Meaning of quote from Innocence..?

Discussions about the first film (Ghost in the Shell) and the second (Innocence)

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GhostLine
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Post by GhostLine »

AlphonseVanWorden wrote:Here's another way of looking at the problem. To be sinless-- like our metaphorical elephant-- is to be innocent, whereas sin implies guilt. So, what does the film's title mean? And how and why are animals innocent?

Does innocence imply what we think of as "goodness"?

And what does a gynoid have in common with a dog?

And what's up with the skylark?
"like an elephant in the forest"...it reminds me of an asimov derived tale, of some time travellers searching for a robot that had gone back in time, causing a cataclismic paradox in the future. the travellers specifically noted how a slight event in the past could echo into the future.
i guess we could say the same as adam and eve's past echoing into our own...that humanity is not in a state of innocence...our all-consuming need exceed boundaries of simplicity, but is it just extensions of self-preservation or emotional/ chemical dependency?
gynoids/ dogs/ dolls/ children--are without the taint of guilt...they remind us of innocence...perhaps we recreate ourselves in order to be surrounded by such innocence...those who do not know any better...such as adam and eve before the fall and ejection from paradise. however, such attempts are self-serving and are more abusive to those we try to purge our guilt upon. we anthropomorphize(sp ?), we live vicariously through, we spoil....
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Post by ])R@G()N »

So... why does she help Batou? And why does she take an active role in things? And why will she always be there for him?
When I said "the major achieved a peace with everything akin to this state of acceptance of the way of things that something of infinate or zero conciousness would have by default" I did not mean that she had reached a point where she now accepts without preference the state of things. I meant only that she had found a simillar peace through coming to terms with everything including her wishes and the consiquences of those. Hence forth she is like the elephant with 'few' wishes.
I think some Buddhists might take issue with the assertion that your viewpoint is similar to theirs, insofar as they believe there is a true and ultimately real) state to things, but there isn't and cannot be a definition or description, a.... It can only be suggested to the conscious Self through metaphor.
I said my view point ran along the same lines, compared to all the view points one can have on life a fair comment I would say, and I would laught at anyone petty enough to have issue with that. My idea of things just being is that they cant be described, I ment to talk about a 'state' of things as something that could be described to someone, written down on paper, hence to have no 'ture' state is to be indescribeable. Obviously there is something out there that is unchanging no matter what u are, there are solid atoms everywhere, i do not deny that, only that as soon as u percive them you have attributed them properties within your artificial viewpoint, hence whatever definition of state u can percive is partly artifical, hence there is no state, in my terminology, but not neccesarily going against these ideas, maybe my bad in my translation of my ideas. I do not pretend to understand anything about buddist philosophies from the little u quoted, I just ment to draw paralels between the quote and a perspective of my own that I felt touched and in some ways re-enforced by the film.

" and about respecting the thing you're experiencing."

I agree with this part of what u say also. To me it feel like unconditionaly accepting and appreciating the thing for what it thinks it is and/or purely from what u can percive about it with as little steriotyping or 'preconditioned ideas' as posible. To try and experience it from outside of your own ideals/ethics/desires etc if u like.

Ghostline
...perhaps we recreate ourselves in order to be surrounded by such innocence...
I agree in some ways. the way we seek to suround ourselves in idiolisations, and ultimatly when u look at what we idolise, it probably is innocence for the most. i was also looking at it from another prespective. We recreate ourselves in an attempt to identify with what we create. the way we indentify with humans more than anything else, we make things into human shapes in order to play on some of our preconcived subconcious ideas of human shapes in a way. We take a small peice of plastic for instance, shape it roughly like a scaled down soldier, and to a kid, this is his toy soldier. He makes it run around, shoot, talk etc. Why? why can a small peice of plastic so easily be given the mental properties of a soldier? It highlights in some ways our level of giving things properties that only exist within our own heads. you could say we don't respect the plastic as a peice of plastic. But without a brain and therefor a cenception of respect I don't think the plastic would want respect, or anything for that matter. so to me its not so much about direspect of the thing, but the delusions of thinking you have respect and awareness of things when you dont, even by your own standards if you were to think them through to their logical conclusion. So in a way its our attempt to identify with things through asigning them these faulse properties that seperates us from those things that are innocent of these higher levels of illogic in the name of logic.
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Post by AlphonseVanWorden »

I said my view point ran along the same lines, compared to all the view points one can have on life a fair comment I would say, and I would laught at anyone petty enough to have issue with that.
])R@G()N, you wrote in the earlier post:
I am unfamilliar with the specifics of most buddhist references... Again I have not read buddism, but...
I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say that something with which you're unfamiliar parallels your own position. As I can't claim to be familiar with all or even most worldviews, I can't and won't judge whether the comparison between your position and that of various Buddhist teachings is a "fair" one, as some other religious or philosophical/metaphysical view might be closer to your own than Buddhism is.

But ultimately, it's something for you to decide.

My point was-- and remains-- that the elephant analogy from the Dhammapada refers to proper conduct in this world. It's simply suggesting that to be free from wrong thinking, i.e. the distractions of the senses and of sensual appetitiveness (and illusion), is to behave properly. The metaphorical elephant in the quoted passage is content, undistracted. The section of the Dhammapada in question isn't about infinite (or zero) consciousness, as the elephant doesn't have infinite consciousness, nor is it without consciousness.

And the Major's point is vastly different from anything Kim was implying. When she said, "Blessed are those who have voice," she was being ironic, as the idea of the gynoids having consciousness (but no voice) doesn't appear in a position like Kim's, or in the position of Locus Solus or the gynoid owners...

You wrote, "[T]he major achieved a peace with everything akin to this state of acceptance of the way of things that something of infinate or zero conciousness would have by default." I think the very fact that the Major has an individual consciousness would render the comparison problematic, as she would have, by definition, a finite consciousness, as opposed to an infinite consciousness or no consciousness at all. The comparison between a finite and knowable thing and an infinite, unknowable (in the conscious sense) thing or a nonexistent thing strikes me as a difficult one...

I offered to provide you with some introductory Buddhist texts because you might be interested in them, and because the texts might demonstrate the differences between your line of reasoning and that of most Buddhists, and might give you something else to consider.

If my post provoked laughter of any sort (or if the thought of Buddhists taking issue with the comparison inspired a chuckle), I'm glad, as laughter is a good thing. :)
When I said "the major achieved a peace with everything akin to this state of acceptance of the way of things that something of infinate or zero conciousness would have by default" I did not mean that she had reached a point where she now accepts without preference the state of things. I meant only that she had found a simillar peace through coming to terms with everything including her wishes and the consiquences of those. Hence forth she is like the elephant with 'few' wishes.
This is far clearer than your original post:
I too didnt mean to imply Kim thought animals had infinate conciousness, but rather that things of infinate conciousness or none are in total peace and harmony with themselves and their enviroment, and that i think the major achieved a peace with everything akin to this state of acceptance of the way of things that something of infinate or zero conciousness would have by default.
The clarifications to the general statement make all the difference. We've gone from sounding as if animals had infinite consciousness, to drawing distinctions between infinite consciousness and no consciousness. And we've made other clarifications: Kim's statements point to a third mode of being, that of animals, and his contrasting all three with humans implies a fourth mode-- human consciousness. For Kim, human consciousness seems inferior to the other three.

And we have another mode of consciousness implied in the film-- the Major's mode of consciousness, post-fusion. (She's godlike in many ways, but I don't think she was exactly what Kim meant when he mentioned gods.)

So we have gods, dolls, animals, humans, and post-fusion entities.

This brings us back to the matter of innocence and guilt.
We take a small peice of plastic for instance, shape it roughly like a scaled down soldier, and to a kid, this is his toy soldier... you could say we don't respect the plastic as a peice of plastic. But without a brain and therefor a cenception of respect I don't think the plastic would want respect, or anything for that matter. so to me its not so much about direspect of the thing, but the delusions of thinking you have respect and awareness of things when you dont, even by your own standards if you were to think them through to their logical conclusion.
We should probably note in passing that gynoids are a lot more sophisticated that toy soldiers... the doll analogy works in the film only insofar as the gynoids' owners and most citizens think of them as toys, and their bodies were made to resemble human bodies.

And this points to yet another dialectic within the film. Kim's thinking, while it alludes to Eastern concepts, is an extension of Cartesian dualism and, in the final analysis, of a materialism which denies metaphysical value to all things, except in terms of mastery and pleasure.

The ritual involving the burning of the dolls points to other viewpoints, those of Eastern religion-- in which even inanimate objects have essences. We can pay respect to those essences, without being about to say much about them... and the people burn the dolls as anything physical is burned, as appeasement and as offering to the thing's spirit. (As Oshii mentions in the commentary, all sorts of items are burned in Japan for precisely those reasons...)
But without a brain and therefor a cenception of respect I don't think the plastic would want respect, or anything for that matter. so to me its not so much about direspect of the thing, but the delusions of thinking you have respect and awareness of things when you dont, even by your own standards if you were to think them through to their logical conclusion.
Your argument assumes several points. First, you imply that "brains" are what cause things to want respect. (The statement "[w]ithout a brain and therefor a cenception of respect I don't think the plastic would want respect, or anything for that matter" is pretty much a syllogistic argument: "Brains are what cause things to conceive of and to want respect, dolls don't have brains, therefore dolls can't conceive of and therefore don't want respect.") But the term "brain" remains undefined in your argument-- and really, for the position to be logical, the term would need to be defined.

Do you mean the physical mass we call a brain? Can one have a brain without wanting respect? Can a brain experience anything without a body? Where does neurochemical activity figure into this, if at all? And what is the relationship between "Self" or "essence" or "soul" and "brain"? Could someone claim that an inanimate object has an "essence" or "soul" that's different from that of human beings, and therefore doesn't require a "brain"? And might someone claim that a person's soul or essence is merely a part of a larger whole (or Oneness) of which the person is unaware?

In short-- and these aren't my points, this isn't my position-- Eastern philosophies and religions approach the issue differently from how you or I might. So showing respect to something that's inanimate isn't logically inconsistent, as it doesn't imply that the toy soldier is like a person; the conclusion or behavior simply follows from a different set of assumptions and presuppositions about the relationship between souls/essences and matter. (Humans, animals, and inanimate things have essences, but depending upon the school of Eastern thought, the essences are themselves different in kind, or are similar only insofar as they're bound or related to matter; the nature of the essences, or their particular mode, might be different manifestations of Oneness, or they might differ because of the nature of the thing. While one can't say much about a particular tree's kami in Shinto, one can say that a tree has kami, and one pays respect to the tree's kami. Some kami are anthropomorphic, but others aren't. Depends on the thing being discussed. And a Buddhist might say the tree is a manifestation of the One... And sometimes in Japanese culture, the viewpoint is both Shinto and Buddhist, with a particular kami being both kami and a manifestation or incarnation of a particular aspect of Oneness.)

As for "respect", one might say that a sense of respect stems from the notion that all essences (and their phenomenal or material counterparts) are interconnected...

Also, the toy soldier-- like the gynoid, although I don't want to stretch the analogy beyond this point-- doesn't have a "voice", i.e. it can't say one way or another what it wants. Unlike the toy soldiers, gynoids and androids can demonstrate their displeasure in physical ways. (Remember, not all of the bodies in Haraway's office were Hadaly-model gynoids, and several of them committed violent acts and/or suicide.)

As I said, the argument sounds like something out of Buddhism or Shinto, but it's not quite Buddhist or Shinto. To put this another way: Certain Eastern beliefs hold that all material things have an essence or "soul". Other viewpoints would limit souls to human beings (and/or possibly animals), while other positions deny the existence of the soul altogether.

Oshii includes the religious custom of burning inanimate objects in the film because it implies respect for those objects.

I don't mean "respect" in the sense of "rights" or whatnot. I mean something more basic, something upon which legal rights are built.

Something like acknowledgement...

Also, one could argue along these lines: I can't say a lot about another person's desires or wants or reactions; I can only judge reactions, then assume that a person doesn't like something. But what if the person is faking or role-playing or whatnot?

And why should the person's discomfort matter to me at all?

What prevents me from hurting a person (or an animal)? What makes that different in kind from hurting a toy? After all, there's surely some difference between your brain and my brain (in terms of processing, experience, what provides pleasure/pain), and there're certainly differences between our brains and those of dogs... and if I assume that I'm superior to you, or if we decide that humans are superior to dogs...

What makes certain behaviors bad or wrong?

As Haraway points out, from a strictly logical point of view, children aren't what we think of as human. No free will, no identity (in the way we normally think of identity, when dealing with legal and moral issues). If we take this argument to its extreme (and this is really Haraway's point), one can argue that children are property, in the same way that animals are property-- and in the same way that gynoids or other toys are property.

But we don't think of children or animals as being without feelings. (Or at least I hope we don't.) If we did, we might look at all sorts of horrible behaviors and deem them acceptable...

Perhaps respect entails acknowledging difference as well as similarity.

In another thread, I wrote:
We might think of something Alvin Toffler wrote about Barbie dolls and Mattel's late 1960s announcement of "new, improved models" [a girl could trade in her "old" Barbie for a new one] in his 1970 book Future Shock: "What Mattel did not announce was that by trading in her old doll for a technologically improved model, the little girl of today, citizen of tomorrow's super-industrial world, would learn a fundamental lesson about the new society: that man's relationships with things are increasingly temporary." Toffler argued that because a culture's psychology is shaped by childhood relationships with things, i.e. objects, the notion of upgrading one's toys has larger social implications. In this context, we might recall Hadaly's speech in L'Eve Future again: "...in the distance you hear the sound of living beings (beings just like you!) who are also getting up and going about their business, drunk with Reason, wildly excited by the box of toys possessed by a Humanity grown ripe already..."
Oshii's points seem to be: What happens when our "toys" become aware? Should we treat them as toys? And if our bodies are viewed as or literally become machines, what does that say about our essences? Are we even sufficiently aware of our essences to recognize or acknowledge the essences of non-human entities, or do we take too much for granted?

GhostLine raises an interesting point:
i guess we could say the same as adam and eve's past echoing into our own...that humanity is not in a state of innocence...our all-consuming need exceed boundaries of simplicity, but is it just extensions of self-preservation or emotional/ chemical dependency?
gynoids/ dogs/ dolls/ children--are without the taint of guilt...they remind us of innocence...perhaps we recreate ourselves in order to be surrounded by such innocence...those who do not know any better...such as adam and eve before the fall and ejection from paradise. however, such attempts are self-serving and are more abusive to those we try to purge our guilt upon. we anthropomorphize(sp ?), we live vicariously through, we spoil....
Since GhostLine has mentioned Adam and Eve, and since Milton's version of Satan is alluded to in the film, let me ask: What was the nature of Adam and Eve's sin, what was the nature of Satan's sin in Paradise Lost, and how do these relate to the film?

In short, what sorts of guilt are we talking about? And what do these sorts of guilt or sin have in common?
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. - Bosola, in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
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Post by Tonks_kittygoth »

In a bit of real world irony, apparently Elephants are begining to cease walking through the forest disturbing nothing.

They have begun attacking vilages and people. According to the special I saw, they are reacting to our wonderful (sarcasm) species. Increasing habitat removal, as well as poaching and culling oversized herds without regard to Elephant family structures and culture has seriously disturbed thier mental states.

They have identified what we call post traumatic stress syndrom in them, have to do with these issues. They are trying to figure out how to deal with this to help interaction between people native to Elephant habitat,.as well as those who deal with them in Zoo and Circus enviroments, where the Elephants often have come from very traumatic captures.

They are working on learning elephant language in order to understand why they are freaking out and try to alleviate their stress. They found out this group of young males was killing area rhino's. They watched them and found out they were all very agressive. Looking into thier history they found out that they had been orphaned due to culling. They had witnessed thier parents get shot and taken away. They also had no adult males to keep them in line, and teach them to "be elephants".

So they brought in some large males in who "regulated" the situation, and took the young elephants in and taught them how to act. They stopped killing rhino's and settled down. So now they are trying solutions like that rather than just killing the elephants.

Anyways the special was interesting, look for it on national geographic channel.
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Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as
one wants to live and not die, so do other
creatures." - His Holiness The Dalai Lama
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Post by ])R@G()N »

AlphonseVanWorden wrote:The clarifications to the general statement make all the difference. We've gone from sounding as if animals had infinite consciousness, to drawing distinctions between infinite consciousness and no consciousness. And we've made other clarifications: Kim's statements point to a third mode of being, that of animals, and his contrasting all three with humans implies a fourth mode-- human consciousness. For Kim, human consciousness seems inferior to the other three
you seem to miss my point totally, and i can't help but feel Kims to a certain level too. I am not talking about conciousness, and comparing states of conciousness. I am talking about feelings of eing out of place and being in you place things that have a conciousness have. It is these feelings within that is the point, not a scientific study of different forms of conciousness to be cataloged like a formula. something of infinate conciousness has an inner harmony of purpous and understanding, something of zero conciousness has no ability to even consider, hence has no inner confliction because it has no inner to conflict. A thing of finite conciousness can have an inner harmony 'akin' to that of the infinate and zero, or it can have a conflicting sense of purpose and understanding which causes it mental pain. It is the 'existing without internal conflictions' that I am talking about and comparing, the states of conciousness mean nothing in themselves but to help ilustrate this.
I think the very fact that the Major has an individual consciousness would render the comparison problematic, as she would have, by definition, a finite consciousness, as opposed to an infinite consciousness or no consciousness at all. The comparison between a finite and knowable thing and an infinite, unknowable (in the conscious sense) thing or a nonexistent thing strikes me as a difficult one...
see above
What prevents me from hurting a person (or an animal)? What makes that different in kind from hurting a toy? After all, there's surely some difference between your brain and my brain (in terms of processing, experience, what provides pleasure/pain), and there're certainly differences between our brains and those of dogs... and if I assume that I'm superior to you, or if we decide that humans are superior to dogs...
A toy (the toy soldier for example) can't be hurt. hurt, pain, feelings of 'bad' in any shape of form are the result of you having a body and being capeable of thinking and effecting your surroundings coupled by need enforced on our minds by our physical bodies. A peacie of plastic has no nervous system, it has no grey tissue full of chemical/electrical synapses inside a skull in its head. It has no needs materailly to stay alive like breathing or eating etc so it exists in a world where concepts themselves dont exist. my point of the toy soldier was and is a look at how we cant see outside of our understandings of the world, the idea of attributing things that we feel like hurt to an inanimate object shows how, as the major put it, 'what we see now is like a dim reflection in a mirror', when u look at the mirror, you neither see the mirror for what it is in itself, nor do you see yourself for what you really are. When u mentally attribute to a toy feelings of its hurt etc you are not truely seeing the peice of plastic for what it is, nor are u seeing a being that is capebale of feeling hurt. the mirror within it only clouds the true vision of either. To see face to face is to see the toy as a lump of inanimate atoms free of any artificail concepts like 'this is a toy' 'this is a soldier' 'hurt' 'want' etc.

there was a time when I would have loved to read some buddist stuff. However i do not read philosophy for the sake of it anymore. I stuided philosophy at college, and i found there were a group of people who were good at philosophy in my classes. Amoung these a very small number understood the text and how it related to life. Most however had no deepper udnerstanding of philosopghy at all. they were very good at it, and they knew a lot of different philosophies, and they could quote them, and then quote other sources that talked about them, and so forth. But they understood philosophy in the way a mathmatician understands mathmatical laws and formulas. they could quote philosophies and to some extent inter relate them using highly sophisticated philosophical terminology. but they couldnt see what the people were really saying outside of the exact phrasing that they read. they couldnt see when 2 philosophies were saying exactly the same thing just using a totally different view point. Even teachers, who had masters degrees in philosophy seemed unable to relate what they knew in any way to themselves, reality or to other philosophical ideas that wernt written in exactly the same terminology. everyones point of view is enterly personal, to read another persons writing is not to udnerstand what they wrote, everything you read is interpertied by you and your preconceptions, as Ayimaki said 'understanding is a copncept purely based on wishfull thinking'. i dont enjoy reading to much into philosophies I cant question and recieve an answer too. I would enjoy a conversation with a buddist maybe. I am sure there are bhuddists who talk together, and feel they have the same views, who have no idea how different their conception of the world is from one another and therefor how different their interpritation of what they think they agree on is. To think in terms of 'understanding' something other than yourself, to me, is like attributing hurt to the toy, its a delusion based on a delusion.
I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say that something with which you're unfamiliar parallels your own position
I was familliar with the quote you posted, and that quote was all I attempted to draw parralels with.
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Post by Tonks_kittygoth »

they could quote philosophies and to some extent inter relate them using highly sophisticated philosophical terminology. but they couldnt see what the people were really saying outside of the exact phrasing that they read
I havent had time to keep up with this whole line of posts, but for some reason I was able to read this bit today, and I just wanted to pop in and say I find many many people with the same relation to literature in my field.

They plug in these theories with big words but cant get their mind around concepts like fear, depression, love, etc. It is maddening and depressing, not so much in my peers, but in my Professors. I was so very hopeful and excited starting grad school, only to find it is even more limiting in ways than undergrad.

It reminds me of some popular group in highschool that demanded you knew the latest brands and designers, only its literary critics and criticism based on pyramids of criticism, having lost site of the original work long ago.

Im afraid that since I wont play that game, I'll suffer for it, but then again its just same game, new players. I generally make it through once I realize how to avoid the rooks. Sounds like you did too. :D :gabu:
"Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man.
Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as
one wants to live and not die, so do other
creatures." - His Holiness The Dalai Lama
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Post by ])R@G()N »

lololol, yeah, I call it the modern art theory. I think theres a lot of people into art now days that have no udnerstanding of art, they have no emotional connection to it, but they want to be into it. So they study the exactness of the art world and buy into it, they learn the social politics of what sort of art person you are by buyign into different preset genres (for what of a better word) and before you know it, the art would is full of people with no concept of art looking for something they can all agree on to justify eachothers interests and desire to be a part of it all. Before you know it you have Tracy Emin putting a messy bed with a pack of fags beside it in one of Londons most prestigeous galleries and calling it modern art. You cant prove it isnt therefor it is. Its as valid a point as me saying its not art, but I have to be true to my personal perspective on life and just shake my head at the situation. Like u said, you just got to keep goin, making it through in your own way that makes sense to you I guess :lol: .
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Post by AlphonseVanWorden »

])R@G()N wrote:I was familliar with the quote you posted, and that quote was all I attempted to draw parralels with.
Not to nitpick, but you wrote in response to my discussion of Lenji:
Again I have not read buddism, but this seems to run along the same lines as some personal views I have.
Given that I'd discussed Buddhist tradition and quoted Lenji, I'm still not sure-- are you saying that you were drawing parallels with the Lenji quotation? You quoted my elaboration of Lenji's quotation, and not the quotation itself.
everyones point of view is enterly personal, to read another persons writing is not to udnerstand what they wrote, everything you read is interpertied by you and your preconceptions, as Ayimaki said 'understanding is a copncept purely based on wishfull thinking'.
Hmmm...
I am sure there are bhuddists who talk together, and feel they have the same views, who have no idea how different their conception of the world is from one another and therefor how different their interpritation of what they think they agree on is
Hmmm... So you're saying we can't really understand other people, but you're sure that people who seem to agree actually have different interpretations. How, I ask, could you claim that's anything more than a personal interpretation?

Let's compare this position with something else you wrote:
I stuided philosophy at college, and i found there were a group of people who were good at philosophy in my classes. Amoung these a very small number understood the text and how it related to life.
Hmmm... How can you say that a small number of people understood the texts if you also say that to read another person's writing is not to understand what the person wrote? And can you say, with any kind of consistency and any degree of certainty, that you weren't interpreting that small number of people and their understanding of the texts through your own preconceptions? :wink: :idea:
Most [students] however had no deepper udnerstanding of philosopghy at all. they were very good at it, and they knew a lot of different philosophies, and they could quote them, and then quote other sources that talked about them, and so forth. But they understood philosophy in the way a mathmatician understands mathmatical laws and formulas. they could quote philosophies and to some extent inter relate them using highly sophisticated philosophical terminology. but they couldnt see what the people were really saying outside of the exact phrasing that they read. they couldnt see when 2 philosophies were saying exactly the same thing just using a totally different view point.
How can you prove that two philosophies with different viewpoints mean exactly the same thing if "everything you read is interpreted by you and your preconceptions"? After all, that would simply be your interpretation, and as such, it would say little about the philosophies-- since they can't be understood. Ditto the students-- how can you prove that they thought about the philosophers they were reading in the way you're describing, that this isn't simply your interpretation of the students' thinking?
Even teachers, who had masters degrees in philosophy seemed unable to relate what they knew in any way to themselves, reality or to other philosophical ideas that wernt written in exactly the same terminology.
Is this a statement of fact, or, according to your own line of reasoning about conversations and written texts and understanding people and things, an interpretation? :wink:
To think in terms of 'understanding' something other than yourself, to me, is like attributing hurt to the toy, its a delusion based on a delusion.
While I believe that "perfect" and "complete" understanding might well be impossible, I also believe that something like decent communication occurs when one party uses language clearly and/or to the best of one's ability and the other party follows the speaker or writer's words. Let's assume that the first party wants to be understood (wants the listener or reader to "get the point") and isn't deliberately being ambiguous. If the listener or reader finds certain statements unclear or contradictory and if he or she has the opportunity to ask the speaker or writer for clarification or for supporting evidence, the listener or reader should do so.

Call me utopian about that sort of thing. But if it's all interpretation, you have no voice, my friend. Not really. You're simply a text-generating machine who can never hope to be understood, even approximately. And it doesn't get more lit-crit and art scene and postmodern hipsterish than that.

And I don't think that's what you mean, or what you want to mean. Or is that just my interpretation of your words? :wink:

I think you'd have to define or describe "understanding" for me to agree with you. And I don't think that acknowledgment of a person or thing or respect for it always has to do with "complete" and "total" understanding, which seems to be what you're hinting at.
there was a time when I would have loved to read some buddist stuff. However i do not read philosophy for the sake of it anymore...i dont enjoy reading to much into philosophies I cant question and recieve an answer too.
If you can never understand written or spoken things, why would you even want to question the philosopher or proponent of the philosophy, as the person's answers would be as unknowable or incapable of being understood as the original text, and the answers wouldn't explain or elaborate upon the thing you were asking about (which, in turn, can't be understood)? Come to think of it, why attempt communication or interpretation at all? And why bothering reading, listening to, or talking with anyone, unless it's for your own amusement?

I suspect that such attempts at amusement would get boring after a while...

Saying that this sort of thing's what humans do doesn't really explain why we don't just wise up and acknowledge the futility of our own nature and efforts-- and according to that description, things seem pretty futile-- and give up the ghost.

For a moment, let's forget that I've actually followed your argument well enough to ask these sorts of questions, which in itself raises further questions about communication and about what you mean when you say that people don't really "understand" written or spoken words. (You can claim that I don't understand you and that no one really understands a written or spoken statement, but you'll have to explain how it was possible for some students to understand the texts in your university courses, while others lacked "deeper understanding" of the texts.) You're still left with the matter of why we try to understand things. The answer-- or the mystery- is not simply a matter of human hardwiring or vanity, I think. That sort of circular reasoning strikes me as a cop-out. "We do it, we exist this way, because we have to... It's just the way we are." There's actually a pretty nasty and often messy alternative, but most of us don't take it.

And I have to ask... okay, so you don't read philosophy "for itself" anymore. What does academia have to do with reading philosophy?

I tend to read philosophical and religious/theological texts because a.) I'm interested in other cultures and ideas, b.) I find it fascinating to see the relationship between knowledge, interpretation, and practice at work, c.) I find people interesting, and philosophers and authors of religious texts are people, and d.) a lot of the concerns found in the texts touch upon some pretty basic fears, concerns, and questions.
you seem to miss my point totally, and i can't help but feel Kims to a certain level too. I am not talking about conciousness, and comparing states of conciousness.
By "miss your point," I suppose you mean that I didn't understand you? Or am I misinterpreting your interpretation of my words, which you interpret as misinterpreting your earlier posts? :P
])R@G()N wrote:everyones point of view is enterly personal, to read another persons writing is not to udnerstand what they wrote, everything you read is interpertied by you and your preconceptions, as Ayimaki said 'understanding is a copncept purely based on wishfull thinking'.
If an understanding of someone's writings is impossible, you shouldn't expect me to see your point. :wink:

I think I saw your point, but as I said earlier, clarifications to general statements make all the difference. And given that Kim was talking about modes of consciousness and that his points were very much centered around a discussion of such modes, I fail to see how I'm missing Kim's line of reasoning. Gods, dolls, and animals have different modes of consciousness, and these modes of consciousness are similar in that they lack the specific sort of self-consciousness common to humans and thereby differ from the consciousness-mode of humans, according to Kim.

And, as I've suggested, Haraway's conversation with Togusa is, in part, about differentiation between modes of consciousness in relation to morality, identity, and free will...

Your statements were a little broader than the above, though. So I was hoping you'd qualify, quantify, clarify.
I am talking about feelings of eing out of place and being in you place things that have a conciousness have. It is these feelings within that is the point, not a scientific study of different forms of conciousness to be cataloged like a formula.
How someone or something feels-- and I don't mean just the feelings themselves, but the ways in which feelings are possible-- would be contingent upon the mode or type of consciousness, correct? Hence the film raising the issue of certain things potentially having a mode of consciousness-- and a ghost-- but no voice, and the dialogue and plot play such a possibility against Kim's "dolls are perfect because they lack consciousness of any kind" argument.
something of infinate conciousness has an inner harmony of purpous and understanding, something of zero conciousness has no ability to even consider, hence has no inner confliction because it has no inner to conflict.
I think I've mentioned in several posts that the relationship between infinite/perfect and zero/nonexistent consciousness is dialectal, that the terms are at times virtually indistinguishable from each other in much Eastern thought, and that Kim is playing with the concepts.

We might want to consider the way Kim quotes one of Confucius's teachings-- "Without knowing life, how can we know death?"-- and compare the original context with the way in which Kim uses the phrase. In context, the original comment has to do with ethical value and knowing one's duties to the living; Kim uses it to suggest, along with Confucius, that most humans don't understand life-- but Kim isn't implying anything about duty or morality. He's deliberately and ironically altering the phrase's meaning:
Chi Lu asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The Master said,
"While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their
spirits?" Chi Lu added, "I venture to ask about death?" He was
answered, "While you do not know life, how can you know about death?"
A lot of Kim's argument mocks the very notion of moral value.

Kim states that dolls, gods, and animals are similar in that they lack the self-consciousness inherent to the human mode of consciousness, but he's pretty careful to point out the differences between all of these modes. And there's a reason that he notes the differences between dolls, gods, and animals in passing. For someone like Kim, they have to be described as different modes of consciousness in order to discuss the similarities and differences. He ironizes, much of the time-- and his notion of harmony is mathematical and scientific.

Kim's entire discourse describes modes of consciousness, knowledge, and mastery, and it embraces a scientific and materialist worldview. Kim categorizes, classifies, and discusses relational and functional value. As he says, "the desire to transcend the quest for perfection"-- the desire to move beyond admiring gods and creating dolls and envying a kind of "pure joy" in animal consciousness, the desire to pass beyond the quest for something like the three modes he's described-- led to the development of certain technologies which, in turn, resulted in the resurrection of the man-as-machine idea. Kim implies that someone who follows this line of reasoning runs the risk of discovering that humans can't become something like gods, but can become something like a mere machine, something like Kim's idea of dolls-- as dolls are "nothing but human," and as "[t]he notion that nature is calculable inevitably leads to the conclusion that humans, too, are [like dolls] reducible to mechanical parts." "The definition of a truly beautiful doll is a living, breathing body devoid of a soul..." If humans are reducible to parts in the same way that dolls are, if dolls are "nothing but human," and if dolls don't have souls, Kim's argument implies that humans themselves don't have souls.

According to Kim (speaking through a hallucinated version of Batou), the universe itself is revealed as "God's everlasting geometry"-- an ironic reference to Johannes Kepler's open letter to Galileo, to the foundation of modern cosmology and, by extension, to the idea of man as machine and the universe as clockwork.

For Kim, all these things suggest-- and perhaps prove-- that we're in fact nothing but machines making other machines. Kim hints that we're flawed as machines, because we're self-conscious, self-aware-- but our "humanity"-- the flaw itself, that which makes us different from machines-- is beginning to disappear. "[S]cience, seeking to unlock the secret of life, brought about this terror." "The mirage of life equipped with perfect hardware engendered this nightmare."

If this sounds like a mockery of Eastern philosophy and religion, of the idea that the soul can achieve Oneness with things, of the value of ethical action, it is. For Kim, we're nothing but machines-- machines flawed in such a way that we don't recognize our mechanical nature. Our mode of consciousness is an anomaly, a malfunction-- a misunderstanding. And Kim's saying that we're understanding that, and in doing so, learning that we are without souls.

As I've stated elsewhere on the forum, Kim is echoing Edison from L'Eve Future, the novel quoted at the beginning of Innocence.

Kim isn't at all adverse to the 18th Century notion of man as machine, and he seems to enjoy provoking terror and uncertainity in his visitors, while other viewpoint(s) within the film-- the implied religious or metaphysical views-- contrast with Kim's views.

As I've said, we should take Kim's words seriously, but with caution...
A thing of finite conciousness can have an inner harmony 'akin' to that of the infinate and zero, or it can have a conflicting sense of purpose and understanding which causes it mental pain.
I thought you said you weren't talking about consciousness or different modes of consciousness, but here we find two of Kim's three modes of non-human consciousness being mentioned...

I didn't think your earlier posts were clear on how the Major's mode of consciousness was akin to the modes of gods and dolls. If wanting clarification is a sin, I'm numbered among the damned. :twisted:

Kim suggests that humans differ from animals in that animals don't have self-consciousness; the only thing his argument implies is that infinite consciousness, zero consciousness, and the consciousness(es) of animals are commensurate (related) to each other in that they lack self-consciousness. Why does Kim describe perfection as being possible only for those with infinite consciousness or with no consciousness or with something like the consciousness of animals? Because those modes imply a lack of self-consciousness. A god (as Kim describes lowercase-g gods) has no reason to think of things the way humans do, a doll is without consciousness and can't think of things that way, and animals are incapable of doing so because their brains work differently.

Note that to arrive at this point in our discussion, we did have to talk about modes of consciousness...

It's important to remember that Kim's reading of the consciousness of dolls is probably incorrect-- the gynoids and androids that have attempted suicide seem to have something like consciousness, and probably a "ghost" as well. (These two terms-- consciousness and ghost-- aren't necessarily synonymous in the GitS franchise, although they're certainly related to each other.)

According to Kim, dolls have zero consciousness. But Haraway mentions gynoids (other than the Hadaly-models) and androids attempting suicide; this is at odds with Kim's statement, as is the Major's comment that the dolls would most likely not want to be human.

(Without consciousness, gynoids and androids wouldn't have the potential to object to their obsolescence, they wouldn't have the potential to object to their mode of consciousness being changed, and they couldn't possibly want to commit suicide-- unless you can show me that things without consciousness are capable or potentially capable of objecting to things, desiring their own demise, and/or committing suicide.)

Also, to come back to my original (and oft-repeated) point: The Major doesn't fit Kim's definition of a god, insofar as she doesn't have-- nor does she claim to have-- infinite consciousness. And to be completely honest with you, I believe that Kim is discussing gods as an idea, as a thought experiment or concept, not as something existing in reality.
A toy (the toy soldier for example) can't be hurt...my point of the toy soldier was and is a look at how we cant see outside of our understandings of the world, the idea of attributing things that we feel like hurt to an inanimate object shows how, as the major put it, 'what we see now is like a dim reflection in a mirror', when u look at the mirror, you neither see the mirror for what it is in itself, nor do you see yourself for what you really are. When u mentally attribute to a toy feelings of its hurt etc you are not truely seeing the peice of plastic for what it is, nor are u seeing a being that is capebale of feeling hurt. the mirror within it only clouds the true vision of either. To see face to face is to see the toy as a lump of inanimate atoms free of any artificail concepts like 'this is a toy' 'this is a soldier' 'hurt' 'want' etc.
I think this simply repeats your former argument, without addressing the issues I raised. You seem to be saying that even acknowledging the essences of non-human-- even non-animal-- things implies that those things "feel" pain, love, etc. in the same or similar way to humans.

In the first film, the Major quotes from 1 Corinthians. In the King James Version, Verses 10-12 read:
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
In the original context, the passage is part of a discourse on the importance of charity. All other things-- speaking in tongues, the gift of prophesy, knowledge of the world-- are compared to childish things, while experiencing divine truth is compared to "becoming a man" (or adult).

In the context of the movie, the quotation foreshadows Motoko's fusion with the Puppetmaster, and equates it with divine experience, with seeing God face-to-face.

We were talking about gynoids and androids, I think. A different matter altogether, as Batou is uninterested in fusion. (EDIT: ])R@G()N, I'm trying to bring us back to topic, to a specific examination of quotations or even metaphors in the second film. A minor digression or even a regression to an earlier discussion on the thread is fine by me, but I'll politely suggest-- again-- that some of your posts might be more appropriate to the sort of discussions found in the forum's Philosophy section, or that you might want to quote specifically and more often from Innocence when framing your comments in this thread. That said--)

I stated earlier:
Also, the toy soldier-- like the gynoid, although I don't want to stretch the analogy beyond this point-- doesn't have a "voice", i.e. it can't say one way or another what it wants. Unlike the toy soldiers, gynoids and androids can demonstrate their displeasure in physical ways...Oshii includes the religious custom of burning inanimate objects in the film because it implies respect for those objects...[W]hy should the person's discomfort matter to me at all? What prevents me from hurting a person (or an animal)? What makes that different in kind from hurting a toy? After all, there's surely some difference between your brain and my brain (in terms of processing, experience, what provides pleasure/pain), and there're certainly differences between our brains and those of dogs... and if I assume that I'm superior to you, or if we decide that humans are superior to dogs...
If one doesn't adjust the position to account for this line of thinking, one might come to the conclusion that because understanding is impossible, nothing really matters.

And I wonder if you think one can or might hypothetically recognize a thing for what it is, if understanding is impossible... or how one can even speak of seeing things for what they are, as such a statement would imply things such as truth or validity, and recognition of such a thing would seem contingent upon some sort of understanding of reality.

But you've suggested that the concepts employed would merely be articulations of an interpretation of what we perceive to be discrete objects or phenomena, and the articulations would be interpreted but not understood by the reader or listener...

In short, I'm wondering what the purpose of this discussion is. If you believe what you're saying, what you're writing can't be understood by readers, and what I'm writing can't be understood by readers, and both our views are just interpretation, anyway. :lol:

So we're back to the points I was raising earlier in this post.

Let's put this to one side and proceed.

Regarding the second film, I wrote:
Oshii's points seem to be: What happens when our "toys" become aware? Should we treat them as toys? And if our bodies are viewed as or literally become machines, what does that say about our essences? Are we even sufficiently aware of our essences to recognize or acknowledge the essences of non-human entities, or do we take too much for granted?
Now, let's return for a moment to Eastern thought.

I stated:
Humans, animals, and inanimate things have essences, but depending upon the school of Eastern thought, the essences are themselves different in kind, or are similar only insofar as they're bound or related to matter; the nature of the essences, or their particular mode, might be different manifestations of Oneness, or they might differ because of the nature of the thing.
(Emphasis added; there are many different accounts of the relationships between "soul" or essence and matter in Eastern thought, but few of them resemble or directly correspond with prevalent Western models, except where Eastern and Western models have fused.)

Taking a hint from some of the Eastern models I described, we might say that a plastic soldier's essence qua plastic soldier is such that it has no consciousness, but that doesn't mean that the toy has no essence. (Again, this isn't my personal belief, but a position I'm offering as an alternative to yours.) When you say that the hypothetical owner of the toy soldier thinks of the toy as "hurting", it follows that the owner is confusing his or her sort of essence with that of the toy. Is that a mistake on the owner's part? Sure, and I stated as much when I said that essences would differ in kind. But you seem to be misinterpreting my comments about respect-- devotees of Eastern religions and philosophies can acknowledge and respect the essence of something inanimate without implying that the thing "feels" this or that emotion, and without claiming perfect knowledge or total understanding of the thing.

To put it bluntly, a "soul" or essence in certain Eastern traditions is pretty different from what most of us think of as a soul. I think I kept suggesting as much...

As I've said, I believe the ritual burning was meant to suggest a worldview that's better able to deal with the notion of our "toys" having an essence and developing consciousness, ghosts, souls, whatever. A contrast to, among other things, Kim's radical materialist philosophy, which denies the existence of a soul and argues against essence of any kind by suggesting that we in fact the sum of our parts.

Again, if somebody starts from a different set of presuppositions or definitions, the conclusions will be different. That doesn't mean the conclusions are necessarily and in all instances illogical. It just means the initial points in their line of thinking are different from yours, and that perhaps the structure or formal language of logic is different from yours.

Hence the value of looking at positions antithetical or removed from one's own position; one learns how others think about the same issues, and can see that there is more than one way to skin a cat-- or look at a toy. :wink:

And that was really my point about why you might want to look at other (i.e., non-Western) philosophical traditions before talking about what "we" do as a species.

I'll repeat something I stated earlier in this post: You'd have to define or describe "understanding" for me to agree with you. If you mean something like "perfect" understanding of a thing or person or "oneness" with the thing or person, sure. That probably is impossible. But such a statement doesn't cover all types or styles of understanding, and it wouldn't include such things as provisional or operational knowledge-- and acknowledgment of ambiguity and paradox. And it wouldn't preclude the significance of trying to understand, nor would it mean that the attempt is meaningless or futile. And it doesn't seem to take into account that continuity, contiguity, experience, etc. provide kinds of understanding and knowledge that are valid, meaningful, and useful, both to individuals and to communities.
hurt, pain, feelings of 'bad' in any shape of form are the result of you having a body and being capeable of thinking and effecting your surroundings coupled by need enforced on our minds by our physical bodies.
This still doesn't answer my questions about what you mean by "brain" or "mind" and about the relationship between such a thing and the body. (I have my own thoughts on the subject, but I haven't discussed those thoughts, and I can't really elaborate upon comments I haven't made. But you've shared your own thoughts, so I might as well ask, so that I can try to... understand you. :wink:)

Your statements as written could be taken to imply a mind-body dualism, and I don't think you meant to do that. "You having a body" can be taken to mean that "you" "own" a body, and that 's something different from your existing as a body, if we include the organic matter and neurochemical impulses/reactions that make consciousness possible as parts or properties of a living body; "need enforced on our minds by our physical bodies" isn't quite the same as describing a biological and neurochemical reaction to a given stimulus or to the absence of/need for something.

Again, is the mind something other than a neurochemical and biological thing, and if so, how does it exist, and if not, why make or suggest the distinction? Is there another option, and if so, what do you think it is?

These aren't abstract things. A person's honest and deeply-held beliefs about these matters-- conscious or not-- influence and inform his or her responses to issues including the environment, the "right to life"/pro-choice debate, the right to die and euthanasia debates, artificiality, etc. Some pretty basic moral issues.

And they're relevant to a discussion of the film...
Last edited by AlphonseVanWorden on Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:28 pm, edited 14 times in total.
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. - Bosola, in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
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Post by AlphonseVanWorden »

Tonks_kittygoth wrote:I havent had time to keep up with this whole line of posts, but for some reason I was able to read this bit today, and I just wanted to pop in and say I find many many people with the same relation to literature in my field.

They plug in these theories with big words but cant get their mind around concepts like fear, depression, love, etc. It is maddening and depressing, not so much in my peers, but in my Professors. I was so very hopeful and excited starting grad school, only to find it is even more limiting in ways than undergrad.

It reminds me of some popular group in highschool that demanded you knew the latest brands and designers, only its literary critics and criticism based on pyramids of criticism, having lost site of the original work long ago.
Off topic, but...

You ever seen Whit Stillman's Metropolitan? One of the characters, a guy who's never read a word of Jane Austen, delivers a tedious lit crit-laden rant about the novels. When the young lady with whom he's talking asks him if he's read the books, he says: "I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author." :lol: :lol: :lol:

BTW, of course some academics and students act that way on the graduate school level. The profs want to avoid being replaced by bright young things, and the students want to find employment. :roll:

A lot of American universities and graduate programs are like corporations and corporate training programs, the same sort of culture of assimilation, subtle intimidation, and fear of being outside the loop...

Welcome to late stage corporate-model capitalism. Don't forget to keep up your tuition payments.

At least the employees get benefits. I guess that's something...

I tend to avoid most academics in real life, except for the cool and well-read, slightly whacky and/or well-traveled ones.

I won't knock all literary criticism, as some of it's useful, thought-provoking, and interesting. Still, a lot of what passes for lit crit is actually about a given professor wanting publications to list on his or her C.V., and the published works themselves, alas, too often seem crafted to provoke boredom in the reader. That's been the case for a long time, but there's just so much more of it now, and I'm not partial to cottage industries.

Trees die for the sins of academics, and professor gets increased salary and promotion to department chair for critiquing capitalism and denouncing technology in online article. Footage at five, six, and ten. :evil:
Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. - Bosola, in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
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Post by Tonks_kittygoth »

AlphonseVanWorden
You ever seen Whit Stillman's Metropolitan?
Nope, now I'm not sure If it woul make me rotfl or cry into my beer. (beer,...maybe thats what I need right now...)

Yeh, The whole thing is a self perpetuating mess.

Of course, I also would not disregard all Lit. crit. as I'm happy Lit. Major girl.

I just have get annoyed w/ the petty politics thingy and the talking/writing for the sake of talking/writing... the tree killing jerks!

])R@G()N
Yeh the modern art scene makes me crazy. (I also have a degree in art and had to deal w/ the baby picassos too)

The super funny thing is that the most annoying stuff of modern art was originally a joke, like Wharhol peeing on metal to point out people would buy any thing... and they did...and now eveyone includes feecees in art... yea... sigh.

Where IS that beer....




:gabu: :tachi!:
"Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man.
Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as
one wants to live and not die, so do other
creatures." - His Holiness The Dalai Lama
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Post by ])R@G()N »

sry i am gonna reply to these posts, making a post here requires a certain level of concentration I can not always muster after a long day doin my dues as it were :)

"I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author."

lol, what a view, but theres a logic there that I guess works from that persons perspective.

I'll be back later tonight to reply to the main topic in full.
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Post by sonic »

the art would is full of people with no concept of art looking for something they can all agree on to justify eachothers interests and desire to be a part of it all
Oh, oh! I know this one! Is it a website called "Deviantart"? :lol:

And yes, academics are evil. I'm doing battle with one at the moment. Stupid soul-sucking world of prentious "I need to be important!" glory-hounding cowards! They ruin the world. They ruin the young. And according (quite rightly) to Tonks_Kittygoth, they ruin the trees. We need better people shaping this world. I don't think I'm going to last much longer in university here, if this is how they treat all the good and decent people and things...

PS- I think that someone is behaving too smart for his own good sometimes, and needs to stop doing this :arrow:
:wink:
to people so much. Never looked at that emoticon before and felt like it was being so damn, obnoxiously smug. No offence, but it is extremely un-endearing behaviour. Like a 17-year-old, know-it-all intellectual me...
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Post by Elmo »

acedemics can be lovely people, y'all just being a bunch of meanies.

lol, but don't worry your pretty little head about it madam ;) ;) ;) j/k
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Post by sonic »

:shock:

:?

:x

:evil:
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Post by Elmo »

*searches desperatly for a run-away emoticon.
Joseph Cambell wrote:Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
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