Reciprocality

@Consept I am saying the opposite of the bolded, that tribal people in Africa for instance would look at strangers as a threat and be suspicious of them, certainly pay attention to them, and incredibly rarely sit on a bench in a city, were they somehow located that way, absently minded. I think this clarifies the confusion. When someones body reacts to a situation as though it were dangerous when instead the healthy behaviour would be a light form of suspicion (which you will see i would say about 60% of the time) such as in the middle of a sidewalk then that as you suggest would also be an indicator of being less civilised. And also, in some ways I am smart and in other ways I am not, if you had familiarised yourself with the language I am using beforehand, which obviously you are not expected to have done, then some of the ideas I express will be easier to decode, on the other hand when I were in my early twenties nothing engaged me more than the language that helped me learn the quickest (on my better days at least) and the nature of some of my ideas are such that it is these people (with a similar attitude) that I hope my sentences to actually land on, and thirdly I will be writing for the rest of my life and I intend to make it as compact and efficient as I can in part because writing a lot is taxing on my mind and abstruse word do trick, fourthly these concepts are actually a part of the english canon, contain a lot of value and are far too underutilised. Edit: you are correct that there is almost no substance here, a philosophically inclined writer who wishes to install substance in his readers is delusional.

@Yimpa It takes courage for most people to not do groupthink, and it takes a lot of effort. The cringe gets me too sometimes, its only sensible that you still identify with certain groups, and to some extent I think we will always do so even if against our will. And interestingly: when the means by which you think for yourself is not itself something you have thought for yourself then to some extent you will actually not do so, to my awareness it takes scientists many, many years to actually contribute new insight, originate concepts and draw unseen relationships.

In other words, since my interests are rarely like those of people who has something very interesting to say, specialists and scientists, I am merely saying what once it has been understood were obvious all along, the following paragraph will distill that to its essence: When in an urban area you see signs of people imagining strangers as something which does not present any type of danger whatsoever you are in fact observing the not-so-good consequences that happens to a non-primitive human mind. Check your subliminal reactions next time someone is trying to hint to you that you have been living too comfortable for a long time, life is once, your body fragile and one stranger is all it takes.

@BlueOak @bebotalk @Consept The change from "civilised" to "civil" in this thread were unfortunate I should have arrested those bringing up that conflation immediately, subtle differences can have big consequences, and as several of you suggested already we should be very clear about what we mean. I will now bring up a dictionary definition of the word I referenced in the title not to show you why I were correct (which no dictionary could ever do except for in axiomatic systems) but to hopefully induce on your part a more healthy approach to people bringing up, from your point of view, original hypotheses. From Dictionary.com: "Having an advanced or humane culture, society, etc. polite; well-bred; refined." The way in which the concept of being civilised is different from its opposite does not contradict the tenants of that concept, the former approach to the concept is rationalistic, the latter is empirical, to make an analogy: you are adding 1+1 and get 2, and I am saying that every time you wish to add 1 with 1 you must divide 1 into 2. Or in the inverse direction: if you take a piece of a certain kind of cake you will identify the whole cake from that part, and if you take a piece from a different kind of cake you will not be able to identify the whole cake from that part, when you attempt to disagree with my assertion that people in general who are carefree and inattentive in the middle of sidewalks where thousands of strangers are walking past are so as a consequence of being overly civilised then it is as though you were to be unsure of whether something were a cheesecake or not despite the piece you are given being a cheesecake piece. If you are a fan of Gura then this kind of rationalistic thinking is present at least 20 times in most episodes, and should not be unfamiliar, the meaning of things are thinkable because of them being distinct from their opposite. The claim is, now refined due to the helpful criticisms in the thread, that if we consider humans on a spectrum of primitive to civilised, as we are bound to do and which all semantics concerned with politeness etc does necessarily (does not mean that one can not talk about the character of politeness without talking about that about politeness which does not pertain to the thing it shares with every other sub-set of "civilised"), then it will be a falsifiable (if statistical and inductive) assertion that can not possibly be undermined merely by semantic reevaluation, instead, if you want to wrestle with this topic, must be undermined by showing either that in primitive cultures there is a higher proclivity to be absent minded, or for the particular (non-inductive) version of the assertion you must show that such a person sitting on a bench carefree or absent minded did so while being indeed civilised in a modernised world while seperating that variable from the others that explains that behaviour, and this experiment you can not do. Which is why the nature of the assertion regarding the particular person on the bench is unfalsifiable and serves merely the purpose of being an example, is not our interest here. And to those who find my style of writing triggering or pretentious, whatever flavour of projection your subconscious hides, prose is integral to the efficiency of thinking itself, hard-earned and will be there to stay if you were like me and put in the hours.

However, let us not lose sight of the ball, if for arguments sake you were to entertain the anti-primitive definition of civility, then would you then be more apt to agree that it is a cause, over many years, to the kind of people who are carefree (to a fault even) of their surroundings, whether or not you still disagree that these are in higher risk of assault?

If you are native english or American then the words will have more distinctness to them to you, their meaning will become their own thing in culture at large independent of duality (independent of being opposite or complimentary to in this instance: primitive), this general trend probably has a name but I don't know what its called. And that would also contribute to explain the language barrier here.

@BlueOak Now this is different, now you introduce variables that first confuses the matter and then you assert something about these variables that has no bearing on the connection of those I listed. In relation to your reply: it is very possible for it to be more dangerous for country people to travel to big cities than city people to do stay there per day at the same time as the countrypeople have less risk of being robbed or attacked etc in the situation i listed. And beyond the reply: it is also plausible, given the next sentence in your reply: "I think growing up in a city can make you a lot more streetwise" "I think if I had been there all my life i'd be a lot more suited to city life.", yes indeed, and I find it self evident that the variables "better suited for city life", "more civilised", "carefree to ones surroundings" and "more prone to experience assaults in an idle state" are each correlated to the others. "Our accepted definitions for them come from the dictionary, and although they can be debated, I'll usually just pull up the dictionary to show someone if they do" The dictionary is a product of the accepted definitions, not the other way around, but I understand your point about the importance of bringing up the utility of dictionaries. "At night in the same park, maybe yes. Years ago two guys almost robbed me in an area just outside the city center, in a relatively quiet area, that's more likely. I managed to get into a nearby shop in time. - The trigger for that was my sharp suit and briefcase as it was an important appointment." Sounds traumatic, its good it all went well I bet they didnt catch those fucks on camera? "As for civility being the cause if you want to debate it we can, its not at all related in my eyes. You'll need to link up for me why manners, discipline, politeness, respect, and consideration cause people to daydream." Though I appreciate that you list up essential characteristic for civility the concept of daydreaming includes many characteristics that extends beyond the concept of a "carefree attitude", and also I can not help but smile a bit at the absurdity of this conversation ending up here but its all good. First of all I take the phrase as self evident that too much of most good things is a bad thing and that if the term "civility" is going to mean something its referents must necessarily pertain to that phrase. (the argument for this would be overly philosophical, but if you want to hear it too then Ill make one later) Civility is a term that describes so many aspects of human social behaviour that though it serves the purpose of the point I made it can serve the purpose of points that are very different from the one I made, the man who has no care for his surroundings does not as you suggest have to be disciplined, polite, respectful or be mannered for his civility as opposed to his primitivity to be the cause for that behaviour. I like to think in terms of simplicity, dualities and quantities and then the coupling between these, I am thankful that this conversation has made me realise that this is not helpful when certain assertions are made where the language has so much semantic baggage that the points will never be made, I kind of have known this for a while but it is helpful to repeat the cycles sometimes. If instead of thinking about civility as a term which pertains to a subset of what modern people are doing then think about the possibility distribution of all human behaviour where what is furthest on one side is primitive and what is furthest to the other is civil, it may be more obvious then that the person who sits on the bench carefree is very far removed from primitive thus overly civil. I should have gone for this approach far earlier. I would though argue that the general meaning of the word civility is more like the kind I exposed last above than yours which includes distinct characterstics, the difference being that politeness for example is a sufficient accident of the term under your definition and more of an insufficient necessity under my definition. edit: Nah the part I crossed over is not entirely true, so forget about that.

@FourCrossedWands I especially like this comment. First you ask what I am even talking about and then you produce the very evidence of the thing I am talking about awaringly that it is such an evidence for then to top it off with a "lol".

@bebotalk All real thinking is based on very subjective perceptions, when we get through the hurdle of language we end up in the land of plausibilities and statistical relationships. If you wish to reduce (as opposed to criticise) what I am saying to being subjective perceptions then the ground of your assertion is that these relationships have a somewhat random distribution, and then you are affirming the last reply I made above concerning the difference between people from the country and people from the city.

@BlueOak Okay I hear you, you take problem with the semantics of my descriptions, I refer to the underlying cause by the word "civility" What is very interesting now is that your response: "Also being happy and enjoying yourself doesn't mean you lack awareness." implies that when you are reading the examples I provided of someone sitting on e bench you actually believe that the imagination I induced in your mind, though merely associated to it were the thing I were referring to, in this way could you respond to what I said with what has rather little to do with what I were saying. I am describing real events in terms of words that are merely here to induce adequate imagination, I would never attempt to even hope to establish a causal prediction based on the meaning of words or to be pedantic about what words in general are meant to signify. I think it is fair that it appears to you that I were trying to do that, this is an ongoing problem of communication, so to be clear: there are observations possible of people sitting on park benches absent minded from their real surroundings, we may disagree as to whether civility is the essential characteristic which makes them behave this way, in either case the behaviour must have a sufficient reason and this reason is almost guaranteed to affect many aspects of their life and is certain to imply something about, given the magnitude of the kind of thing strangers are, how they see the world. We can also debate the meaning of civility if you want, either by composite concepts or through examples, I don't often do that because it will be irrelevant to the actual points I make, though it could be helpful to establish an even more solid understanding of the descriptive definition of the word and it could help for you to see the connections drawn, were that the issue. "As for happening to them, if someone is going to rob or attack you, how civil you are is likely not going to make a difference one way or the other." To be clear: this statement means that if every other variable were equal in a statistical distribution you would think that men and women who comes from the country who visits big cities and are naturally inclined to be more suspicious against people in their surroundings and display a proportionate body-language would be robbed and attacked to a diminishingly differing extent to those who, born and raised in big cities, portrays a carefree attitude.

@Phil King I am not interested here in what one should do, normativity is a different kind of thing than explanatory speculation. It is however true that some basic sense of normativity is likely the cause for why I would notice a carefree attitude to begin with, but even still it would not address my concern. A new question that can specify our problem of communication here is this: do people have in their heads a perpetual conception of what a stranger is? And if the answer is yes then what kind of character does the conception have in those who sits on a park bench carefree of thousands of people walking behind them? Surely this conception would be susceptible to the same kind of collective uncosncious as other conceptions are, making it possible for us to speculate sensibly about it. The implication to me, is that there is some form of fugue state underlying these people in general, where new information is treated as though it were old information, which brings us to the conception of predication, discernment and sufficient similarity between experiences.

@BlueOak If the fugue state I referred to either does not explain the behaviour or does not actually exist in those who behaved in the given way then what would be the matter that could be refuted. Nothing that I borught up has to do with whether sitting on a park bench in a given way affects someone greatly, but instead precisely the opposite, how a state of mind represented by how someone sits on a park bench can affect them greatly. It is always possible that egos are involved or indeed the main concern where causal speculation takes place, it is besides the point.

The thing that makes the animal which you would otherwise think of as intelligent quite mediocre and pale is that it actually cares about being in agreement with others. When we ask "why do humans care about the construction of agreements almost all the time?" what quality answers do we provide that actually has explanatory power? We may reevaluate the question and ask instead "what about the context a human finds itself in is removed if they never had the affinity for agreement to begin with?" or "what characterises the phenomenal impulses of people when they perceive or relate to strangers such that agreements (as opposed to something else) could neutralise these impulses?" and "if the tool by which the impulses are neutralised becomes the means for that end in general then wouldn't people seek agreement not informed first and foremost by what is true but instead to counteract the impulses? The keyword here which exposes the possibility of relevant observations is "impulses", have you observed in yourself something antagonistic, something ugly, something hostile towards others? What if certain phenomenal impulses akin to these descriptions would answer precisely the first question above, why most the individuals pertaining to an extremely intelligent species could fall so short?

@Phil King yes what the hell The assumption is that we as a general baseline value civility, do you do this? Okay moving on. A question humans sometimes ask themselves is this: is too much of a good thing still a good thing? And then let me add to that: is the ability to associate different things with one another, say you associate the streets with absence of violence or general danger, itself sufficient to make good decisions? I can then translate the latter question into the form of the former: is relying on the beneficial ability to associate variables a good stategy if it is done excessively? If not then let us go back to my example of someone sitting carefree or in their own world on a bench in the middle of a street in a big city with plenty of people walking around them, they would certainly rely on their ability to associate variables to do so, but is this sometimes an example also of doing so excessively?

@Danioover9000 This branch of people that you brought up, particularly victorians, were excessive in a way that has to do with being different from another contemporary group, where they idealised certain behaviour and attempted to internalise it and become that behaviour while judging others who did not successfully do so. Civility in general however can be excessive without the causes for a certain form of civility having to be excessive like above, if u know what I mean, we can all conceive of the distinction between pretentiousness/pompousness and normality, what I attempted to induce in your mind were the possibility of an overly civilised version of the latter, normality. And to your comment on moral degradation, yes the force is strong in that shit, I do think it is a separate topic though and that there are plenty of different causes.

@Jannes @Thought Art If you change the axioms regarding the syntax then 2+2 could be 22, but I don't think as Jannes suggests that by changing the simple axioms of math you could get 22 by adding 2 and 2. If instead you create arbitrary composite axioms then you can always get 22 by adding 2 and 2, the challenge then would be to have a consistent system. A simple axiom would be something like "the smallest conceivable quantity can not be a plurality", this may be provable within a system of other axioms but it is also what we should call simple because the concept of the predicate and the concept of the subject can not apply to some experiences as opposed to others (applies to all experiences without exception). A predicate in general states that some subject is in some way, a particular predicate is the given way one says that the subject is, a subject can be anything.

Most people need others to think effectively, if you want to brag about deconstructing yourself from your culture you will need to learn the dark side of the force, thinking for yourself. The way you do it is similar to how you learn to ride a bike, first you may need a push but then you have to give yourself the push, if those in or outside your life you have known for decades are those against which you measure whether you have come to your own conclusions or not then you haven't. To think for yourself is to be on the offence, it is to build up the thing you are attacking in such a manner that it can only fall from specialised weapons, if the weapons you are using are lent from somewhere else then the thing you were attacking were too. A forum, a dialogue, anything to this effect will produce lazy minds necessarily, it transmutes the object of offence into something that it is not the same way semantics are created in the mind of a child.

We are here now because the alternative is our own construct and nature does not wait for constructs. Our childhoods relation to reality were physical, it is the foundation of our thinking, any attempt to destroy the foundation destroys itself first. Physicality is not a synthesis of properties in a mindstate, it is substantial on its own, the ego is the most efficient and least contrived way to deal with the existence of physical reality. The matter of non-duality is independent of our acceptance of physical substance and independent of the characteristics of our ego.

There will always be good reasons for narratives and copiums, a supposedly actualised forum delves into the reasons as opposed to the copium.

Most of you have an American collective unconscious ingrained in your mind, which means that your self-identity, your ability for reflection, analysis and your ability to think in general stands in a dialectic relation to an american unconscious, that is, that collective unconscious if feeding you the problems you are trying to solve and then in parts produces the solutions. You refuse to understand what I am saying unless it fits within the narrative of that unconscious. Everything you are doing on this forum feeds into the problem.

Concepts that did not initially directly describe things in phenomenal experience are without exception solutions to past contradictions/problems, every description of the world by means of these, such as "infinity" is thusly a logicism.

The intensity or magnitude of your consciousness is independent of your circle jerks on forums. The question and possibility of an intensional god is subverted by a mere phenomenal "I am god" account, category error.

The part of you which is able to imagine others is not what others are, you simply do not know how others are like, you are literally alone and separated. That, again, has nothing to do with non-duality.

They are not self-referential like we are, they just are, and that is non-duality. If you make a theoretic framework of spirituality beyond direct experience then you will falsely imagine that other humans are not awake, and this will become your insanity.

Most humans out there in the world you are too narcissistic to face are living a fully actualised life because of their self-conceit.