Which means you have some cobwebs to brush past if you want to understand what’s really going on.
Something partial presenting itself as whole is a lot more problematic. It’ll tend to survive testing, for one.
More problematic than what? By your own statement, both the calm, considered response, and the knee-jerk reaction, are ‘something partial presenting itself as whole’. And both will survive testing, if the subject is aware of the test.
It’s the one that intentionally hides the incompleteness that’s a problem, though, because of that intent. With the knee-jerk reaction, you need only reframe things to provoke different knee-jerk reactions. With the considered, curated response… they know what they’re actively trying to keep you from finding out. And they’ll keep trying.
Of course-- if they really want to hide it. And often even if you do discover the fuller truth you’ll want to hide it too, and even hide that you know it.
Reality is fun that way. Most of the time it doesn’t even know when it’s spinning fibs.
But that’s part of what makes looking for what is so worthwhile.
This is somewhat true but I find a good deal of the time in very heated situations words are simply used to act out raw emotion. Perhaps in place of a physical reaction. There is no subtle message or confession of thoughts better left unsaid, only venting.
In truth speech is a very imperfect tool for personal expression and everything should be taken with a grain of salt, whether it appears to be forthcoming and on the spur of the moment or “through the lens of propriety”
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Sometimes, but I really don’t see how that applies in this instance. Caldari pilots demonstrating themselves to be less concerned with pragmatic communal survival than they are about xenophobic self-aggrandizement against other Caldari isn’t something anyone would want to hide except for nakedly self-serving reasons.
Nor does the fact that many will want to hide it for those reasons make those pilots any less representative.
And? That doesn’t make it dishonest. Those emotional responses tend to be the very things we tend to lie to ourselves and everyone else about, in denial.
Well, when you market reliable telepathic communication, let me know. Until then, language is the best tool we’ve got for both clarity and precision.
You’ve never exaggerated a negative aspect of someones personality or situation when in a argument? Really? Emotion has a tendency to accelerate far beyond reality. Maturity isn’t a guarantee.
I’m not suggesting telepathy Arrendis, only a hope that one day a more sophisticated language arises than the one we are using now, one that has caught up to the emotional and intellectual development we have made as a species.
Until then there will be many misunderstandings, as an ill-fitted language struggles to convey the inumerable subtleties of feeling. I feel Aria explained this well.
Emotion’s honest. It’s sincere. The accusations made in the grip of that emotion may be wrong, but the emotion itself is honest.
The language being used right now is plenty sophisticated enough to achieve that. It’s just in how you use it. It’s the difference between ‘I’m mad at you’ and ‘I feel angry, and that anger is directed at you, because from my perspective, I feel like the things you are doing are hurtful and thoughtless. I know I’m not perfect or omniscient, though, and I want to believe that you have reasons for the things you are doing, so it might help me feel better if you were to explain why you’ve been doing these things.’
The lack of sophistication lies not in the language, but in the application of it.
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There is no real way to express this without putting yourself at a significant disadvantage if the argument turns ugly. Speaking to someone in this manner renders yourself very vulnerable. I would only approach in this manner if I was 100% sure the person in question was either a saint or kindred spirit. Unfortunately the world is not like this and for everyone else there is only imprecision and confrontation. I often see such matters as not dissimilar to fighting a duel with both participants being blind and deaf.
But that’s not a failure of the language.
There is no way to present complete and complex emotional honesty without vulnerability. It doesn’t matter how you seek to to present it, the simple process of doing so exposes those vulnerabilities, because those vulnerabilities are themselves part and parcel of that emotional honesty.
There is nothing inherently honest or vulnerable about stating what is obvious to you. They are hurting your feelings, and they have to stop. The language does not allow for you to get this across without baring your neck. A better one would be quite capable of conveying this without making it look like weakness to exploit, or without aggressive confrontation and harsh words. To use a crude analogy if someone is whacking you on the head and they don’t realize its hurting you can obviously tell them what the problem is without rendering yourself vulnerable. This is not the case with emotional topics.
No, it would not, because the very fact that they are hurting your feelings is the vulnerability you expose. So there is no way to be honest about your emotional state without exposing it. To use your analogy, if someone is hitting you on the head and doesn’t realize it’s hurting you, then by telling them what the problem is (‘that hurts’), you are exposing a vulnerability: your head is not impervious to being whacked.
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I have to admit that it comes across as somewhat odd, whenever a Caldari or Caldari-adjacent person comes out with statements like this, attacking the concept of “freedom”.
Since, you know, the whole Caldari Independence War thing was about the freedom to be Caldari, and to live in a way they desired, rather than have a lifestyle imposed upon them by government.
I don’t think it’s purely a translation issue.
But well, my speciality is studying dead civilisations, not living ones, so maybe I’m not seeing something.
I suppose I can look forward to becoming an expert on Gallente and Caldari culture.
In this case I’d describe it as a willful translation issue. Believing “freedom” is a synonym for “chaos” makes it easier for Ms. Kim to justify some of her attitudes, and, well, the world isn’t very full of things that make it easier to be her.
It also sort of puts an exclamation point on the idea that freedom, at least the way the Federation practices it, really is chaos, which is just a stronger version of a long-standing critique.
Oh yes of course. The Caldari and their notion of Order being the pre-requisite for everything.
Well-- no, not just ours, though. The idea that policy shouldn’t be at the whim of public passions isn’t a strange one basically anywhere I think but the Federation?
And yet, that’s only one aspect of ‘freedom, at least the way the Federation practices it’. And generally speaking—and once again, this is taken purely from the viewpoints actually expressed by Caldari living in the State as part of State Culture—the governmental structure isn’t the thing that they find the most egregious or anathema. It’s the personal behavior, and the lack of limits there.
Which isn’t a matter of policy. You could reform the Federal Senate into an advisory board to a cadre of regional (small ‘r’) executives who then come together to decide on national policy issues, and that wouldn’t necessarily impact the ‘hedonism’ and individualistic emphasis on personal freedom that Kim and others find so egregious.
You’d have to go quite a ways to find something the Caldari don’t tend to disapprove of in Gallente culture, Arrendis (breathing? No, wait, Ms. Kim objects to them doing that, too).
I’m not sure it’s a contest to find the worst thing really.
No, but that kind of undercuts the whole ‘it’s about policy being at the whim of public passions’ thing. It’s much, much broader than that, which renders ‘nobody else does it that way’ pretty moot… because it’s not really about how the Gallente do X, it’s that the Gallente are doing it.
You’re big into this theme lately-- making one truth the enemy of another, instead of facets of a larger and more interesting whole.
Truths don’t have enemies, though, at least among other truths; just interactions. Even a directly countervailing truth is more of a balance than a foe.
Is this just another one of your things where you go way out on a limb and defend something ridiculous because you can and it’s fun?
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