Morbidly Obese Mutants

gue_barium

angelica wrote:

What people perceive as "not-self", or the factors many people consider to be outside of themselves.

Interesting. I've been outside and not felt the outdoors was outside myself.

angelica

gue_barium wrote:

Interesting. I've been outside and not felt the outdoors was outside myself.

That's cool then! There are people on this board who seem to see the illusory nature of separation. And at the same time, the illusions and the stages are there to hone us to "higher" levels of perception so the separation is valid of it's own accord, too.

NMyTree

angelica wrote:

I wonder why anyone would take issue with seeking to understand the cause and effect aspects of a problem. Why does understanding the cause equate to "excusing" behaviour to some people?

Because I never said that.

I have repeated several times that seeking, researching and studying these things is good, but those solutions you have mentioned do not apply to every individual obese person. And that has been one of my points all along.

Some people will benefit from your approach, while other will not. Just the same, some people have legitimate psychological or physiological disorders, while others are just self-absorbed.....weak-willed.....and irresponsible.

People are individuals. Two people can behave in very similar or even identical manners, but have arrived at this behavior for completely different reasons.

angelica

The fact is, we are one with the biosphere. It is not something we are affecting outside of us, only. It flows within us and effects us on many levels. The spheres go beyond that: we have the physiosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, the theosphere.

Ahnimus

gue_barium wrote:

Interesting. I've been outside and not felt the outdoors was outside myself.

Most people perceive reality as being independant of their minds. Rather than interdependant. We are however active participants in our environments and our interpretations of reality lay heavily within our minds. This is not to say that we have free will.

I have a hypothesis to test the existance of free will, however the process is unethical. It would involve taking two Identical Twins from the Zygotic stage of development and placing them in a controlled environment. The importance is on everything being identical, every tiny detail of influence has to be identical, from the prenatal environment until full cognition. At that point I would provide various stimulus to each twin identically and observe their reactions. Assuming free will, their reactions should differ. However the history of psychological research has never fully accounted for free will anyway. It's all based on a deterministic view of the mind. Assuming every gene is identical and assuming all environmental influences are the same. Each twin should behave in exactly the same way, essentially picking their noses at exactly the same time, in exactly the same manner for the exact same length of time, as one example. It would have to be an incredibly controlled experiment though and it would mean depriving at least two individuals of a normal life.

NMyTree

angelica wrote:

The fact is, we are one with the biosphere. It is not something we are affecting outside of us, only. It flows within us and effects us on many levels. The spheres go beyond that: we have the physiosphere, the biosphere, the noosphere, the theosphere.

I personally feel very much in touch with the bootysphere and boobysphere. That's where I feel the happiest:D

angelica

NMyTree wrote:

Because I never said that.

I have repeated several times that seeking, researching and studying these things is good, but those solutions you have mentioned do not apply to every individual obese person. And that has been one of my points all along.

Some people will benefit from your approach, while other will not. Just the same, some people have legitimate psychological or physiological disorders, while others are just self-absorbed.....weak-willed.....and irresponsible.

People are individuals. Two people can behave in very similar or even identical manners, but have arrived at this behavior for completely different reasons.

I disagree with you in that the symptom of compulsive behaviour is what it is. It has variations from person to person, but the roots and understandings, and treatments all hinge on some very simple base causes. This, even though there are wide ranging variances and degrees. The bottom line for me is when I see somone confusing their value judgment with neutral objective understanding, the objectivity has become distorted. Therefore informed understanding has been compromised. You're fully entitled to your opinion. It is what it is. It's still independent of what is objectively known at this time. Again, a key here is that when a judgmental, emotionally charged word slips in, such as "weak-willed", "irresponsible" and "self-absorbed", then it's a sure sign neutral objectivity is being distorted. Again, you're opinion still stands as your personal point of view, representing what you know and see.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

Most people perceive reality as being independant of their minds. Rather than interdependant. We are however active participants in our environments and our interpretations of reality lay heavily within our minds. This is not to say that we have free will.

I will say it: we do have free will. We might be unconsciously choosing, but choosing to not choose is still a choice. By not accepting our choices and our responsibilities, we miss out on understanding our problem solving variables. And therefore, we take the option of learning our lessons the hard way: through experience and consequence. As we come to own our will, our choices and their consequences, we can begin to choose before acting out. Eventually, we eliminate even the step of the dual-choice arising in our minds. This is at the level of resolving our duality or the dichotomies--at the top of Maslows hierarchy where opposites become resolved into the whole, and one lives directly plugged into potential, creating from the position of oceanic expression and aligned-with-life-principles creation.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

I will say it: we do have free will. We might be unconsciously choosing, but choosing to not choose is still a choice. By not accepting our choices and our responsibilities, we miss out on understanding our problem solving variables. And therefore, we take the option of learning our lessons the hard way: through experience and consequence. As we come to own our will, our choices and their consequences, we can begin to choose before acting out. Eventually, we eliminate even the step of the dual-choice arising in our minds. This is at the level of resolving our duality or the dichotomies--at the top of Maslows hierarchy where opposites become resolved into the whole, and one lives directly plugged into potential, creating from the position of oceanic expression and aligned-with-life-principles creation.

That's an interesting viewpoint. However, I've yet to see credible scientific research to support free-will. That's not to say that it does or doesn't exist, however.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

That's an interesting viewpoint. However, I've yet to see credible scientific research to support free-will. That's not to say that it does or doesn't exist, however.

I understand.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

I understand.

I'm actually quite interested how free-will applies to your sociological and psychological viewpoints. If, some cause like child abuse, results in the effect child is abusive, shouldn't that be dependant on free-will?

Ahnimus

I'm going to start another thread on free-will.

gue_barium

So, Earth is a biosphere, I tend to be pretty cool with it, and I have free will.


Wooohoooo!

I need some smoke.

Where the bridge? Where's that confounded bridge?

gue_barium

Ahnimus wrote:

I'm going to start another thread on free-will.

I think you're taking it too far. Angelica had it pretty good. Free will isn't a sliding scale, or anything like that. We can't simply slide it back in time to poor human behavior of medieval times, or something like that and expect it to be relevant to the discussion. If you want to start another thread, then go ahead, and I'm going to google some medieval shit on your ass.:)

gue_barium

Ahnimus wrote:

I'm actually quite interested how free-will applies to your sociological and psychological viewpoints. If, some cause like child abuse, results in the effect child is abusive, shouldn't that be dependant on free-will?

You're over-thinking it. Perhaps you were a victim of some sort in this, I'm sorry for that. You are, at the same time suggesting you may want to try something like that. I know that doesn't sound kosher to you right now, and believe me, I've read your posts and you seem like a stand up guy, but really....

Ahnimus

gue_barium wrote:

You're over-thinking it. Perhaps you were a victim of some sort in this, I'm sorry for that. You are, at the same time suggesting you may want to try something like that. I know that doesn't sound kosher to you right now, and believe me, I've read your posts and you seem like a stand up guy, but really....

You belief in free-will is substantiated by what?

I pitched this question to the creationist dude I work with an he became very hostile. "He didn't create us that way, he created us to have free-will." This and subjective experience are the only arguements I've heard thus far.

soulsinging

angelica wrote:

I disagree with you in that the symptom of compulsive behaviour is what it is. It has variations from person to person, but the roots and understandings, and treatments all hinge on some very simple base causes. This, even though there are wide ranging variances and degrees. The bottom line for me is when I see somone confusing their value judgment with neutral objective understanding, the objectivity has become distorted. Therefore informed understanding has been compromised. You're fully entitled to your opinion. It is what it is. It's still independent of what is objectively known at this time. Again, a key here is that when a judgmental, emotionally charged word slips in, such as "weak-willed", "irresponsible" and "self-absorbed", then it's a sure sign neutral objectivity is being distorted. Again, you're opinion still stands as your personal point of view, representing what you know and see.

the issue i take with your posts along these lines is they have no real world application. it's all abstract, airy, hippy-like "the universe is all connected man" kind of stuff. reminds me of my thinking when i was on lsd. but it solves nothing. it's "peace and love dude." but you can't smoke a joint and cure the world. there is nothing practical about this feel good, pseudo-buddhist pop psychology. if i never say the word lazy again, we will still have an obesity epidemic in this country. even if we all loved fat people and never said lazy again as a society, it would still be a problem. just like you can't eradicate racism by stopping people from saying nigger. the problem is not me and my judgment calls about why people are overweight, the problem is the overweight people and their lifestyle decision. just like my alcoholism was not the fault of my catholic upbringing for preaching against drug abuse, it was my decisions. i was raised by the most supportive and understanding parents one could imagine, but that did not stop me. so me being all touchy-feely about obese people's feelings is not going to reverse the epidemic. it calls for practical solutions and tough love.

Ahnimus

soulsinging wrote:

the issue i take with your posts along these lines is they have no real world application. it's all abstract, airy, hippy-like "the universe is all connected man" kind of stuff. reminds me of my thinking when i was on lsd. but it solves nothing. it's "peace and love dude." but you can't smoke a joint and cure the world. there is nothing practical about this feel good, pseudo-buddhist pop psychology. if i never say the word lazy again, we will still have an obesity epidemic in this country. even if we all loved fat people and never said lazy again as a society, it would still be a problem. just like you can't eradicate racism by stopping people from saying nigger. the problem is not me and my judgment calls about why people are overweight, the problem is the overweight people and their lifestyle decision. just like my alcoholism was not the fault of my catholic upbringing for preaching against drug abuse, it was my decisions. i was raised by the most supportive and understanding parents one could imagine, but that did not stop me. so me being all touchy-feely about obese people's feelings is not going to reverse the epidemic. it calls for practical solutions and tough love.

Personally, I think that whole viewpoint is philosophical. I think Angelica's viewpoint is mostly based in philosophy as well, however, many of the concepts she's proposed are grounded in real scientific study. In my opinion everything works by chaotic mechanism. You can theorize that if you call one person lazy the direct outcome is them disliking you, but chaos theory predicts a much greater impact, not only on that individual person, but everyone they have contact with and everything they do. That one tiny little piece of information will impact the rest of their life, positively or negatively. So perhaps "tough love" will yield positive results, perhaps not, it's a dangerous thing though.

soulsinging

Ahnimus wrote:

Personally, I think that whole viewpoint is philosophical. I think Angelica's viewpoint is mostly based in philosophy as well, however, many of the concepts she's proposed are grounded in real scientific study. In my opinion everything works by chaotic mechanism. You can theorize that if you call one person lazy the direct outcome is them disliking you, but chaos theory predicts a much greater impact, not only on that individual person, but everyone they have contact with and everything they do. That one tiny little piece of information will impact the rest of their life, positively or negatively. So perhaps "tough love" will yield positive results, perhaps not, it's a dangerous thing though.

and coddling them and enabling their behaviors by refusing to challenge their decisions is just as likely to yield dangerously negative results.

Ahnimus

soulsinging wrote:

and coddling them and enabling their behaviors by refusing to challenge their decisions is just as likely to yield dangerously negative results.

That is entirely correct and I feel it's also possible to have both results. Depending on the situation, for example, if I call someone lazy and that elicits a dislike for me, that information is databased in a variable or variables pertaining to me, but also linked to variables pertaining to thin and average people. This may result in a strengthened relationship with people of similar Body Mass Index (BMI). However, it may decrease the strength of relationship with thin or average people. Other variables will come into play, we can actually represent this pseudo-mathematically. But first we need all of the variables, for simplicity I will represent these as booleans. Body Mass Index(BMI), Social Support(SS),Emotional Support(ES), Basic Stress(BS), Emotional Intelligence(EQ), Social Intelligence(SQ). For simplification, if a variable is 1 (ON) the impact is negative, if the variable is 0 (OFF) the impact is positive. Assuming a human being has a conservative fault tolerance of 90%, there is a high probability of mental break-down in an obese person, if, they are obese, society rejects them, they are generally stressed out from life, they aren't very good at handling emotion, they aren't very good at social interaction and a myriad of other things. Of course these aren't all the variables, and this isn't a scientific algorithm, merely something I conjured this very moment. But it represents the theory behind many scientific disciplines concerning cognition. These are all variables in which the psyche is dependent on. The constants are the stimulus, the informational input, I feel this is the basis of most cognitive research and psychological treatment. Correlations are drawn between these variables and experiential/biological influences. Obesity has been directly linked to physiological dysfunctions and psychological stress. Society made the link between obesity and the will of a clear-headed, happy, perfect mechanism that doesn't really exist. And societies response is "Stop fucking eating so much!" which only serves to increase psychological stress which probably lead to the condition in the first place. One constant with society and culture is that it postulates totally unfounded theories that stand the test of time. If a person can hold a magnet to your head and make your arm move, all the while you think your making it move. What does that say about the human consciousness? Without the power of will, based solely on our ability to control our conscious states, all we have are variables and constants, a mathematical formula. Since Newtonian physics all science has been representable by mathematical formula.

That's just my view of course. I hope you consider that it is based on at least some understanding of the disciplines involved. Bear in mind that within each discipline there are various viewpoints as well. In physics this would be called Chaos Theory because of the impact of small influences on future events, in Psychology this is called Radical Behaviorism, in Cognitive Science it's Hard Determinism. There are others I'm sure, but so, this is the information processed and this is my determination. I'm not saying it's correct, again, that's totally up to the individual. I honestly believe it's proven, and I believe Einstein knew that and I'm pretty sure most agnostic scientists know it as well. It is still possible to believe in God with these underlying principles of determinism, but most theists believe that free-will is required, and for the last 2000 years specific percepts of God and humanity have influenced society, creating a social prejudice that denies reality.

I'm sorry if that seems autistic, I'm just being honest