refusing to do so- resulting in lcm firing all of them- resulting in 80% of the twi rank-and-file leaving WITH them all in one year. What was left in twi was the 20% most likely to follow lcm off of a cliff- and all the moderating influences were gone. So, the jerk training was spread across twi with nobody putting the brakes on it locally any more. (Seriously, in the Bronx, when twi sent someone bossy, they were treated courteously to their faces, and ignored most of the time, until they left and were promptly forgotten. Yes, EL, I'm thinking of you here.) When lcm pulled his power play and canned ALL the NY leadership we respected- and I mean ALL, the only ones left were respected by family but not rank-and-file otherwise- we left with them. They had earned our respect, lcm had not.
(As a sign of how empty we left twi at the time, I could have jumped from "local chair-warmer" to "branch coordinator" when it was all done. If I had been older, I might have had a shot at grabbing "territory coordinator" = which WAS grabbed by someone who went from "local chair-warmer" to "territory coordinator". I know because he'd warmed a chair next to mine from time to time. )
So, yes, jerk-training was a thing at twi- and all indications are that it still is. This leopard has not changed his spots.
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Rocky
I would argue that he did indeed go into all three.
I must confess that I so agreed with your entire post that it would have been useless for me to quote all of it.
Btw, remember the Einstein quote:
It makes so much more sense to me now (not that it didn't make sense before) that I think of mathematics as entirely based on abstract ideas. I love that you cited the imaginary number "square root of -1." But now I realize all of math is imaginary concepts that are used to represent or describe, most of the time, real things.
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Raf
I think they trained us to be jerks by example, but I think it could have been avoided. I did not agree with everything everyone taught, but I respected the hell out of a lot of these Corps trained "jerks."
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OldSkool
Ill readily admit I was a gigantic jerk up until about the year 2000. I followed the example of others who had been around longer than me and were way corps. Not everybody is a jerk. I actually held the Bible in higher esteem than anything way leadership had to say. And that started on my apprentice year, the year 2000. Personally, I did everything in my power to treat people with love and respect. I wasn't perfect at it and I probably stepped on a few toes along the way, but if someone said something to me I would be as meek as possible to them and do all I could to apologize for my faults. My main concern to this day is standing approved before God and not men.
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Rocky
The paradox, as I remember it, was that we were taught that WE were the "called out," the special ones because we had the "rightly-divided" truth. Yes, I remember reading and hearing about the two greatest commandments. But, again, for me, it wasn't until the early 1990s that I began thinking in terms of introspection.
M. Scott Peck taught me, when I read his main work, The Road Less Traveled, to reflect on what I was thinking and doing. It wasn't until years later, and screwing up my marriage because of the male-dominated social orthodoxy that I even started to figure it out. The curtain didn't come up all at once to enlighten me about my psychological problems. It was a process. A journey I'm still on.
Wierwille's crappy example, unfortunately taught me more than his crappy class did.
That's why I appreciate people like Pavlovitz, Stephanie Foo (author of What My Bones Know), Brene Brown (Atlas of the Heart) and MANY others. Like Penworks, like Skyrider, and other current denizens of GSC.
So, my conclusion, is that we very emphatically WERE taught by both dogma/doctrine and by example to be major jerks. And I was one of them. Thankfully, I never attained a powerful status or position in TWI or I have to now figure that I would have many more people to whom I would have to make amends.
Being so damn sure of knowing what's right about God, or any related spiritual matter... well, going back to the OP for this thread, I believe Pavlovitz seriously understated the point. But I guess his use of a particular figure of speech in that regard can underscore the importance of it.
The difference now is that I'm not a 19-year old know-it-all airman trying to sell a class.
I hope others lend their insight on this subject even though this post feels like a closing argument.
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waysider
Can I get an amen?
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Bolshevik
The purpose of marriage is to move The Word. God sends revelation the head of the marriage first.
I'm not sure this message that being male is wrong is helpful. Question the institution that serves no purpose and is built to fail.
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Rocky
male-dominated social orthodoxy
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Bolshevik
I Googled the term a few times.
I'm not clearer on this than the idea that it sounds like. You feel a male oriented (Knowing who the father is) social order caused you to destroy your marriage.
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Rocky
This thread isn't about psychoanalyzing me, but thanks for asking for clarification anyway.
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Rocky
The topic is, "were we taught by and in TWI to be jerks?" The answer, as I see it, is yes.
I learned. Then I did. Then, from mistakes, I learned what I did didn't work.
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Bolshevik
No, not you, your generation.
Your language is common.
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Bolshevik
Mathematical exactness and deception
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WordWolf
A) Yes, we were taught to be jerks in twi.
B) The closer in you were in twi, the more you were taught this (by example and by lecture.)
C) Some of us, post-twi, have tried to learn better behavior since leaving.
D) Some of us, post-twi, haven't tried very hard (generally, those who insist there were no real problems under vpw._
E) vpw, among other things, was a self-professed "expert" at all sorts of things that he didn't understand as much as he claimed to, and as much as he believed.
F) vpw taught, by example, and others he taught, passed along ALSO by example, to be a self-professed "expert" at all sorts of things. (The closer in you were in twi, the more you learned this.)
G) Some of us have tried to unlearn that since leaving twi, some of us have not.
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Bolshevik
Jerk is the third derivative of our position with Respect to time. Snap, crackle and pop, being the fourth, fifth and sixth derivative. I'm cereal.
Perhaps some scientific presicion and mathematical measurement with relative erroror would help. Meaning examples.
First, lunch.
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Bolshevik
It's kinda been bugging me that . . . LCMs behavior for example . . . aren't more and more people behaving like him anyway? Makes the lawsuit look moot. If everyone's bad, nobody is bad.
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T-Bone
Rocky, as always you bring fascinating food for thought to Grease Spot Café – not just the intriguing books you mention but also your own ideas...I put If God Is Love, Don't Be a Jerk by Pavlovitz on my Amazon wish list.
I had to Google some definitions of phenotype and genotype after reading this quote:
Abstract: We examine the self-deceptive aspects of religion and nationalism. By embracing various religious or political ideals, regardless of their truth, our ancestors could have enhanced their confidence, solidified their social ties, and manipulated their reproductive rivals. This use of culture as one’s extended phenotype may increase the spread of misinformation and create global webs of deception and self-deception. From Research Gate: culture of deception
And that led me to some interesting subtopics that I thought may relate to this thread. One of the hits from Googling “extended phenotype” was a book by Richard Dawkins. “The Extended Phenotype is a 1982 book by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author introduced a biological concept of the same name. The main idea is that phenotype should not be limited to biological processes such as protein biosynthesis or tissue growth, but extended to include all effects that a gene has on its environment, inside or outside the body of the individual organism…
…Dawkins suggests that there are three forms of extended phenotype. The first is the capacity of animals to modify their environment using architectural constructions. Dawkins cited as examples caddis houses and beaver dams. The second is manipulating other organisms. Dawkins points out that animal morphology, and ultimately animal behaviour, may be advantageous not to the animal itself but, for instance, to a parasite which afflicts it – "parasite manipulation". This refers to the capacity, found in several groups of parasites, to modify the behaviour of the host to increase the parasite's own fitness…” from Wiki: the extended phenotype
I can see how the first form of extended phenotype Dawkins talks about correlates to the “use of culture as one’s extended phenotype may increase the spread of misinformation and create global webs of deception and self-deception” from Research Gate article.
Dawkins’ second form of extended phenotype - manipulating OTHER organisms – really got my attention…Dawkins makes mention that this process may be advantageous not to the animal itself but, for instance, to a parasite which afflicts it - "parasite manipulation" referring to the capacity, found in some groups of parasites, to modify the behavior of the host to increase the parasite's own fitness…Yikes ! That made me think of a certain cult-leader (his initials are vpw) and his malignant narcissism - “Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.” From Wiki malignant narcissism Ever the parasite, certain cult-leaders eat away at the healthy relationships of family and friends – like vampires sucking the vital essence out of others for their own sustenance.
As Rocky, Raf and WordWolf pointed out, we were taught to be jerks by the “great” example provided by cult-leaders. Many of us deeply admired the vampire on stage for his charisma and supposed supernatural powers to get things done. As the proverb goes - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – which means one imitates someone else because one admires that person or values what that person is doing.
Probably one of the biggest reasons I went into the way corps was that I was so captivated by wierwille’s persona, legends and myths ( see Wiki: Difference Between Legend and Myth ) and figured the way corps program was the fastest way to catch lightning in a bottle…much to my dismay the corps program was the fastest way to become a porta-potty of wierwille’s bull$hit…going forth as jerk-leaders and jerk-workers to invade other folks’ boundaries – because getting all up in other folks’ business is definitely the concern, interest and need of exemplary-way-corps-vampires…their motto – It is Written – We Suck!
My comments might be too cerebral for some folks…so I’ll end on this. I Googled “calling someone a jerk” and among other things found this:
Edited by T-BoneA jerk is a mean, rude, selfish, arrogant, inconsiderate, snooty, pushy, uncaring, narcissistic, manipulative, self-centered, holier-than-thou, egotistical and good-for-nothing individual who treats people with disrespect…The way they behave makes others feel as though they are being belittled…Needless to say, nobody likes a person who is a jerk and/or a bully. From Quora: What is a jerk? Why do some people call others jerks?
I said to my editor “don’t jerk me around. Quite goofing off and fix these dammmb tipe-0-s”
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Rocky
So did I. I'm thankful for dictionaries.
Now, THAT is down right eloquent. Btw, I did read your entire post/comment this time, T-Bone.
Wow, if that doesn't hit the nail right on the head, I don't know what would.
And here I thought Pavlovitz was just using a euphemism to be nice. Of course, when I first heard about his book (it actually took my local public library FOUR months after ordering it, to get it on the shelf) I thought of some less kind words that might also apply.
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Rocky
Here's another salient book that further blows the lid off of whether Victor EVER had insight from God.
Beside the fact that we were the only people who were RIGHT [all the time, about everything] and that we were in complete and total denial about our emotions... here's more of what we missed out on and that stunted our emotional and social growth and maturity.
From Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole page 6
UC Berkeley psych professor Dacher Keltner, working with Pixar director Pete Docter...
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