My buddhist fundamentalist friend envies the discipline that nice people have, but is wary of their "neurosis and lack of drive".
There's a philosophical contradiction there. Can he have the spiritual discipline he seeks, without the neuroses? Isn't discipline a form of neurosis? We nice neurotic people are simply more disciplined about redirecting our inner nastiness. Whereas happy layabouts are invariably rude. I rest my case.
Look at Maggie Thatcher, she channelled her latent nastiness into something useful, like clobbering Arthur Scargill. That left her free to be nice to ... well maybe Dennis.
open text
10 July 2005 at 09:13
nice neurotics
Hotboy said...
Nice people? The whited sepulcures .. sepulcres ... sepulchures ... tombs of the perfectly toilet trained, lower middle class footsoldiers of capitalism ... a bit like myself! Hotboy p.s. I think neuroses might go with the things to be negated. Don't sound right, do they?
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Hotboy said...
Punishment and reward are more Pavlov than Calvin. Conditioning and reinforcement? Why we do stuff is about the prospective sweeties maybe. Cut to the chase. Straight to the sweeties. I hope this clarifies things. Hotboy
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onan the bavarian said...
Ach, you Britishers with your class-consciousness. Fortunately the UnHeard & McDonald Islands are a classless society, where everyone has an equal right to be fascist, and nobody feels obliged to pander to the notion of the working class as guardians of democracy and attitudinal rock music.
I liked your metaphor - the ivory towers of McDonald Institute as porcelain toilet pans and biblical tombs. I expect that's why you're a prolific writer while I'm just another foot-soldier of the neurotic classes, aspiring to the ranks of Mannheim's "Freischwebende" (impartial intellectuals).
But I'm afraid I'm lost when you talk of the things to be negated. Is that more buddhist-speak? Clarification required.
I think I get it now. You mean the band, the Things To Be Negated? They toured here in the 90s, and you're right, they didn't sound right at all.
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