[FoRK] The Golden Compass: AWEsome!

[Jeff Bone]

On Dec 2, 2007, at 10:42 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:

>
> Blah, blah, blah...
>
> On Dec 2, 2007, at 9:02 PM, Lion Kimbro wrote:
>
>>   This doesn't seem particularly anti-religious, to me.
>
> Well of course not.
>
> You do realize that this semantic / linguistic / pattern  
> recognition pathology (everything-the-same-thing, opposite-as- 
> related, syncretism, animism, inability to achieve precision  
> coupled with inability to realize lack of precision, tendency to  
> infer agency --- the roots of conspiracy theory --- etc.) you've  
> got is common to several DSM categorizations, right?

Oh, not to mention:  the hypergraphic tendency and repetitive  
motifs...  (NOT that there's anything "wrong" with that... ;-)  Cf.  
Takatsuna Takeda, schizophasia, etc.

"Yep!  I *DO* believe it!  I could be wrong, but I honestly don't  
think so.    I do sense a desire to break with post-modern cynicism,  
in our society.    I believe we are approaching a social  
enlightenment.    Similarly, I believe we are approaching another  
Enlightenment today.   I believe in thesis, antithesis, and  
synthesis.  The timing seems about right.  The actors seem to be  
coming on to stage, and the questions seem to be being asked...   
People are realizing that post-modernism left to itself is bankrupt.   
People are really starting to wake up.    Now is the time.   How many  
hundreds of millions, and in the future how many billions, are asking  
just this question?  "Ask, and you shall receive."  But that's all he  
needs to do, to reflect the zeitgeist."  Look, I agree that my story  
appears quite mad..."

Etc. ad nauseam.

Definitely some distinctive babble patterns there.  Repetitive  
assertion of belief instead of persuasion or explication;  reinforces  
belief pattern in speaker as well as / rather than recipient.  (Mis) 
use of jargon (post-modernism, thesis / synthesis / anti-thesis,  
etc.) to co-opt credibility.  Normative assertion of authority  
implied coupled with false humility and expressions of uncertainty in  
an attempt to appear in some sense "objective" or measured.  Constant  
motif:  an "awakening" is imminent;  soon the writer will no longer  
be isolated in his or her perceptions of the "ultimate truths" ---  
the ignorant masses are on the verge of a renaissance in  
understanding.  It's a fortuitous time, sure --- historic.  And the  
writer will, no doubt, be more fully appreciated in the light of  
history for being the leading edge, perhaps even the prophet, of this  
new and crucial understanding --- the writer as social outcast now  
vindicated, thinly-disguised (if at all) messiah complex, etc.   
Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's interesting in a rather horrifying way to compare some of the  
patterns in your diatribes about this and, say, some of the diatribes  
that the aforementioned e-mail stalker has inflicted on my inbox.   
Different motifs --- at least you're not about time-traveling Nazi  
lizard aliens --- but IMHO no less troubling on some level.


$0.02, a professional opinion might be in order.


jb