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Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 29, 2021 9:57:40 GMT
Despair is a legitimate reaction to the world. Especially these days. I've had a few conversations with friends over the last few months (different generations, different pov) and at some point in the evening the conversation has turned to "the world" and we are all a bit like "what the actual fuck is going on". I could sense a slight relief too and a feeling that people wanted to talk about this stuff. Talking helps so maybe saying something to yer mates might make you feel better? Like you are having some input rather than keeping schtum? I think there is something unhealthy about that that makes us feel a bit helpless and disconnected from people. It also helps to try and understand why people think the way they do so even if you disagree at least you can understand where they are coming from and in doing so you can humanise them too. I've tried to do that over the last few years and it has helped me. Of course I can understand the whole "turn the news off and go and build something in yer shed" approach and in a way I agree but there is something solipsistic about it , a bit stick yer head in the sand whilst the house is burning down.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Nov 29, 2021 9:59:08 GMT
Choose not to engage with the world if you choose I very much engage with the world (and if I were not in a cheery mood might have bridled at the implication that I don't). It's just a different world.
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Post by rayge on Nov 29, 2021 10:01:40 GMT
And for fuck's sake, solipsism?
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Post by cousinlou on Nov 29, 2021 12:42:15 GMT
It isn't your politics or pro vaccination or anti vaccination stance or your religion etc. It is the reasons that so many people arrive where they do in their views.I am not saying what I believe is right and everyone is wrong. I am just saying that there is so much, I dunno, stupidity and nimbyism and intolerance these days. I fucking despair. As Dougie says, what a world. I believe there's not an awful lot of reasoning going into the pov's the many people arrive at. More and more I coming to the conclusion people just choose a pov based on where they identify with. For the hell of it, peer pressure, opportunism and maybe sometimes out of pragmatism.
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Despair.
Nov 29, 2021 12:49:52 GMT
via mobile
Post by oh oooh on Nov 29, 2021 12:49:52 GMT
and then search for 'evidence' that their chosen view is the right one
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Nov 29, 2021 13:06:07 GMT
People work backwards.
They also confuse thinking with feeling and tend to do the latter when they believe they are doing the former. That is the crux of it.
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Post by Reasonable good Nick on Nov 29, 2021 13:58:26 GMT
Also, there's a limit to just how much thinking and impartial reasoning most of us can do in terms of things in which we have no expertise. And most people have no expertise in most things.
And experts can get it wrong.
Some people talk about 'the facts' as if there were clear sets of them that provide undisputed explanations with regard to everything. That's often not the case, at least not in terms of the black and white conclusions that people think of.
Taking Brexit as an obvious example, the idea that most people voted to either leave or remain based on even a rudimentarily competent understanding of the way the whole EU works is so obviously untrue it shouldn't need stating.
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Sneelock
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Post by Sneelock on Nov 29, 2021 19:29:20 GMT
Despair is for sissies. I'm a sissy myself but for other reasons so I won't make a big deal about it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2021 20:12:18 GMT
Also, there's a limit to just how much thinking and impartial reasoning most of us can do in terms of things in which we have no expertise. And most people have no expertise in most things. And experts can get it wrong. Some people talk about 'the facts' as if there were clear sets of them that provide undisputed explanations with regard to everything. That's often not the case, at least not in terms of the black and white conclusions that people think of. Taking Brexit as an obvious example, the idea that most people voted to either leave or remain based on even a rudimentarily competent understanding of the way the whole EU works is so obviously untrue it shouldn't need stating. I understand what you are saying Nick. At the same time it reads as the kind of logic that confirms the lunacy. Facts mean nowt , experts, who needs them. Blah ,blah.
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Post by Reasonable good Nick on Nov 30, 2021 12:04:32 GMT
Also, there's a limit to just how much thinking and impartial reasoning most of us can do in terms of things in which we have no expertise. And most people have no expertise in most things. And experts can get it wrong. Some people talk about 'the facts' as if there were clear sets of them that provide undisputed explanations with regard to everything. That's often not the case, at least not in terms of the black and white conclusions that people think of. Taking Brexit as an obvious example, the idea that most people voted to either leave or remain based on even a rudimentarily competent understanding of the way the whole EU works is so obviously untrue it shouldn't need stating. I understand what you are saying Nick. At the same time it reads as the kind of logic that confirms the lunacy. Facts mean nowt , experts, who needs them. Blah ,blah. I suppose it could if that was the interpretation someone wanted to infer from it. What we need is better quality of discussion and debate. We should try to understand that we can look at information, facts and informed opinions and make predictions of likely outcomes, but that these are always provisional and subject to variables. "Events" as Harold Macmillan famously said. And that while experts are always worth listening to, they're not infallible oracles. We need something in between blind devotion to expertise and the outright dismissal of it. Closer to the former, to be sure, but still apart from it. Ironically, this is more or less what Gove was actually trying to get at when he was misquoted. What we needed in the Brexit debate was more people on both sides who were honest enough to say "these outcomes are what we think might happen if we leave or remain, but really, who knows? But this is what we think we should do because of these reasons, with the proviso that no plan survives more than five minutes' contact with the enemy. So buckle up."
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Post by Half Machine Lipschitz on Nov 30, 2021 12:15:06 GMT
Who can forget where they were that fateful day when Harold Macmillan said "events"?
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Post by tory on Nov 30, 2021 18:55:27 GMT
It is a well-known phrase in Britain.
"Events my dear boy, Events"
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2021 20:43:51 GMT
But it is, John. It's all just noise. you don't have to listen. Zen Master.
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Despair.
Nov 30, 2021 21:40:48 GMT
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Post by oh oooh on Nov 30, 2021 21:40:48 GMT
It is a well-known phrase in Britain. "Events my dear boy, Events" is it buggery well-known! BUGGER OFF
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Nov 30, 2021 22:28:43 GMT
It is a well-known phrase in Britain. "Events my dear boy, Events" is it buggery well-known! BUGGER OFF While I agree with the general sentiment , in the interests of fairness I got the reference straight away. So I at least know it well. which isn't really the same thing. Now considered apocryphal by some, apparently. Mine of useless information, me.
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