House of Eratosthenes

I have a Facebook friend who regularly tangles, or is entangled by, some acquaintances of his over in the UK who are fond of what in The States would be considered left-of-center ideas. He regularly invites me into these threads so I can see what’s going on & contribute to the discussion. I’m not sure if the attempt is to help me, him or them. It’s always enlightening but I have to say, with regard to where these discussions go, my curiosity has started to wane because there isn’t too much variance to it.

I’m going to be asked, by the three “blokes,” in a rather pugnacious manner what my feelings are about something that is purely a values determination, like do I support gay marriage, abortion, etc. Or about some discipline that’s trying to be science-ey, like global warming. When I answer in a way the blokes find disagreeable, they’ll gather together and cluck away like chickens in a barnyard that I’m — fill in the adjective — and it’s unworthy of their time to discuss this issue or any other with me.

And then the cycle repeats. But I do learn a tiny bit more every time.

Lately, the most outspoken of these ankle-biters embedded the video you see above, which I find to make some reasonable points about the basics involved in how to think. Interestingly, it points out some things about open-mindedness that often go unnoticed by those who use the term most often.

First time I watched it all the way through, I was convinced — still am — that the bloke who embedded it, never made it to the 8:27 mark. It sounds like the guy who produced the video had been reading his Facebook feed, and said “this bloke is doing all kinds of things wrong, I’m going to put some comments at the end of that video I made so people know they shouldn’t act like him.”

But that point, I thought, would remain a subtle one…until early this morning when I saw this:

I’m surprised the Christian right in the US&A [sic] haven’t made amendments to their Bible like they do to the Constitution so it suits them more. Take out those awkward bits which suggest greed isn’t a good thing, and the bit where Jesus bashes the bankers up. If they did, sheep like Mikey and Morgan will nod in Orwellian fashion, baaaing “Compassion is good, Selfish Greed is Better, Compassion is Good, Selfish Greed is Better”

Oh, my. I’m not even sure what that was. I put in an inquiry. Until I get an answer back that is coherent and makes sense, I’m going to assume it is…

…yet another example of this…

I have noticed something about how some people treat beliefs which are personally important to them. When faced with uncomfortable facts, they do what I call “making up stories.”

I don’t mean they lie. Or rather they do, but they’re lying to themselves, and in a very particular way.

Some examples: About seven years ago, I was taking a course in the Polish city of Wroclaw. While there, I shared an apartment with an Englishman who had a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

This fellow was convinced of every fashionable environmental catastrophe, including, of course, global warming.

I am skeptical about man-caused global warming for reasons not relevant here. In the course of our discussions, I mentioned that when I was working to launch a new college of science in Poland, I had come to know quite a few members of the Polish Academy of Science in the departments of chemistry, physics, paleobiology, etc.

I told him that not one of these world-class scientists believed in man-caused global warming.

He replied, “That’s because their jobs depend on defending the oil companies and denying global warming.”

To begin with, that’s not true. On the contrary, the Polish government at the time had no concerns about global warming. They had too many real problems to deal with. And he was a stranger to Poland who couldn’t have known one way or the other.

From what I have seen around the ‘net, this is a common pattern. The leftist claims, in a variety of ways, to possess a superior attachment to, and command of, reality. I’ve noticed the contemplations about global warming and God are the two triggers most likely to send the discussion off in this direction.

And then that same leftist will start to manufacture this reality which he claims to understand better. Well, I suppose that all makes sense, if you’re the one creating it. Some thought makes you happy, gives you a sense of satisfaction, you get tired of waiting for it to actually happen so you go to Facebook and enter one of your “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened” comments. Uh…alright, I’ll go ahead and state the obvious. It’s fun to think about, for him, because if it happened it would say something that would bolster his argument. Wouldn’t it say so much more to bolster his argument, if he waited for it to happen and then pointed out that it happened?

Things the way they are, he’s just ‘fessed up to, at the very least, a passionate bias at work as he chooses what ideas are worthy of contempt and therefore dismissal, be they based on empirically observed fact or anything else; and what other ideas are worthy of special emphasis and maybe even some embellishment, even if they’re completely manufactured fiction — just because they happen to be fun ideas. To him.

Hardly the stuff that helpfully rivets a concerned thinker to reality.

And this is not an isolated case. It’s become enough of a set pattern that when I see the first event take place, I now expect the second. I’m not making a claim to any powerhouse intellect in noodling this out, I’m just recognizing a pattern, like a dog expecting a meal when he hears a bell ring. Leftists who boast of the most durable and functional recognition of reality, tend to labor with anemic and misguided effort in precisely this area. They make up stories and then they pretend it’s the other guy who’s doing it.

Maybe because if they take the Bible at face value, they don’t think either God or man has left them free to amend the Bible in the way they’re free to amend the Constitution. How would you do it, anyway? There is no Article V for the Bible.
- Rich Fader | 01/11/2012 @ 13:45
I have followed your input on this guys open facebook profile, it seems he has now blocked you though someone else has just posted this page as a link there, hence my arrival here.

This is one of his comments as to why he has blocked you-

“Apparently, my banning of the odious creep (presumably that’s you?) from my pages is ‘leftist censorship’. This is abridged from a comment I made in reply to this on another thread: “Nothing political about it all. I banned a bullying wanker from repeatedly posting on my pages without ever engaging. He censored himself by erasing comments that conflicted with things he wanted to say later. Someone who does that and hides behinds blogs and masks is certifiable IMHO.”….
“….I will add to that Mikey (your mutual friend?). Someone who hides behind a mask and has a closed facebook profile. someone who writes and erases vitriolic comments, someone who refuses to engage or answer questions about himself, someone who has no respect for another’s privacy and is as secretive as he is.. For how long am I meant to allow him access to my pages? All the boxes of ‘creep’, ‘stalker’ and ‘dangerous person you should ban your kids from having contact with’ are ticked. I gave him the opportunity scores of times to come out of his closet and he refused to do so. If you want to continue defending him, fair play, but I ask you this. If someone did the same to you, hid behind a mask and drip dripped insult and prejudice onto your personal pages which are open to your family and kids without ever being accountable for it, would you tolerate it? Especially as you had asked him over a two year period to expose himself (no Freudian slip intended)? I don’t think so….”

I have read a few threads you have commented on too and I have to say, the above comment does ring true.

Regards

Esra
- esra | 01/13/2012 @ 03:39
I agree, it does. He asked repeatedly for statements about my personal values that were not germane to the subject at hand, such as, am I in favor of gay marriage or do I think the Bible was written by God, in a deliberate attempt to sideline the discussion. We don’t need to speculate on what happens after that, since Mike has been accommodating this and we know what results: The questioner uses it as an escape route. Ah, so you’re one of those people who believe in X, now everybody watch me as I ridicule this person.

Not much edification takes place after that. I’ve had these exchanges with the thread-owner in question, and I have to say, this pattern does remain consistent.

The irony is, the video is about being ready & able to take in unwelcome information, questions, ideas. As Michael pointed out, the person who put it up, is not ready.
- mkfreeberg | 01/13/2012 @ 06:35
Oh yeah, forgot, we need to get this out there:

I don’t delete things on Facebook. If I did that, I’d be ethically bound to stop complaining when other people do it, something I’m not prepared to do since I find it confusing, irritating and dishonest. What I think is likely to have happened is, when a thread gets that long, each post within is shrunk down to some number of lines, three I think, at least the posts that are longer than that…whatever is below the third line won’t show up on the display — this is each post — and it won’t be returned in a page search.

So our thread owner wanted to cite my statements to really lay it down on me & make me sorry my parents ever met or something…saw a “not found” result when he went looking…and leaped to a conclusion about it since, when you feel your way around all of life’s challenges rather than thinking your way through them, dismissing all criticism, there’s no need to reconsider anything or give anything a second thought. You’re always right the first time. So yes, every single post I wrote was blisteringly offensive. I’ve been invited to many of these threads, albeit not by the thread owner — haven’t always accepted, in fact, usually not — and I have to say, that pattern remains consistent as well.
- mkfreeberg | 01/13/2012 @ 06:41
Hi MKF 🙂

I meant the above comment from the guy you have been conversing with actually rings true, not your blog and not your reply to my initial post. You have removed posts from his Facebook thread, I have seen them go only hours after you have posted them. In fact, re-reading through your latest ‘conversation’ with said person, I also notice a complete refusal to respond to any questions asked of you.

In short, this blog is flawed. Your refusal to enter into conversation on the Facebook thread is ludicrous and your assertion that you never delete posts is an out right lie. At one point you said ‘the bible was absolutely written by God’. You seem to have removed this post and then refused to answer questions, not all from the person you are talking about, but from others, as to whether you really believed this.

I am quite interested in some of the other stuff you have written here. I like your conservative stance. It’s refreshing in this liberal controlled era of media manipulation, but I do not agree with you here.

Regards

Esra
- esra | 01/13/2012 @ 17:51
Well having been removed from the thread, I can’t comment on what’s missing and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to comment on what was once there & no longer is. But I haven’t removed anything.

For the benefit of those who (somehow) might be curious, I’ll summarize the last parts that I saw. I had noticed a longstanding trend in which three litmus tests were applied to people, and apparently the results were pre-determined because the litmus tests were all passed or failed as a monolith, never with any mixed results. I wrote it up here, and linked back to it there…our proprietor apparently didn’t appreciate the observation, and called me out for being indecent in a number of ways, with a number of my comments — apparently, each and every single one? — and especially with this latest. I noted that he had just proven my point. Whereupon, he proclaimed that comment, as well, to be unforgivably beyond the pale, as well. Thus proving my point again. And then booted me out…so…message received. He doesn’t want anyone visibly disagreeing with him.

Esra, I had previously presumed, charitably, that you were in a situation of buying into this silly notion that I had been deleting posts, rather than actively selling it. Since it’s clear you’re actively selling it, can you explain this culture to me? I mean, where a position is stated that relies on a mix of factual assertions & personal values…a critic comes along to challenge the factual assertion, and the conversation is steered toward a debate about the personal values, as of those matter. In an off-line to Michael, I likened it to this:

1. Blue is unacceptable
2. Red is the same as blue
3. Therefore, red is bad

Here comes an interloper, invited by someone else in the thread, without the knowledge of the thread owner, to challenge #2. Syllogism doesn’t work, because red is not the same as blue.

Now from what I see here, you appear to be part of a large membership of people who think it is somehow reasonable to insist — this dialogue cannot continue in any shape or form, until you, an Internet stranger, articulate to my satisfaction, whether or not you accept that blue is awful and terrible. I’m not part of this, because in my world it doesn’t matter…just like my views on gay marriage don’t matter and my views on whether the Bible was written by God, don’t matter…if there’s a factual underpinning of the argument and it doesn’t hold up, or is questioned and the question is not satisfactorily answered…the personal values become a distraction and nothing more. But you and those other three blokes — or two others, if you’re going by an alias, which I think is likely — would rather sideline the discussion into this tangential and useless comparison of personal values, when the facts are in dispute.

Furthermore, if the other party does not play along, you feel personally slighted.

Care to explain the rationale? I’m genuinely curious.
- mkfreeberg | 01/13/2012 @ 18:15
Really

I have been going through a few ‘threads’ this British guy has posted. One was about Santorum and his views on homosexuality. You seem to have spent a lot of time attacking his ‘liberal’ values on that post, and those of his friends, but you refused point blank to answer any polite questions aimed at you. Surely if you are going to invade someone else’s personal space (I presume you were never invited by the person who’s profile this is) you should at least have had the decency to respond in kind? Perhaps that is why you were again asked about your views on gay marriage, because other peoples views on it were so important to you that you couldn’t stop asking them.

Someone else commented on this guys Facebook pages about internet stalkers, “..they are all the same, they ask very invasive questions, over and over again, and yet refuse point plank to give any information away about themselves.”. Do you think that’s true? It’s certainly how you seem to operate on your little covert operations into enemy territory. Your friend MO says you have to be secret because you are being monitored by a Big Brother state;

He writes”..Yes but homeland security is monitoring all of our posts. I dont blame him (you) for wanting to be secretive. I recall the Left wanted to repeal the patriot act, close Gitmo, etc. instead when they got power, they strengthened the pa, decide to put Americans in Gitmo, and now monitor us like big brother”.

Is that true, do you think you are being watched?

Anyway, keep up the good fight my friend.

Esra
- esra | 01/14/2012 @ 03:05
Well, stranger person I don’t know who is very likely to be a sock puppet, there doesn’t seem to be anything I can say that will convince you. And so I shall have to endure the agony of knowing there is someone out there on the Internet laboring under incorrect opinions about me.

No, I’ve already said why I don’t divulge the information, it’s off topic. I recognize the question as a deliberate attempt to derail the conversation, after I’ve detected an inconsistency in what they do, and wish to learn more about it.

I can tell you what happened with the God and Bible thing. Chris, owner of the thread, asserted AS FACT that the Bible, all of it, was written and re-written by man. I replied with “Now the re-written part I’ll go along with” — a reference to the KJV, and others, and likely some confusion was created here because I remember leaving the ‘w’ off the “Now” — but how did he know man wrote the original bits? Was he there? That is what I said. See, it’s all in keeping with this accusation of yours, which is somehow important in ways you won’t explain: I ask questions about his beliefs without offering mine. Yes, that is the burden to be carried in any discussion, on the Internet or off, when you say “I believe X.”

I said up above the contrast is one between thinking and feeling. That’s exactly what happened with these posts I supposedly removed…to you and your two friends, it felt like I was asserting God definitely wrote the Bible. It felt like you should have been able to go searching for that statement…and when you didn’t find it, it felt like I must have deleted the offending post, just like it felt like every little thing I said was intolerably offensive. It felt like when Michael used the word “mulatto” that this was intolerably offensive too, and when one of your compatriots engaged in deliberate attempts to piss off the faithful, since you have the right opinions about things, it feels like that, somehow, is not quite as offensive.

And I’m sure it feels accurate to say I’m a stalker because I dropped in uninvited, just because the proprietor of the thread — who, you’ll notice, never directly asked me to hit the road, not one single time — didn’t invite me. But it is a falsehood to say I was never invited. I know, I know…it feels good to write the words down, see them written by others…makes me into the bad guy. Situation becomes much more comfortable then.

Hey, sorry I subjected you to my flawed (for entirely unstated reasons) blog. But glad you learned so much about being open-minded from the video! Well done Esra.
- mkfreeberg | 01/14/2012 @ 05:56

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Open-MindednessWednesday, January 11th, 2012

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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012