Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 07:12:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: SELF TALKING TO SELF


--0-2113359667-1033913535=:5753




I found your statement one of those observations where you point out the obvious and makes me wonder why I missed it myself:

To experience attunement presupposes something with which to be attuned, and 'to be attuned' presupposes a measure of adjustment. Because the environment cannot "adjust itself," it follows that any "adjusting" and "tuning" must be our own work, whether consciously or sub-consciously. 

I guess "attunement" is attractive because it implies music, poetry, etc. But what you say applies perfectly. It has to be that way. The phrase "state of mind" is still somewhat disagreeable to me, though you have a perfectly good use for it. I can think of words other than "state" with all of its observational connotations, that is, someone is observing me or I am observing myself as an object like a butterfly pinned to a display board. "Situation" and "condition" possibly do a bit better but actually sound awkward and strangely off point. So I guess I have to settle with "state of mind" as least bothersome overall. Any suggestions from anyone?

Jud: 
Personally see the connection between stimmung [mood or atmosphere] and ontological considerations from a number of angles, but in perhaps different ways. The apprehension of our own moods or momentary dispositions are existential modalities of appreciating or apprehending our own existential modalities, for although mood and modality are etymologically co-derivatives they are not the same, and in fact a mood is a mode but a mode is not necessarily a mood. For example, one of the modes of human existential behaviour is playing ice-hockey, but this activity would never be described as a "mood", whereas being in a suicidal mood could be described as being in a certain existential state or modality of moodyness. 

GARY C MOORE:

This is extremely interesting. Then can you have both a "mood of mind" as well as "mode of mind"? I assume "mode" always implies "intent", i.e., something in you is doing something for a clear purpose. When you have learned how to play ice-hockey well, then you can play to a large degree without thinking about what you are doing but one would never say one does not KNOW what one is doing. In this case, the less one needs to think about it the better one knows how to do it. This is one of the main things Hubert L. Dreyfus writes about, i.e., "coping skills," "background practices," something like statistics where you see X happens in a certain situation more than Y and therefore points to something you need to pay attention to in terms of living successfully or simply surviving at all and yet it is not really conceptually clear exactly what is involved. If you have to act, pressed by necessity, you go with what you have and are familiar with. But you would really rather know exactly what is involved. It is precisely in "background practices" where you have "beliefs," assumptions learned as a child under the press of necessity and coercion that guides their way of thinking and action ‘successfully’ in ‘society,’ but are presuppositions that cannot be coherently defined. Being “adjusted” to society seems to be the easiest way “to get along,” but essentially you are letting dead people give you your thoughts and values (my “you” is always anonymous like “one” and maybe even a way I am talking to myself, a key concept in Plato and Aristotle). But in ‘surviving’ in this manner delivers you up helplessly to the dead powers (dead not only in the sense of deceased but also unthinking, unfeeling, generally parasitical through their dead living using your mind. One might say the ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’ person within us is totally inhabited with the dead purposes of dead people). This is precisely how I felt when I got my draft notice and decided, Quixotically, whimsically, contrarily, to volunteer instead. It may have been stupid to do, but it was MY stupidity and I knowingly choose it as if somehow I took my fate out of other peoples’ hands even though I knew in reality I was voluntarily delivering myself over to them. Silly, but in that same situation, if it came again, I might well do the same thing at least to gain the illusion of self-control. Therefore, detaching yourself somehow from your “state of mind” – the words imply this is something that is really not you – and being able to think outside all boundaries of the “socially acceptable” and “normal” is a passion for me even though I am well aware that my “rebellion” merely takes on a “background practice” of the minority, a "rejected background practise," and repeats exactly the way a ‘rebel’ is suppose to think and is expected to feel. I am still caught in the web.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore



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I found your statement one of those observations where you point out the obvious and makes me wonder why I missed it myself:

To experience attunement presupposes something with which to be attuned, and 'to be attuned' presupposes a measure of adjustment. Because the environment cannot "adjust itself," it follows that any "adjusting" and "tuning" must be our own work, whether consciously or sub-consciously.

I guess "attunement" is attractive because it implies music, poetry, etc. But what you say applies perfectly. It has to be that way. The phrase "state of mind" is still somewhat disagreeable to me, though you have a perfectly good use for it. I can think of words other than "state" with all of its observational connotations, that is, someone is observing me or I am observing myself as an object like a butterfly pinned to a display board. "Situation" and "condition" possibly do a bit better but actually sound awkward and strangely off point. So I guess I have to settle with "state of mind" as least bothersome overall. Any suggestions from anyone?

Jud:
Personally see the connection between stimmung [mood or atmosphere] and ontological considerations from a number of angles, but in perhaps different ways. The apprehension of our own moods or momentary dispositions are existential modalities of appreciating or apprehending our own existential modalities, for although mood and modality are etymologically co-derivatives they are not the same, and in fact a mood is a mode but a mode is not necessarily a mood. For example, one of the modes of human existential behaviour is playing ice-hockey, but this activity would never be described as a "mood", whereas being in a suicidal mood could be described as being in a certain existential state or modality of moodyness.

GARY C MOORE:

This is extremely interesting. Then can you have both a "mood of mind" as well as "mode of mind"? I assume "mode" always implies "intent", i.e., something in you is doing something for a clear purpose. When you have learned how to play ice-hockey well, then you can play to a large degree without thinking about what you are doing but one would never say one does not KNOW what one is doing. In this case, the less one needs to think about it the better one knows how to do it. This is one of the main things Hubert L. Dreyfus writes about, i.e., "coping skills," "background practices," something like statistics where you see X happens in a certain situation more than Y and therefore points to something you need to pay attention to in terms of living successfully or simply surviving at all and yet it is not really conceptually clear exactly what is involved. If you have to act, pressed by necessity, you go with what you have and are familiar with. But you would really rather know exactly what is involved. It is precisely in "background practices" where you have "beliefs," assumptions learned as a child under the press of necessity and coercion that guides their way of thinking and action ‘successfully’ in ‘society,’ but are presuppositions that cannot be coherently defined. Being “adjusted” to society seems to be the easiest way “to get along,” but essentially you are letting dead people give you your thoughts and values (my “you” is always anonymous like “one” and maybe even a way I am talking to myself, a key concept in Plato and Aristotle). But in ‘surviving’ in this manner delivers you up helplessly to the dead powers (dead not only in the sense of deceased but also unthinking, unfeeling, generally parasitical through their dead living using your mind. One might say the ‘average’ or ‘ordinary’ person within us is totally inhabited with the dead purposes of dead people). This is precisely how I felt when I got my draft notice and decided, Quixotically, whimsically, contrarily, to volunteer instead. It may have been stupid to do, but it was MY stupidity and I knowingly choose it as if somehow I took my fate out of other peoples’ hands even though I knew in reality I was voluntarily delivering myself over to them. Silly, but in that same situation, if it came again, I might well do the same thing at least to gain the illusion of self-control. Therefore, detaching yourself somehow from your “state of mind” – the words imply this is something that is really not you – and being able to think outside all boundaries of the “socially acceptable” and “normal” is a passion for me even though I am well aware that my “rebellion” merely takes on a “background practice” of the minority, a "rejected background practise," and repeats exactly the way a ‘rebel’ is suppose to think and is expected to feel. I am still caught in the web.

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore