@skysidhe: Good answer. I will use that as an understading of how we can interact in a way that will benefit us both. Maybe the most difficult relationships can be the most rewarding because they challenge you to go outside the comfort zone?

As a quick and unsolicited update on where I am at right now: married, baby on the way, just bought my first house. I have a day job as a system administrator, and I have been getting back out and playing gigs (drums) as well as going back to school after ten years. Very busy. So, what about you? Tell me something about you.

"I don't see anything hostile in my post."

@skysidhe: I apologize for my perception, then. But you edited it since I replied, I haven't even read the whole thing.

It's also a basic survival skill. Time dictates how far you sort, like walking down a street you scan the other people looking for clues. You see 2 people carrying baseball bats, so you put them into a category. One has a ball, glove and cleats over his shoulder and the other is dressed in scruffy leathers with a bandanna covering his lower face. so now you subdivide into probably benign and probably dangerous categories

OK, that's extreme but you see how we all do it, all the time. Speaking of time, if you have more of it, you further categorize and with enough time you get every person so sub-sub-sub categorized that everyone is unique and has to have their own category.

It's when you run out of time (or interest) that you leave people hanging in clumps and never get them into individuals. :2cents:

I edited it = I corrected my crappy punctuation and spelling. ( just for you ) :)

The only thing I deleted was
"I don't see anything hostile in my post."

The post in question is still there. Smiley face and alll. Just like it was the first time.


Congradulations on all that. Your lifes progression the way you want it too.

I am happy. In a great townhouse. Have a new car. Made a great friend when the music was still alive and we see each other every year.

I have two parttime jobs and a new puppy. He is 6 months old and sooo cute! One day I will post a picture of him and we can all decide what his bread is.

I was told he was a pom but a pom he is not! You'll laugh when you see his picture. No pomeranian there :)

I got to go for now....take care

If we did not take your statement at face value we would be forced to misinterpret it.

lots of double speak in your posts, flint. you wouldn't be trying to impress us with the depth of your thoughts now, would you?

truly dizzying

sidhe, it's no wonder you're struggling to wrap your mind around it.

When Noso speaks, its like listening to the "flight of the bumblebees"... Not in a bad way, just a classical example. In a more abstract manor, I'd say, Stravinsky

Sorry, your response got lost in the shuffle.

My joke is really quite appropriate in this thread and in light of recent events on the board. Its a humorous take on how a society or a group responds to a large influx of "outsiders."

In recent years the population of Colorado has increased by what seems like several orders of magnitude. Native Coloradoans have been overwhelmed by the surge in population growth and the resulting rise in real estate prices caused by a large influx of Californians and Texans with money to burn. With that background, here's my joke:

****

A Coloradoan, a Texan, and a Californian were all sitting in a little Colorado bar having a drink together. The Californian finished off his white wine spritzer, and to the astonishment of the other two, threw his wine glass at the wall, shattering the glass into a 100 broken shards. The Californian smirked and announced, "In California, we have so much money, we never drink out of the same wine glass twice."

The Texan, not to be outdone, gulped his shot of Jack Daniels, threw the shot glass at the wall, and said, "In Texas, we have so much sand, we never drink out of the same shot glass twice."

The Coloradoan stared at the Texan and Californian, chugged his can of Coors, crumpled it up, and drew out a gun and shot the Texan and Californian. He announced to the rest of the bar, "In Colorado, we have so many Texans and Californians, we never drink with the same ones twice."

****

Diversity does not come easy to ANY group! :D

umm no? I haven't found difficult people to be rewarding in real life or the internet. Quite to the contrary.......case in point. IF that were true I probably
left many an ager highly rewarded. :P :lol:


hehehe I like that thought. They benefited from my sarcastic wit aye
and pretentous assholeness.;)

mmmuhuh ok. hehehe I somehow doubt it.

Just as here You see there cannot be a double standard. A difficult relationship is difficult . Period. I'm ok with the reality of that.


No disrespect intended. Please don't interpret me any differently than say.....someone else much more volitile.

This was posted in a previous discussion entitled Why didn't Hollywood save New Orleans? It was just that; nothing more. Every intent of that post was in that post. And yet review so many responses. So many wanted to read into that post a hidden agenda. I don't do that. I am the world's worst politician because I speak bluntly; consider political correctness akin to what others consider evil. If I had a hidden agenda in that post, I would have posted it - bluntly. There was no hidden agenda. And yet others could not admit that post only asked what it asked.

I am struck by same responses to Flint's post. You and I don't care what he may have posted anywhere else, when replying here. He asked a simply question - nothing more - nothing less. He asked: No one answered a simple question. Many instead asked for an 'agenda'. With so many responses, where did one ever answer the original question – without personal biases - emotions - attached to their response?

The answer: No. A society that opposes diversity dies. Death is not the purpose of society. It is why societies that oppose diversity - that endorse hate, racial purity, intolerance, commandants from dictators, and that stifle its most valuable asset - the little people - are therefore dying societies. It is why containment works so well and why preemption is not productive.

What was the secret to Rome? Rome endorsed and assimilated diversity. What made Islam so dominant up to the 1400s? Same tolerance to diversity. A tolerance limited only by certain and specific principles that provided that society with a common fabric.

The purpose of society is to permit diversity - as much diversity as society can tolerate. Some answers to his question demonstrated intolerance - such as assuming a hidden agenda. Such biases -such as assuming a hidden agenda - only undermine the purpose of a successful society. BTW, reasons that justify a hidden agenda also imply a sick society. He asked a simply question and did not even receive a simply answer - without hidden agendas.

First of all, you lie. He asked the question in nine words and Lumberjim answered it with a thousand and seven words. Beestie and Elspode also answered the question.

The trouble is that it is very difficult to write about a simple question given with no examples. If you want to be able to write any sort of substantial response to the question, you must have a model in your head. You have to be thinking of some society -- of Rome, of 15th century Spain, of America, of Texas, of the High School football team -- which either acted to preserve, to embrace, to oppose, or to assimilate diversity.

From there, you use your knowledge of the model to build an argument, and fold that argument, I hope, into a clear and well written response.

If two people argue, and each person understands a different, contradictory model, they talk past each other. The argument goes nowhere and becomes stupid.

So someone has to introduce a model, as tw did and flint did not. The choice of model determines where the argument will go, if someone is hoping to win. Hellenistic Greece would be an excellent example for someone who wished to argue that merging cultures bring prosperity. The example of 15th century Spain, when King Ferdinand drove out the Moslems and endorsed Colombus, might make for a good argument for the prosperity of an undivided state.

Neither is particularly good for understanding or answering Flint's incredibly broad and somewhat ambiguous question.

I think that a good model might come from Physics. Consider a volume of high temperature air. Each molecule has high energy and high, albiet random, momentum. If you insert a mass of cold air, then the two types of air, cold and hot, will interact and circulate tempestuously. Ultimately, the entire volume of air will have uniform temperature.

All sorts of things could complicate this model, and it doesn't necessarily translate well to societies. It doesn't deal with the possibility that societies tend to develop, and that if two societies are isolated they will develop along divergent paths.

That brings along another ambiguity in Flint's question: what is the scale? Is he talking about the world? Is he talking about America? Is he talking about New Orleans? Is he talking about my math study group?

Having written all of this, I think that his original post was a passive-aggressive way of implicating the established group at the Cellar of being insular. If this was his real question, and he really wanted us to discuss it, he should have come out and said so.

One last thing: I think that Lumberjim's response was incredibly eloquent.

Reviewing those posts again, maybe there was an attempt at an anwser. I certainly still cannot see it in a few responses. A kid splashing in a mud puddle makes about as much sense to me as the 'kid pissing on a statue' and calling it the purpose of life - a philosophy whose real purpose is to insult. I watched those english teachers dish out 'Paul was barefoot and therefore dead' from the Abbey Road album. To me, classic junk philosophy intended to insult. But on second thought, and after literally rereading those particular replies about 10 times, maybe there was an attempt to actually reply to Flint.

Models are only examples. Examples so that a concept is provided something concrete; so that the reader can compare his interpretation to an example/model; so that the reader can confirm he properly understood the author's intent. Those models were not intended to limit the scope of Flint's question which I regard as intentionally vague. If Flint intended something more specific, he can limit the scope of his question. If Flint intended his question to have scale, then he would have put numbers or limiting examples to it.

Having said that, I still don't understand how society has a "level". And I don't understand why "I find your question somehow strange and out of place." is relevant. Like the 'pissing kid', and like those english teachers who could not understand why 'Paul was not dead', I again see little relevant in such replies.

Marichiko provided a definition - something to work with. It did not answer the question, but the definition proves useful - one step to providing an answer. Elspode did same by providing a framework; a structure to better define where to seek an answer. My post should not have implied Elspode post belongs in a category of subjectively irrelevant interpretations.

Meanwhile, "If two people argue, and each person understands a different, contradictory model, they talk past each other. The argument goes nowhere and becomes stupid." is why perspective causes two people to answer correctly and yet provide 'apparently incompatible' answers. Wars have been fought over less. Which is why I am still looking at that answer about 'levels' and about "the ebb and flow of things". And yet still see nothing but 'a kid pissing on a statue' philosophy or a hidden message that 'Paul is dead'.

Bravo, Torrere, I feel that YOUR response was incredibly eloquent!

Given Flint's history on the board and the vagueness of his question, it is no surprise that he has gotten the response he has. In fact, many of the responses were far more well thought out than his original question.

I notice, also, that he has not taken much part in the debate his own OP inspired (perhaps because AG is functioning again, or so we are told?).

If one wishes to look at the laws of physics and the natural world, all systems tend to seek a status of equilibrium - that is to conserve energy. A chemical reaction that is thrown out of equilibrium by a change on one side of the equation or the other will quickly work toward becoming in balance again. Human society is no different.

The original residents of Colorado found their state thrown into dis-equilibrium with the sudden influx of outsiders who drove up property values, and at the same time voted in laws that were at odds with the well being of the residents of the state - the TABOR amendment (tax payer's bill of rights) is the most blatant example of this. TABOR was pushed into law mainly by the influx of Californians who were weary of the tax burden in their home state of California and opposed paying any taxes what so ever in their new state of Colorado.

The result has been chaos on every level of government in the state of Colorado. The division of motor vehicles is understaffed forcing people to wait literally 4- 6 hours for something as simple as a renewal of their driver's license. The courts are over burdened and under staffed. Our system of higher education has taken many hard hits, and some of our universities are in peril of losing their accreditation thanks to underfunded libraries and teaching staff. The list goes on.

People who live here have responded by putting "Native" with a map of Colorado on their bumpers, jokes such as the one I posted earlier, and the great Texan/Colorado tomato war, where participants bombard each other with ripe or rotten tomatoes (and sometimes hard green ones).

One way or the other, Colorado will reach equilibrium again. Either the new comers will realize that the laws they have voted in have made Colorado a less than wonderful place to live, and act with other Colorado voters to repeal them (this has already begun to happen to a certain extent in our most recent election), or else they will leave for greener pastures and those remaining will clean up the mess they leave behind.

The influx of AG-ers into the Cellar is little different than the influx of Texans and Californians into Colorado. In both instances the new comers were met with suspicion and hostility. Things were discovered to work off this mutual animosity in more healthy ways like the great tomato war which is actually quite funny. Native Coloradoans have gradually become more open to new thoughts, and the newcomers seem to be learning that they weren't right about EVERYTHING.

Colorado has dealt with heterogeneity by slowly turning it into homogeneity. I think most other societies are no different.

this is why your nonemotional, rational method of thinking is inferior. sublty escapes you, imagery and suggestion help you not. you can't smell what i'm cookin.

would you really like a translation of those two posts? in all words?

@lumberjim: So when I was criticized, as a new arrival, for not making substantive enough posts, it was actually a ploy to get me to share something real just so you could make fun of it? Oh, yes, this is a very mature and dignified society here, much more advanced than all those other "chatroom style" boards out there.

This really gets to the crux of your "fit in or F off" argument, doesn't it? You don't want people to actually be themselves, you want them to fall lockstep into your pre-specified style of clique-ish posting: not too light, but not too heavy either. Truly, the goal of quite a few people here seems to be specifically what I refer to in this thread, to repel diversity and maintain a homogeneous status quo - based on the argument that it has been sustainable for X number of years. Guess what folks - it takes all kinds. Variety is good.

I am disturbed by the pleasure some of you take in attempting to drive away newcomers. You might want to consider joining the KKK.