Wetiko.

[crow]

Who is familiar with the term 'Wetiko'?
What does it mean to you?
Do you think you understand it, or do you understand it?

I confess, I was not familiar with the term until today. But I have been aware of the concept for many years.
You might say I am a Blade Runner, in the sense that I am able to instantly detect a lack of authenticity in humans.
A crow-sense, that enables a crow - who is unable to be anything but authentic - to detect a lack of authenticity in others.
Wetiko is the mind-virus that creates leftists out of former humans. While simultaneously causing such people to see themselves as what they mimic, but can never actually be: authentic, living humans.

[fallot]

Excessively harsh don't you think? Leftism is an internally consistent ideology and the vast majority of its adherents probably desire to do good. They are not inauthentic, they are wrong. They are not the living dead, but the blind or misled. Does the inability to look inwards make someone inauthentic? Do you detect inauthenticity or just see them defending ideas they believe to be right that you know are wrong and destructive? It is not that I even disagree with you so much that I quail at how you say it, because it verges close to communist-like language of tainted minds.

[prozak]

Leftism is an internally consistent ideology and the vast majority of its adherents probably desire to do good. They are not inauthentic, they are wrong.

Socrates asks:

If there is a wrong, there must be a cause for that wrong.

What is the cause? People are misled, perhaps. By whom? And did the misleader induce them to be misled, or provide an excuse for them to "let go" of the desire to not be misled?

At what point do we stop making excuses and start making a diagnosis?

Something caused the delusion.

If they are wrong, there is (a) a reason that they are wrong and (b) a reason they chose to accept that wrongness.

In other words, people don't just simply wake up and fuck up. Girls don't decide to become prostitutes. Daddy rapes; uncle rapes; the girl self-pities; a few lugubrious states later, she's working the streets.

[fallot]

I don't doubt that there truly are diseased people, I just doubt these are most leftists. There are a few loud misleaders, as in anything. For some truly it would be a rationalization of their own weakness, your broken girl. But not the average nerd who writes internet posts defending slutwalks. The reason is they don't realize they are wrong.

[Annihilation]

There are bad people, yes. Caused and/or inborn?

At what point do we stop making excuses and start making a diagnosis?

What forms the authority of this diagnosis? Proof. Sentiment ain't data.

Accordingly, the definition and etymology of "authority" both refer to institutions of temporal power: scripture, law, prestige, sway, etc.

[crow]

Fallot:
Inauthentic is not just a way among other ways. It is an inability to know authenticity.
Besides, I never claimed the inauthentic were wrong. I said they were diseased. Virus-ridden.
There is no right or wrong here, only well and unwell. Healthy and unhealthy. Sane and insane.
The terminally insane human may well wish to do good, yet he is unable to, in the state he is in.
Some cases may have a sudden revelation, and start to recover, but this is not common.
Meanwhile, the damage done by such cases goes on, and is permanent.

If someone sets fire to my house, do I concern myself with what made this poor wretch do such a thing?
I do not. I would prefer having a house, to trying to understand the incomprehensibly destructive. 

This is all about authenticity, compared to an ability to even know what authentic is.
Have you never seen people act as if they were something they clearly are not?
A sane character would simply be what he is, rather than pretend to be: it is just as easy.
Whereas the insane character does not see a difference between acting out, and being what is acted out.

[crow]

There are bad people, yes. Caused and/or inborn?

What forms the authority of this diagnosis?
Proof. Sentiment ain't data.

Proof is some obscure thought-quirk conjured up by those unable to know what is what.
This inability is caused by a root inability to detect reality.
Reality exists outside of whatever the individual thinks of it.
Reality is what people generally refer to as 'God', thus misunderstanding it.
Without this reality, there can be no context by which things can be known.
Thus 'proof' is needed by the unknowing, to label the unknown as true, or false.
These labels change nothing. Reality remains reality.

Whenever I see anyone demanding 'proof', I know them by their words.
I live in a world without proofs. In my world, things work or they don't work. They serve, or they don't serve.
They are real, or they are not real. And, fortunately, I am able to discern which is which.

[Annihilation]

There are bad people, yes. Caused and/or inborn?

What forms the authority of this diagnosis?
Proof. Sentiment ain't data.

Proof is some obscure thought-quirk conjured up by those unable to know what is what.
This inability is caused by a root inability to detect reality.
Reality exists outside of whatever the individual thinks of it.
Reality is what people generally refer to as 'God', thus misunderstanding it.
Without this reality, there can be no context by which things can be known.
Thus 'proof' is needed by the unknowing, to label the unknown as true, or false.
These labels change nothing. Reality remains reality.

Whenever I see anyone demanding 'proof', I know them by their words.
I live in a world without proofs. In my world, things work or they don't work. They serve, or they don't serve.
They are real, or they are not real. And, fortunately, I am able to discern which is which.

Then you discern that your argumentation is unpersuasive - i.e., it don't work.

Whenever I see anyone [advertising and arguing for an exclusive license to the perception of and appropriate interaction with reality (zealots of any kind)] I know them by their words.

I live in a world without [self-referential claims to truth]. In my world, things work or they don't work. They serve, or they don't serve. They are real, or they are not real. And, fortunately [- because, surely, it is a matter of fortune -], I am able to discern which is which.

Quack!

[crow]

My words are not intended to 'work'. They are only words.
Those able to recognize the communication therein will.
Those like you, will not.
Wetiko itself is a state of being unable to tell the difference.
Thank you for your stunning display of what wetiko is.

[Annihilation]

So,

I live in a world without proofs. In my world, things work or they don't work. They serve, or they don't serve.
= =
My words are not intended to 'work'. They are only words.

that's what you mean (or don't). God will sort this one out.

Regards.

[crow]

To get back to the subject...
What we have here is wetiko in action.
There are those that read my words, and the words of others, and consider them, whether or not they initially understand them.
And there are those who see those words as making no sense to them, so therefore those words make no sense, period.
And those people, Pavlov's-dog-like, then mount absurdly disproportionate attacks against the writer's character.

This is decidedly old-hat. I have been on many forums where this exact scenario has played out.
Those who attack are absolutely unable to see their attacks as attacks, while seeing any defence - if there is one - as a pre-emptive and gratuitous attack against them.
Next the 'troll' label will appear.
It generally does.

But see: I have been specifically retained, here, by a very VIP-like VIP, to identify the closet-leftists and assorted losers, as a prerequisite to some upcoming and long-overdue bannings. This is something I excel in, this ability to identify such bandwidth wasters.
So...
Those who are about to die, might consider saluting Caesar, while they still can. For lo, Caesar has been known to reconsider.
/EOL.
 

[prozak]

I prefer the term egophrenia.

Christopher Lasch's Narcissism essentially made this point in the 1970s: liberalism is the ego out of control, forming a social collective based on the right to be an ego out of control.

That in itself might not be bad... but the consequences to society are devastating.

In fact, they proceed exactly as the Bhagavad-Gita said they would.

[crow]

And as The Book Of Revelations predicted.
Babel. Nobody able to communicate with anybody else.
'no wot I mean?'

[fallot]

But see: I have been specifically retained, here, by a very VIP-like VIP, to identify the closet-leftists and assorted losers, as a prerequisite to some upcoming and long-overdue bannings. This is something I excel in, this ability to identify such bandwidth wasters.

You know whether or not you mean it to be anything but a direct statement of fact, this is still passively ominous in the same way I took initial issue with. Name names and out with it. Also, the whole every-forum-I-have-been-on line is the same heard from internet trannies. The maligned always find a way to look noble. You claim a vast distance from any such thought, but you are still a human bound by the nature of human beings, to be a rationalizer. For your wisdom, I take you at face value, but I get a bitter taste from your more self-referential posts and its not the bitterness of the truth.

[crow]

Whatever you say, Jack.
You know what your truth is.
It is yours by choice.