Bizarre idealistic assumptions of civility

If you're out walking and you come upon a large dog lose that comes running up to you, of course you're apprehensive of this dog. You rightly so worry that it might try to harm you, you do try to be on your defensive. And the dog in turn, if it has a clue, does the same with you. And you don't dislike the dog for that. You don't hold it against the dog that it doesn't just assume the best of you.

If you go to pet it and stumble over your own feet and it mistakes your sudden movement for an attempt at aggression, the dog then thinks you're a bad person who will try to harm it.

If this happens, you don't hold it against the dog. Such is life.

Should it be so very different with people? It shouldn't. The world is full of hate and indifference. Of course we shouldn't be just assuming the best with people... Of course we shouldn't just expect others to assume the best of us...

Why would we do otherwise?

Assuming the best of others is the civilized thing to do. It's insulting to quickly suspect ugly things of people.

And if you're an idealist, then you just don't want to face the truth of this world. You want to believe that people are good and you want to deal with them as if they are.

And... you want the same in return. Which you're not going to get. And you're going to get insulted, etc that others aren't making such bizarre and idealistic assumptions about yourself; that instead people will quickly dismiss you as a bad person if you stumble over your shoe.

You will also be annoyed that you're expected to spend so much time doing the human equivalent of dog butt sniffing with people instead of getting beyond such barbarism and into actually interesting talk. But, you sure as hell better spend all your time on such crap as otherwise you're actions will be misinterpreted, you will be dismissed as a bad person.

Feh. Tired.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Totally missed the humor in this when last I tried to read it. Probably so did most... (all?) Recall once reading it in an English class. No doubt the teacher had no clue. High school was a horrific zoo.

You have the horror of waking up as a bug. But then you have him thinking about still getting to work on time. I suppose I must have dismissed the work talk as something to give a plot and not make it too short, etc. IOW useless stuff that is often thrown in bad stories. Stuff that disobeys that idea that everything should be "essential" to the story.

Reading it now I see that the idea was to show a life so bad that waking up as a bug is almost not quite that big of deal considering what's come before. He's already been put through such crap that this is just some more crap to deal with, still better not be late for work! That's funny, in a way...

From reading Kundera's nonfiction it seems that perhaps understanding the humor in Kafka is the key to getting.... the key to really appreciating his stories. In the Trial for example at the end K is executed. And he almost wants to stab himself as he's convinced himself he must be guilty of something.

Truly an important (and funny) idea. The openminded, good person is (of course) in the minority and persecuted. But because he's so damm openminded (and of course good as a result) and there's so many thinking badly of him, (which, of course there's so many, it has always been a small minority that is openminded to any meaningful extent and they're usually not liked by the rest) he can't help but really wonder if he's doing something wrong. And being a critical person it's easy enough to realize we're all far from perfect.

And by being a good person stuck in such a world he ends up persecuting himself. Which is funny. And I've added a whole bunch that probably wasn't in the original Kafka story. But if done really really well, would be there... I think.

Eckhart Tolle

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness. -Eckhart Tolle

I don't agree with Tolle's main idea which seems to be a repackaging of the old eastern idea of meditating about nothing thus losing sense of self. I'm really against not thinking. Don't think it's quite so easy to turn it off and on in a useful way. I could be wrong though.

I do agree with this Tolle quote though. It is the moral thing to do. (To recognize, to really get to the heart of this dysfunction.) Without Tolle's main idea though, it's maybe kind of dangerous (selfishly speaking). It means seeing this world as a hell. And probably being very alone in doing so. (And I say that from the POV of looking at socialism, veganism, atheism/deism as just baby steps.)

And if a panglossist is wrong to be a panglossist, then what of the opposite? Someone purposely looking so hard for things to be critical of?

The pangloss is causing harm, usually. The opposite is surely one hell of a wet blanket. Some balance again. Coming back yet again to the fake smile versus truthseeking.

The fake smile again versus truth seeking

If you're truth seeking and practicing the golden rule, then a smile is a very rare thing in your interactions with people. To smile you must instead be conjuring a better world in your mind and trying to share some dim shadow of it, some dim shadow of your creativity. This other world... is actually not real. It is fake. The smile is fake. I suppose. Unless you cannot live without faith in it. Then you could believe this better world really exist and your conjuring of it, your attempt to share a tiny, dim, pitiful piece of it could be a positive sort of mysticism.

But if you go that far, as to need to truly believe it's real, to spend all your time focusing on it, that means you've given up on this world. That means you're either a pessimist (underneath that "fake" smile) or probably actually a realist... not that I plan on conceding that yet.

I had a phase where I was truthseeking and practicing the golden rule all the time.; being optimistic, being ridiculously idealistic. Appearing very down.

Perhaps some time can be spent conjuring some better world and trying to share a dim piece of it with others; some time smiling for no real good reason.

Perhaps some balance....

This is a more positive slant I suppose on the idealism versus realism previous post. Maybe.

Idealism versus Realism

The most idealistic thing imaginable is to think that people can work through their differences. Yet such people appear to always be going on about disagreements, always starting shit. Always honestly saying confrontational things. And thus these people are thought of as pessimistic.

The most pessimistic people never voice disagreements. They just secretly think shitty things about people while wearing a big fake smile and being "fun" to be around. They keep their relations superficial and are thought of as being positive.

Why I liked Kundera so much

Because he faced the horrible truth of this world and laughed at it. He laughed in it's face.

I remember I got the feeling of giving up idealism through his incredible cynicism and just enjoying simple pleasures instead through one of his books; just enjoying women and people in general, enjoying what good they do have to offer. It really made me feel a little euphoric for a while. I had a correspondence of a few years and I then had the realization of how beautiful the person was that I was corresponding with and it had been so long since I bothered to think about such things; it seemed like such an innocent good thing.

I told this person how beautiful she was. And she assumed awful things of me, didn't explain herself although in retrospect it was easy enough to guess what she thought, and dropped all relations with me.

And Kundera laughed his ass off.

"Evil" is just a not quite determinable degree of indifference

This definition of 'evil'/'profound stupidity' (knowing you're causing a greater degree of harm and just not caring), just means being indifferent to suffering. All hatred is actually directed at what is perceived to be indifference to suffering. But provided it's even correct that the person is being indifferent, they are doing so because of this so called "profound stupidity" (which could use a better name I suppose) and not because they are "evil". The rest, and that's a hell of a lot, is just mistakenly assuming other people are "evil" when they're not.

This mistaken perception leads people to try to punish people (use force) instead of using reason.

I've been amazed at how badly vegans treat one another. Perhaps it's because while they might be less indifferent, they are just as bad as everyone else at incorrectly perceiving "evil" in others. And when they do, they turn to anger and force pretty much the same as everyone else.

Does labeling 'evil', "profound stupidity" actually change anything? Yes, the person won't be full of anger. Beyond that? Because you're not showing anger the possibility of reasoning with them is improved IF it turns out the perception of "profound stupidity" was incorrect.

It doesn't totally solve the problem. But it does help in at least these two ways.

The two fundamental problems of this world are indifference to suffering and the misperception of indifference to suffering.

The only thing to lessen the first is training young minds to empathy and increased understanding. For the second it can be helpful to not think in terms of evil/hate/anger. Further simply improving communication through better honesty. The main thing holding back honesty is the reality of what a violent world this is where force is so prevalent.