Does the soul know the difference?

[Apech]

I used to play Doom quite a lot in the 90's and so far I haven't felt the urge to shoot anyone - nowadays I play World of Tanks Blitz where you drive little tanks around shooting other little tanks based on WWII - I haven't invaded Russia recently.  Do they affect you these games - I guess they must do - because everything does.  But I would ask the question the other way round - why are the most popular games like Call of Duty etc. war and violence related.  The people who make games - make what sells - so there is something in us which likes vicarious violence.  Perhaps you could say that there is something in the way the human mind has developed which requires this kind of gaming - war, hunting and games - which may be distasteful but actually healthier to admit than repress???

[C T]

I think dangers arise where the mind, already containing the potential for both rational and irrational proclivities, becomes further obscured by laziness, sloth, carelessness, and so on, where such learned habitual characteristics overshadow the otherwise inborn intelligence which allows the majority of people to process distinctions between fantasy and reality without much effort. Corresponding to the gradual dwindling in the numbers of the majority who are otherwise guided by conscience and rationale sees the increase in the potential for reactive-prone events that either occur to an individual, or a society, for the equilibrium to go off-kilter. Those with the intent to manipulate the singular or the collective consciousness simply does things that purposefully agitates that potential so as to increase the odds of reaching the desired outcomes, whatever those may be. I learned this from watching The Matrix. 

[freeform]

Little kids have always pretended to kill each other.

[silent thunder]

Good point.  Children are fascinated with death, murder and dying and their play and the stories they weave for one another to pass an afternoon reflect this.

 

Probably, I'm assuming, because of the innate understanding of just how fragile and close to death we all are at any given moment.  So they are fascinated and explore the concept at length.

 

For all that we can construct massive monuments of steel and glass and develop entire forests of concrete as a species... as individuals, we are each as fragile as a patch of grass, or a toppling glass, readily rendered into decay by a passing storm, a missed step, or an unattentive driver.

 

Any stick lying on the ground readily becomes a rifle or a pistol in the hands of a child's imagination.

 

Though my sticks always tended to morph into bearded axes, claymores, or katanas.

[voidisyinyang]

There are studies showing that political views can be predicted based on a person's instinctual or "imprinted" reaction to smells - this is called the yuck factor - or what is considered disgusting. So this determines the level of vagus nerve energy activation. So for example acupuncture has been shown to improve racial bias that is imprinted as an implicit racism.

 

So these imprints work through subtle energy - I just did a blog post that I'll post as a thread - that goes into how this works. thanks

[OldDog]

2 hours ago, silent thunder said:

Though my sticks always tended to morph into bearded axes, claymores, or katanas.

 

Ha!

 

In my day it was Knights of the Roundtable and Viking invasions.

 

Don't forget to grab a trashcan lid to use as shield.

[manitou]

Just now, OldDog said:

 

Ha!

 

In my day it was Knights of the Roundtable and Viking invasions.

 

Don't forget to grab a trashcan lid to use as shield.

 

 

You know what a trash can lid is good for?  A shield for a nasty, biting horse when you're trying to clean out the corral.  I still have Cowboy's bite mark on my arm. What an SOB he was.   

 

I just thought of another use.  Using them to make tamales along the roadside in Baja.

Edited August 11, 2019 by manitou

[OldDog]

6 hours ago, Apech said:

... nowadays I play World of Tanks Blitz ...

 

Wow, just had a flashback! 

 

Back in my game playing days ... i.e. pre-computerization ... I cut my teeth on board games such as Panzerblitz and Panzer  Leader ... and eventually spent a whole long summer playing the massive War in Europe once or twice a week for 4 or 5 hrs a session.

 

Caused me to think about the migration from such games to ... reenactment groups and scenarios  to ... reality gaming, paintballing and such. Each progression a step further into fantasy and alternate reality ... leading to what? How much of that mentality transfers to conspiracy theorists and right wing paramilitary groups ... even as far as neo-Nazi groups. But that's another thread.

 

Although I look back on my board game playing days fondly, I did learn something from them. I don't play them anymore.

 

 

[Taomeow]

On 8/4/2019 at 1:24 PM, silent thunder said:

My gut says no on games as the source.

 

Humans are violent pack mammals by nature, both within and particularly without their perceived tribes/packs.  And this within a world where life, to live must consume other life of one sort or another. 

 

Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, myriad others... all perfected their murder craft with no video games invented yet.

 

Humans are vicious mammals by nature in a world where in spite of disease, famine, pestilence, toxicity and the myriad of natural disasters, not to mention oppressive and uninhabitable environments, we still number over 7 billion.  As a top predator that seems unprecedented to me, (though my knowledge of the fossil history is woefully light). 

 

I have come to expect that our self-predation (war, homicide, suicide) may be one of nature's inborn self balance check.  Humans outbreed all natural occuring predators and thus have no natural means of balancing their capacity to expand.  So perhaps this is why such a propensity seems to arise 'from within our very midst'. 

 

I do wonder on the occasions this news comes to me, or I seek it out, if they didn't have guns to use... how many of them would have the fortitude to try and pull this shit with a bare blade in their hand?  If the violence was not able to be spent at a distance with a moment's glance, but instead must be up close, in hand's reach, where you could smell your intended victim's breath and feel their skin...

 

Utterly Wretched.  Such Lost Ones.

 

 

Many people think we're this inherently bad and badass species...  I've come to the conclusion there's something entirely else at work.   

 

The species that is domesticated can't be judged by its behavior in conditions of profound universal neurotization as having or not having particular traits unless they are only observed under conditions of domestication, as in our case.  "Civilized" human behavior has nothing to in common with the behavior of any other apex predator under natural wild conditions.  Apex predators kill for food, yes, but they seldom if ever kill for anything else -- occasionally, in conditions where their habitat has shrunk due to human intervention in nature  (sometimes a thousandfold, sometimes more), there's competitive killing, but in adequate-size habitat it normally does not happen, and competing for a mate or for the leading position may involve a fight to establish dominance but it's almost unheard of for a wild animal to fight to the death even under those conditions.    Many apex predators of the highest order simply avoid encounters with competition by remaining solitary and territorial (on a huge territory in some cases -- a snow leopard may have to traverse 400 square miles before encountering another snow leopard), others (lions, wolves) form tightly cooperating groups and also do not resort to deadly violence within the group under normal adequate conditions, and certainly none of them kill for killing's sake, and certainly none of them resort to mass murder of their own kind, or any other for that matter.

 

No, I don't think there's such a thing as a "violent" wild animal.  Violence is the child of civilization, domestication, conditioning.  And domestication itself is nothing if not conditioning, either dismantling or re-channeling instinctive natural behaviors, which as a result become abnormal and pathological.  So, video games and movies and the rest of violence desensitizing endeavors are yet another method of conditioning, and as such are definitely conductive to what they're trying to accomplish to begin with -- desensitization of, and promotion of, violence.  It's not "human nature."  It's "nurture," of the worst kind.  

  

[C T]

I wonder if the kick one gets from playing such games resembles in some way how some folks, in consuming diet cola, think they're making healthy lifestyle choices... hmm... 

[ilumairen]

7 minutes ago, C T said:

I wonder if the kick one gets from playing such games resembles in some way how some folks, in consuming diet cola, think they're making healthy lifestyle choices... hmm... 

 

Personally I only play co-op games. I was playing one such game when a man riding a bicycle was struck by a pick up truck outside of the house I was living in. As myself and the individual I was playing the game with responded to what had just transpired, I can assure you there wasn't any desensitization to the trauma on our doorstep. 

 

:sips a diet cola and wonders how thoughts of correlation arose:

[ilumairen]

On 8/3/2019 at 7:54 PM, manitou said:

 

 

I wonder if the same imprints caused by conditioning in early childhood are also caused by exposure to video games?  Does the soul know the difference, really, between actuality and a video game scenario?   Are internal reactions to stimulus of lesser impact because they're artificially created?.  I don't know, but I suspect not.

 

In considering this, I find my thoughts returning to the idea of willing suspension of disbelief. 

 

A short article on the phenomenon, although it may not directly address what you've called imprints, or how these imprints relate to soul - which, in my understanding (were I to use the word) would not really be "imprintable."

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-brain-activity-can-explain-sus/

 

[ilumairen]

 

5 hours ago, silent thunder said:

Any stick lying on the ground readily becomes a rifle or a pistol in the hands of a child's imagination.

 

Though my sticks always tended to morph into bearded axes, claymores, or katanas.

 

Our sticks were swords, and my sister ended up with a more serious injury due to the manner in which the stick/swords were first confiscated and more importantly disposed of than she ever would have experienced had the play been allowed to run it's course with the sticks being eventually returned to the woods we found them in.

 

[manitou]

28 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

In considering this, I find my thoughts returning to the idea of willing suspension of disbelief. 

 

A short article on the phenomenon, although it may not directly address what you've called imprints, or how these imprints relate to soul - which, in my understanding (were I to use the word) would not really be "imprintable."

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-brain-activity-can-explain-sus/

 

 

 

When I mention imprint, I'm referring to the traumatic things that happen especially in early life that stick, and causes further reactions throughout life to be influenced by the original trauma.  That was a good article.  Not sure what the bottom line was, though.

 

His mention of willing suspension of disbelief, for some reason, caused me to remember a thing that don Juan Mateus (nagual) had Carlos Castaneda do at the very beginning of the apprenticeship.  To sit and stare at something, but with your eyes slightly crossed - he called it "fuzzied".  It's easiest to look at an area where there is maybe a vertical line, like the edge of a sliding glass door, that separate one phenomena from another.  In my case -( I just did this exercise) - I was sitting in a chair and looking at a sliding glass door, through which I see my fence and some bouganvilla.  Up in front of the sliding glass door, on the other side, is a beautiful screen with pretty jewels in it.  So I crossed my eyes where I could easily see both parts of the door - the greenery, or the screen.  You have to look almost exactly between the objects and there will appear a 'third' panel, which will alternately become either greenery or pretty screen.  It's like the middle screen of the cross-eyed panorama.  What happens is that first one view will take over, then it will jump over to the other view.  Don Juan said that the trick is to have command over which side you want to take over, at will.  Like 'now I want to see the screen', or now I want to see the greenery'.  I'm not sure what exact muscle that's exercising - but somehow it affects the reality we think we're seeing.

 

So much so that when I made a chair disappear, it came to mind THIS IS PROBABLY HOW SHAMANS CAN BE IN TWO DIFFERENT PLACES, HOW JESUS WALKED ON WATER, AND HOW KING ARTHUR PULLED THAT DAMN SWORD OUT OF THE ROCK.  That's all it is!!!  Go cross-eyed and change your reality!!

 

I was so sure this was the secret that I ran into my chair a couple times.  Now my knee hurts.

[C T]

30 minutes ago, ilumairen said:

 

 

Our sticks were swords, and my sister ended up with a more serious injury due to the manner in which the stick/swords were first confiscated and more importantly disposed of than she ever would have experienced had the play been allowed to run it's course with the sticks being eventually returned to the woods we found them in.

 

 

No fear of serious damage at our end. Under the watchful eye of our gardener, we crafted sabres out of fallen papaya tree leaf stems. Because of strong attachment to "our" painstaking effort to craft the "swords" as much as the endeavour would allow, the fragility of said instruments demanded that we only indulged in contactless swordplay, and, much later, in the evolution of pretentious acquisitions of kung fu prowess, found depth in the meaning of the term "Shadow boxing". 

 

 

[C T]

Quick question to anyone in the know: Would copying images (like the one above) be construed as rights infringement? 

[manitou]

you've already been reported

[C T]

2 minutes ago, manitou said:

you've already been reported

 

[liminal_luke]

11 minutes ago, manitou said:

you've already been reported

 

Not to worry though, CT -- the soul doesn´t know the difference.

[C T]

You mean even my soul is in jeopardy?? Good heavens! 

[Nungali]

9 hours ago, freeform said:

Little kids have always pretended to kill each other.

 

bang bang you are dead  ... is a little different to the complex I was describing .

 

That would be more like ;   bang bang youare dead , after I torture you with various devices and watch you scream and squirm then get bored with you and slice your arms of  -  you Asian devil .

 

The little rascals !

 

 

[Nungali]

56 minutes ago, C T said:

You mean even my soul is in jeopardy?? Good heavens! 

 

 

yes my son , in dire jeopardy 

 

But I can fix that ... stand still now 

 

 

 

 

 

In dominum domination guiltus maximus iced vovo biscuit. Amen .

[Nungali]

..... all  fixed 

[C T]

If nothing else, the biscuit was certainly reassuring. Thanks, man. 

[manitou]

You didn't play dominos with him?