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I'm increasingly convinced that looking and thinking too deeply on people matters(news, history, organizations, relationships) is like staring at the sun. There

by zubat 10y ago

I'm increasingly convinced that looking and thinking too deeply on people matters(news, history, organizations, relationships) is like staring at the sun. There's nothing much to see by focusing your gaze on it, it blocks out stuff more nearby, and you go blind in the process. Which isn't to say that being a numb automaton is ideal, either, but there is a degree of balance and good taste required to avoid converting the information into dangerous thoughts, and it's simpler to restrict quantity of exposure.

theoh 10y ago
I'm not endorsing the following view of the world, but your comment reminds me of Ken Wilber's division of reality into four quadrants. It's a Cartesian product of individual vs collective times interior vs exterior. What you are talking about as "people matters" sounds like "exterior collective": structural, social things, or "its" as Wilber refers to them. I'm a bit worried that you might also be writing off most of the "interior collective" quadrant: the relational, cultural aspects of reality, the "we". This is New Age fluff, but I guess we have to start somewhere. HN can be pretty hostile to humanities thinking sometimes, at least Wilber has no prerequisites.
dibstern 10y ago
That's the same as saying it's too complex for you to understand so you're not going to bother. It'll hurt you in the long-run, your own relationships depend on your ability to understand people. Furthermore, if you don't understand other people you'll never fully understand yourself.
internaut 10y ago
That sounds like one of my pet ideas I was calling 'physical autism'. I am convinced that we are surrounded by two kinds of autistic behavior but are conditioned to mostly notice one of them. Social autism (the normal kind we're familiar with) is usually evident in person. It's a spectrum from debilitating to barely evident. Some people I've talked to online have been autistic and I'd never know it just by conversing. I generally prefer it this way because it removes any prejudgements. I liked the Net better before social networks made people's photos, names and assorted history available, I feel like you got to know people more intimately. The kind of autism we mostly don't notice is physical. There are people who are experts at social interaction, but who genuinely cannot understand the physical world, they never think about it. Their world is filled with people and nothing but people. These are the people who are blinded by the sun. All of the world's accumulated knowledge is utterly lost on them and they have no sense of an objective reality outside of the realm of relationships. In its own way, this is a disability because they can never be more than their network of connections. Most people know people like this but think that those people choose not to be interested in X,Y,Z. I suggest that maybe they literally cannot fathom those things, or at least have a severe hindrance in their path to doing so, similar to the social autism spectrum.

by zubat 10y ago

theoh 10y ago

I'm not endorsing the following view of the world, but your comment reminds me of Ken Wilber's division of reality into four quadrants. It's a Cartesian product of individual vs collective times interior vs exterior. What you are talking about as "people matters" sounds like "exterior collective": structural, social things, or "its" as Wilber refers to them. I'm a bit worried that you might also be writing off most of the "interior collective" quadrant: the relational, cultural aspects of reality, the "we". This is New Age fluff, but I guess we have to start somewhere. HN can be pretty hostile to humanities thinking sometimes, at least Wilber has no prerequisites.

dibstern 10y ago

That's the same as saying it's too complex for you to understand so you're not going to bother. It'll hurt you in the long-run, your own relationships depend on your ability to understand people. Furthermore, if you don't understand other people you'll never fully understand yourself.

internaut 10y ago

That sounds like one of my pet ideas I was calling 'physical autism'. I am convinced that we are surrounded by two kinds of autistic behavior but are conditioned to mostly notice one of them. Social autism (the normal kind we're familiar with) is usually evident in person. It's a spectrum from debilitating to barely evident. Some people I've talked to online have been autistic and I'd never know it just by conversing. I generally prefer it this way because it removes any prejudgements. I liked the Net better before social networks made people's photos, names and assorted history available, I feel like you got to know people more intimately. The kind of autism we mostly don't notice is physical. There are people who are experts at social interaction, but who genuinely cannot understand the physical world, they never think about it. Their world is filled with people and nothing but people. These are the people who are blinded by the sun. All of the world's accumulated knowledge is utterly lost on them and they have no sense of an objective reality outside of the realm of relationships. In its own way, this is a disability because they can never be more than their network of connections. Most people know people like this but think that those people choose not to be interested in X,Y,Z. I suggest that maybe they literally cannot fathom those things, or at least have a severe hindrance in their path to doing so, similar to the social autism spectrum.