Oppression of Women (historical)

[Hector Papi Castillo]

I came here to challenge you, not insult you. If I insulted you along the way, my bad. I'm a dick. And I've been told I'm the biggest dick when I don't even mean to be. Seems this is one of those cases.

So here, I'll brush my ego completely to the side because now I'm real pumped - if I write up a response on the exact level that you want to play at, will you play along? Because I don't want to spend an hour typing just to have you flake on me.

So you down. Or nah?

I don't know what exactly you're wanting to respond to, or what level you're talking about, but by all means: go ahead. You should start a new thread though. Feel free to carry over whatever quotes or themes from this one you want to explore into that one. This way it will be less a personal attack and more a general inquiry, open to everyone, and focused on understanding instead of on who's right and who's wrong. Well, at least initially

Howell

Hmmm, I just realized something.

In my second message, I dropped all pretense, came at you with unwavering genuity, and you still managed to sneak in daggers of condescension cloaked in statements like "not sure what you want to respond to or what level you're talking about," despite having over-explained at least two or three times exactly what you would want to debate and what you don't want to debate. Not to mention the condescension dripping from everything else you've said...yeah, that's what I just realized -

You're not interested in truth. You never were. And neither was I.

Shame on me for not seeing that. I suppose I was blinded by my ego! Oh, the irony. I saw your unnecessarily big words, your convoluted syntax that needs two or three readings before it makes sense, and your Kierkegaard quote...and then I thought to myself, "dude must be new to philosophy and overcompensating." So then I stroll in to challenge you and knock you off your horse. If I irked you in the process, then that's just extra credit. I said I didn't mean to piss you off, but if we're REALLY being honest, I really did want to piss you off, even if I convinced myself otherwise.

Why? Because I used to be like you and we hate most what we see in ourselves.

In the past, I would use unnecessary jargon when it's obvious my opponent doesn't know the jargon, dismiss others' arguments entirely by pointing out one or two fallacies and laughing to myself how stupid they are when their fundamental point had still yet to be addressed, and all other sorts of mental masturbation. It's all sound and fury with little substance. Makes you feel good for a few minutes, then you need your next fix and no matter how many arguments you think you win, it doesn't stop you from hating yourself and it doesn't quiet the whispers that drive you insane on lonely nights.

After a few years of proselytizing, you realize that you rarely, if ever, have actually convinced anyone of anything unless they genuinely asked you for advice or insight. And even then, you always had the sneaking suspicions that you're full of shit.

So at some point, you gotta ask - "am I really trying to figure out what's true? Or am I just stroking my dick over here?"

With 99.9999999% of the population, it's the latter. You just want people to think you're smart. After that, you realize that intellectuals are just refined gym-rats. Instead of flexin' on fools and fucking bitches from Crossfit, you get off on quoting Wittgenstein or some other super-dope but vastly misunderstood philosopher you probably don't even yourself understand because he's pretty unclear himself....like Kierkegaard. Different methods of stroking our own dicks.

So here's what I really wanted to say the whole time and save ourselves the debate - you're full of shit, Howell. You started this thread to jerk off, not to learn the truth about the oppression of women. I was horribly abstract and destroyed your arguments from their foundation, because that's what you were doing to everyone else. You just didn't like it when it was turned on you. There.

But hey, I'm full of shit, too. I'm here writing a message for a dude who clearly doesn't want help and who was obviously done with the thread, considering it'd been a few months since he last responded. In fact, that makes me a bigger fool than you. But my Muse is telling me to write this, because SOMEONE will profit from it. I should have just been more honest in the first place.

Hector

 

[Howell]

Hmmm, I just realized something.

In my second message, I dropped all pretense, came at you with unwavering genuity, and you still managed to sneak in daggers of condescension cloaked in statements like "not sure what you want to respond to or what level you're talking about," despite having over-explained at least two or three times exactly what you would want to debate and what you don't want to debate. Not to mention the condescension dripping from everything else you've said...yeah, that's what I just realized -

You're not interested in truth. You never were. And neither was I.

Shame on me for not seeing that. I suppose I was blinded by my ego! Oh, the irony. I saw your unnecessarily big words, your convoluted syntax that needs two or three readings before it makes sense, and your Kierkegaard quote...and then I thought to myself, "dude must be new to philosophy and overcompensating." So then I stroll in to challenge you and knock you off your horse. If I irked you in the process, then that's just extra credit. I said I didn't mean to piss you off, but if we're REALLY being honest, I really did want to piss you off, even if I convinced myself otherwise.

Why? Because I used to be like you and we hate most what we see in ourselves.

In the past, I would use unnecessary jargon when it's obvious my opponent doesn't know the jargon, dismiss others' arguments entirely by pointing out one or two fallacies and laughing to myself how stupid they are when their fundamental point had still yet to be addressed, and all other sorts of mental masturbation. It's all sound and fury with little substance. Makes you feel good for a few minutes, then you need your next fix and no matter how many arguments you think you win, it doesn't stop you from hating yourself and it doesn't quiet the whispers that drive you insane on lonely nights.

After a few years of proselytizing, you realize that you rarely, if ever, have actually convinced anyone of anything unless they genuinely asked you for advice or insight. And even then, you always had the sneaking suspicions that you're full of shit.

So at some point, you gotta ask - "am I really trying to figure out what's true? Or am I just stroking my dick over here?"

With 99.9999999% of the population, it's the latter. You just want people to think you're smart. After that, you realize that intellectuals are just refined gym-rats. Instead of flexin' on fools and fucking bitches from Crossfit, you get off on quoting Wittgenstein or some other super-dope but vastly misunderstood philosopher you probably don't even yourself understand because he's pretty unclear himself....like Kierkegaard. Different methods of stroking our own dicks.

So here's what I really wanted to say the whole time and save ourselves the debate - you're full of shit, Howell. You started this thread to jerk off, not to learn the truth about the oppression of women. I was horribly abstract and destroyed your arguments from their foundation, because that's what you were doing to everyone else. You just didn't like it when it was turned on you. There.

But hey, I'm full of shit, too. I'm here writing a message for a dude who clearly doesn't want help and who was obviously done with the thread, considering it'd been a few months since he last responded. In fact, that makes me a bigger fool than you. But my Muse is telling me to write this, because SOMEONE will profit from it. I should have just been more honest in the first place.

Hector

Really? You think you "destroyed my arguments to their foundations"? My interpretation of what you've been doing in this thread is actually the complete opposite. I don't think you've grasped even a hint of my arguments, let alone the scope of this thread, because, yes, I agree -- your egotism has led you to come in here spouting irrelevant nonsense about "unchecked epistemic assumptions", about how you think I'm inherently affirming that science is about finding universal principles (while I explicitly have stated the opposite in passing detail), and glossing over subtle (and thoroughly tangential, might I add) issues like causation/correlation in science, while at the time projecting criticism about things that you have in no way demonstrated I've indicated, and which I firmly believe I was not indicating in the first place (and on top of the general irrelevance even if I had). And then you act as though you've made some biting critique, while in reality, more often than not, your critiques so far have been the equivalent of going up to a horse and telling it its shoe is untied.

Your egotistical "I've been there, done that", and "this will be fun" attitude is so deeply disrespectful and anti-intellectual that it's no wonder I can't help but be defensive. Practically everything you've said in this thread has been so sublime in its owlish stupidity, so ludicrous in its spurious profundity, that I am shocked past annoyance and all the way to remorse for all the people who've had the misfortune of being bullied into submission by your vulgar philistinism in the past.

My previous comment was intended to give you a second shot at at least finding the ballpark. And what do you do? You come back in here with a half-assed attempt to frame yourself as wise, genuine, profound, etc., and to let me know that you've been where I am, and thus are able to dismiss literally everything I've written uncritically -- writing it off as immature and symptomatic of a weak, vulnerable mind, no doubt.

What you fail to comprehend is that I'd be completely willing to engage with you if what you were saying was in any way relevant to the substance of this thread, instead of just an obvious attempt to insult me, as well as the intelligence of everyone who was honestly trying to engage in examining this nuanced, controversial subject matter.

I actually started this thread to learn and get feedback about an issue I was reading about that I thought was interesting, which I saw was also almost universally dismissed offhand. And now you come in here and do what? You do exactly what I was trying to work against: you dismiss offhand not even simply this topic, not even simply this thread, but intrinsically do both while launching a personal attack on me, and even worse, basing your assault on completely irrelevant philosophical abstractions. And even more, if that wasn't enough, you justify your response on quotes of mine from earlier replies to previous commenters' language choices, which were phrased as they were to point out the spurious nature of the discourse they were using in the first place! So you see, your whole approach to this thread is ludicrous on so many levels.

Because of this rabbit hole of miscommunication, the only thing that is coming through from what you're saying right now is pure egotism, with a hefty draft of dismissiveness, philistinism, and a misplaced superiority complex, to add more poison to an already fouled stream.

It really is a mindbogglingly stupid blind-alley you've brought us down, Hector. Yet when I offer a restart for the sake of your dignity and my sanity in as polite a fashion as I could muster, given your incredibly presumptuous and disrespectful approach to this conversation, you decide to instead continue to insult me and everyone reading this in a disgustingly patronizing, pseudo-revelatory fashion. As has been perfectly clear I'm sure to everyone from the beginning, you only commented in this thread in the first place to "show me a thing or two". Well, you sure have -- and it ain't pretty.

Howell

 

[Hector Papi Castillo]

Okay.

Hector