Posted by used2b on April 12, 2005, at 21:11:08
In reply to Re: Please explain your opinion, posted by Dr. Bob on April 12, 2005, at 18:25:04
>When someone behaves pretentiously, how does that make you feel?
>
> BobNobody makes me feel anything. I learned that in Therapy 101. Are you telling me others, and not I, am in control of my feelings?
Are you asking rhetorically or are you honestly inviting an answer because you believe there might be a valid perspective other than the one you hold? Because if you were asking rhetorically, you would only be pretending to ask.
In the event you are asking honestly, I will offer that I allow myself to feel various emotions in response to pretense. Since pretense is the foundation of all theater, it depends on the nature of the performance, and the extent to which I suspend disbelief. I am so accustomed to theatrical pretense, I usually feel nothing, unless it is supplemented by surround sound and theatrical lighting.
My habituation to theatrical pretense might influence my profound tolerance toward social pretense. As I implied in the post to which you responded hatefully, I see pretense all day, every day - usually starting with the first commercial message I see affixed to food containers on my kitchen shelves.
I often feel alienated when I witness routine social pretense, such as fashion, vocal inflection, posture and casual mock affection but I generally try to feel something else. Perhaps as a result of living in the Deep South, I have developed strong immunities to most social pretense, but maintain an ability to pretend as needed.In face-to-face relationships, people generally know by the way my eyes track and fail to dilate responsively not to approach me with pretentious behavior others might consider affectionate. As a politically informed Southerner, I know social pretense goes way beyond cultural rites that affect racism. Social pretense is used to define economic class roles and interpersonal power relationships.
Nobel Prize winning behaviorist Konrad Lorenz related the role of pretense in cultural rites, starting by explaining the role of pretend aggression in the mating rituals of tropical fish. His work informs my ability to identify the role of pretense in most social rites, and especially in displays of affection. Among other examples, Lorenz highlights the role of pretense in cultural rites of humans by a reference to the measured steps of college professors as they walk the halls of an academy.
As a Southern American, I have learned to suspect those who repress exposure of social pretense. The father of the Civil Rights Movement, Vernon Johns, reinforces my life experience with his academic work, which exposed the role of social pretense in perpetuating systematic hatred.
"... both southern and American societies have highly developed systems of social pretense that largely exclude rational consideration of the nation's racial problems. The refusal to discuss race and racism is itself a sign of racism. Not talking about racism continues the social pretense system and racism; but that is the intent, sad to say." (Vernon Johns, The Only Non-Racist History of the United States, Chapter 3)
Go ahead, call my reasonable contribution uncivil. I will call your behavior what it is.
I have no problem saying it Robert Hsiung -- you are a hate-monger in a lab coat. Your policies reveal a hatred of reason and a hatred of truth. You set up this web site where you teach others your emotional code of hatred. Just look at the behavior of your "deputies". After a few months under your tutelage, one very ethical professional considered it funny to joke about sexual assault of children, and to symbolically impose unwanted affection.
Do you think Southern racists dance around in white hoods chanting the "n" word all day? No. They are polite community leaders who take pride in their supposed "civility", all the while declaring it “uncivil” to discuss social pretense. You mask your hatred in genteel behavior even better than do most of my Southern neighbors. Your hatred is an offense against knowledge and against reason. Your enforcement of Rousseau's murderous social contract makes you and your fascist allies more dangerous than any very polite Klan member with whom I have ever shared a meal.
Now why don't you make your subservient mob cheer by symbolically lynching me for a week. I will spend the week celebrating the decline in traffic at this site. When I conceive a stronger way to rationally confront you for the mental disorders you are spreading, I will.
Don’t touch me.
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/
poster:used2b
thread:482520
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050323/msgs/483514.html