This was something I’ve been meaning to discuss for a while. Before I introduce the subject, just let me say that this thread is NOT for flamefests, angst or plain rubbish. If you want to pick up a fight or just act like a retard, do it somewhere else.
OK, here it goes. As time goes by, scientific culture has changed the way many matters were looked at. Most of the time, that meant we got rid of silly supersitions and our views became more accurate. However, I think there are things we shouldn’t overanalyze. One such thing is feelings. Some people have tried to reduce feelings and certain human cravings to mere manifestations of instincts or hormones. They basically say there’s nothing special about such things.
People who try to be logical in all things often end up becoming obsessed with precision and order, and they never actually like what they do. They just go around, living by the clock and can have insane lifestyles.
On the other hand, we have romantic people, a somewhat quiet group that sees life as more than just a bunch of genes. They can be illogical, unpredictable, do silly things they regret later, but they definitely feel alive, excapt for a few of them who lack social skills and end up in an emotional gutter. These people often feel things more intensely, and that can be both a blessing and a curse.
In the border we have people who try to be logical while still fascinated by life. They suffer as much as romantic people, but they’re not obsessed with precision.
Of these types of people, which one do YOU think this world needs the most?
Neither, since they’re all pretty stupid stereotypes and generalisations Pretty much nothing that you said is actual fact, it’s like saying that all black people can’t sing because they’re black. They can’t sing because they suck at it, not because they’re black. Same thing for this. It all depends on the person themselves, not (for a lot) on their work. Sure, the things you experience slowly end up changing you. It’s called forming your personality. I don’t feel like going into a long rant about this, I just typed another long thread. I’ll let Sin or whoever handle that.
And even if feelings are just electrical impulses (I don’t know if they are or not, I guess they are, but I didn’t do any research into this), so what? Just because we know how a child gets made doesn’t make it any less special when the thing gets born. It’s just simple scientifical progress.
I think you shouldn’t overgeneralize and stereotype individuals and concepts if you don’t want to get flamed. Your inability to deal with logic and precision has nothing to do with whether you’re a sentimal or not. The simplicity with which you present this merely demonstrates your lack of understanding of how things work. You say you don’t really want to understand. That’s your problem your own self-delusion.
Whether or not you choose to believe something is special upon understanding the basis on which it works is irrelevant. Understanding how it works has nothing to do with the appreciation of the actual event. If anything, being the biologist that I am, having a more profound understanding of how these things work has actually given me a greater appreciation for the complexity of these things. The fact of the matter is, without understanding these kinds of things, people with emotional disorders, for example, wouldn’t be treatable. While I can’t say I condone the mood altering drug life style which this society has grown complacent with, there are people with real problems and it doesn’t matter if you decide to get sentimental over bull shit or not because their actual problem is a lot more important that your meager insecurity on the topic. I’m a machine in my classes and in the work that I do, but I can be disturbingly poetic and verbose and appreciate things which don’t necessarily have anything to do with time constraints etc… That is all a state of mind and that particular state of mind varies between individuals for a variety of reasons such as personality and mood (which are all not entirely understood). All kinds of people do the things which you mentioned and they do them for sometimes different or same reasons when encountering different situations. Let’s take my friend’s mom. She’s an illogical emotional bitch that can’t deal with the stresses of her home maker life and she ends up prosecuting other members of the family to compensate for her insecurities because she’s in denial over her problems. She’s a fucking walking stress bomb. However, she’s also under the impression she’s always under time contraints. So with this 1 example, I disproved the stereotype of logic and time constraints. Enough for now, I have better shit to do (fucking finals)
Well…the world is made up of many types of different people, not just these two (and I got the impression that that’s not what you meant to suggest) and really, there’s no scientific explanation for it.
People are people. They have their personalities, and that’s that. I don’t believe any should be in any majority, or that we need a certain type of people. Some people are actually sasitifed with that insanity in their life and vice versa for example.
Since you’re narrowing it down to such a specific set of people (and yes, they do exist, but since as others pointed out, due to generalization, you left out a great number of others who act quite similar, but are also different)
I wont answer the question since, I really don’t care what the world needs. There are over 6 billion people and not all of them fall within these categories. The world needs difference, not one over the other, and not neither.
My concern is that by attempting to overanalyze things and submit everything to the laws of logic and science, people may be forgetting that each individual creature is unique and special. Therefore, if differences aren’t regarded and accepted as natural, someone may try to standardize everything from ways of life to genetic specifications, utterly destroying diversity and preventing any natural change that may take place. Understanding the way things are and work shouldn’t make people forget the special fascination that life inspires.
The terms I used were crude, since I often have difficulties showing the images I try to conceive, but this is basically what I was trying to say.
My personal opinion is that understanding beauty and diversity is meaningless if we cannot appreciate them. Knowing the tiniest detail of every single creature won’t make them any less special, and we must not forget that. Some people look at living creatures as if they were merely products they can exploit, others as mere curiosities. That is wrong. Diversity is crucial, because a species that doesn’t evolve will eventually be extinct. Trying to standardize things or manipulate the course of evolution can have dire consequences.
Also, we should never forget the sentimental aspects of life. If we were to follow logic alone, then who knows where we’d end up?
<img src=“http://www.rpgclassics.com/staff/tenchimaru/td.gif”> If each and every single person followed one perfect logic, we’d end up in paradise. And I have yet to see a guy go all “Well, that’s what you get when I inject my semen into your genitalia, so who cares? Just go get some clothes for it, I’m going to go adjust our living budget.” when his wife showed him his newborn.
Even the so-called ‘logical’ people aren’t these self-rationalizing machines, because they’re just as trapped in their dreams and desires as everyone else.
I try to take solace in the fact that we will never be able to explain everything. With new knowledge, there comes new questions. That quote from Einstein: “The mysterious is sacred, he who can’t appreciate it is dead”.
Manus: The vast majority of humanity falls in between the two extremes you’re trying to paint here. Most people do use some logic to get things done while still having appreciation for life. The world isn’t just made up of scientists and poets. 8p
The world needs a mixture of the two, though I personally believe there is more then two groups of people. We need some people who are rational and organized, but we also need the illogical ones. Most people don’t fit into one group, they are a mixture of the two. I don’t believe emotion is just an electrical impulse, even if it is, I would like to believe that what I am feeling is real and something uncontrollable.
Of these types of people, which one do YOU think this world needs the most?
…people may be forgetting that each individual creature is unique and special.
Hmm? You ask in your first quote for an opinion of a “need” of one type of stereotyped extreme, and then in your second you express concern that people may not treat creatures as individuals?
Some people tend more to one side than to the other. I’m not using solid stereotypes, but rather… how can I say this… Groups with a predominant tendency.
While what Manus said may not be correct, it is hard not to recognize that the growth of the “nihilistic” or “meaning-less” movements of the 20th century (and to a degree the late 19th century) were the result of the failure of the rationalist secular Enlightenment movement to provide adequate or correct answers to how one should live their life. This is especially pronounced since organized religion, which had provided an “answer” to this problem (not necessarily correct) was supplanted and pushed to the exterior of day-to-day society by the rationalist movement. It was the very concepts of TD’s and Sin’s of the promise of “logic” “reason” and “progress” that were, to many, shown to be insufficient to provide real certitude to anything, as the horrors of two World Wars (and beyond) demonstrated. I’m speaking largely about the West, the rest of the world doesn’t fully subscribe to the same values we purport.
Keep in mind I’m not saying it was better in the forced-religious days, it wasn’t, and actually amongst “intellectual” people at school I’m sneered at as “a progressivist” if you believe it; and you can also argue that science and Reason isn’t supposed to provide answers for how one should live, but it is hard to argue against the fact that our current way of thinking is far different from how many or even most others think or thought, and for a lot of people, the promises of Voltaire were utterly discredited by the Vermacht blitzkrieg.
Originally posted by Merlin While what Manus said may not be correct, it is hard not to recognize that the growth of the “nihilistic” or “meaning-less” movements of the 20th century (and to a degree the late 19th century) were the result of the failure of the rationalist secular Enlightenment movement to provide adequate or correct answers to how one should live their life.
Nihilism was mainly a 19th century phenomenon (Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” illustrates its popularity among some people). The modernist movements of the twentieth century were extremely diverse and numerous (and there were differences within movements, as well), so it’s hard to apply the same words to all of them. Many of them, indeed, were deliberately irrational, nostalgic for the “primitive,” and showed no trust in “progressivism.” Despite that, on the whole modernism looked forward, not back, and continually searched for new forms of expression (hence the name). By being essentially forward-looking, there was no way that it could deny progress or show no optimism; the very meaning of the word “modernize” (“to break with the past”) implies the opposite.
Additionally, the reason the Enlightenment and those other movements ever came into being is that the sort of disenchantment and dissatisfaction which you describe first took place with religion.
