sadmanbarty
Well-known member
Hers. If I wanted to enjoy myself I’d just go have a wank.
Are you a thrill seeker?
- Thread starter Corpsey
- Start date
Hers. If I wanted to enjoy myself I’d just go have a wank.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Yeah I mean you read about these things and you don't quite believe them. You think they must have been putting it on. The Exorcist is still intense but also a bit ridiculous. A time barrier issue, perhaps.
What I'm increasingly learning, but not finding it easy to really believe, is how different everybody is at a physiological, psychological, cultural level. I always "knew" this, but the idea that one person can look at a Mark Rothko painting and genuinely feel overawed and transported by it - while I look at it, feeling a dull thrum, a faint echo of what the true believer feels... Is strange.
What I'm increasingly learning, but not finding it easy to really believe, is how different everybody is at a physiological, psychological, cultural level. I always "knew" this, but the idea that one person can look at a Mark Rothko painting and genuinely feel overawed and transported by it - while I look at it, feeling a dull thrum, a faint echo of what the true believer feels... Is strange.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
I’ve got a terrible habit of thinking people who like things I don’t are being disingenuous or have sold into some marketing.
So sheakspear for example, I can’t help but feel is people being pseudo intellectuals and pretending to like it. I feel that humans are wired in such a way that makes liking sheaksoear impossible; it’s cognitively untenable.
So sheakspear for example, I can’t help but feel is people being pseudo intellectuals and pretending to like it. I feel that humans are wired in such a way that makes liking sheaksoear impossible; it’s cognitively untenable.
I've been having that experience more and more. The other week I was watching a film with a mate, couldn't really follow it at all, wondered whether he could and had this moment of clarity, whatever you want to call it, where I realised he could be having entirely different thoughts about it. It's an obvious point, but it isn't something I usually feel. Usually it's something I think about in an abstract sense. That we could be sat watching the same thing and processing it in entirely different ways threw me for a loop. It's very isolating.
Something similar happened the other day when I was trying to explain something and was suddenly hit by the sense that every single thing I was saying meant something different to the person I was talking to, had completely different associations and there was no way I could take the books I'd read etc and package them in a way that would allow them to see it from my perspective. It's a horrible feeling tbh. Very frustrating. Another language barrier despite ostensibly speaking the same language.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Communicating your thoughts well is an art unto itself
It's more than that though. You can communicate them as well as you like and you might be understood, but it's impossible for people to see or think about anything the way you do. We can draw the outlines for each other, colour them in a bit, but there's always going to be a disconnect.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well yeah this is a famous problem in philosophy of language isn't it? How do any two people know that they are not speaking totally at cross-purposes in language that means (by complete coincidence) not nothing, but rather something completely different to the other person? I guess it's an extreme skeptical position in a sense - kinda like that "how do you know that the colour you see as green and the one I see as green look the same, it may be totally different but we both have learned to call whatever we see green" if that makes sense.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Wittgenstein's private language argument crosses this kind of area, though I can't remember it in detail
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Exactly - I struggled myself with Shakespeare for years. But increasingly I've "broken through" and found myself in that mental and emotional space where I GET IT.
I think you can be argued into appreciating a piece of music or a painting - but not sure you can be argued into loving one.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Barry's love of contemporary dancehall - I don't think he's being pretentious or has been hoodwinked or anything. I just clearly don't feel anything like what he feels about it.
It's so dispiriting when you play a private anthem to a friend (a song that you absolutely love but isn't particularly famous or acclaimed) - and they don't even dislike it, they just say "yeah that's alright".
It's so dispiriting when you play a private anthem to a friend (a song that you absolutely love but isn't particularly famous or acclaimed) - and they don't even dislike it, they just say "yeah that's alright".
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
I refer you to Sadmanbarty's famous reflections on onanism:
"If I wanted to enjoy myself I’d just go have a wank."
It's tough with something you find funny too. It's an awful feeling when you show someone something you find hilarious and it doesn't hit them at all. It somehow stops it being funny to you too.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Sorry yeah, I didn't mean to sound as though I knew all about it... it's a genuine problem that has no real solution I guess. Same as the brain in a vat thing, there is no way to think yourself out of it, there are two possible situations (in this sense) - either it's that or it isn't. These two worlds are completely separate and we can't move from one to the other, we have to just hope we're in the good one and live according (I think).
