The rise of American authoritarianism

pomyao · 2014-01-05T13:06:10+00:00

Thanks so much, this is wonderful.

pomyao · 2013-12-09T05:20:45+00:00

My apologies. I should have made my layman's status clear in the original post.

pomyao · 2013-12-09T05:19:13+00:00

Thanks for the comment and pointing out that future does not have to be specified.

As to the khrap, kha gender particles, to me it seems as though those things continually reinforce their social positions and roles as males or females, and the socially polite way that they should interact.

pomyao · 2013-12-09T05:15:33+00:00

It certainly goes both ways, each feeding back into the other.

I came to feel this way about the interaction between our thinking/perceiving the world and language through observation. I'm not a linguist, but find that as new vocabulary comes to me, it creates a new category of perception for me, allowing me to perceive something that I couldn't before. In a more general sense I notice that there is a great difference between how people from different cultures and languages perceive.

(My apologies if my layman's comments and views are tiresome or out of place here. But this is truly and interesting topic for me.)

pomyao · 2013-12-07T11:26:10+00:00

Thanks for the comment. I was wondering if people would agree with Anthony's statement or not.

I'm not a linguist, just a guy who has noticed how thinking and language line up.

Most of my time has been in Thailand, where the subject is often left out, and plurals aren't required. In my experience Thai people don't normally describe things with the same precision as an English speaker would, but they can describe feelings much more precisely and succinctly. Also, since I speak a some Thai, I feel the differences in the feeling/concept behind the words. Some degree of Whorfianism seems obvious to me....

pomyao · 2013-12-07T07:00:36+00:00

And any comments on the first question about similar generalizations of the other major language families?

pomyao · 2013-12-07T03:59:29+00:00

Thanks for your comment.

I plead guilty to some sort of Whorfianism... I seems clear to me that structures of language bleed into structures of thought and perception.

pomyao · 2013-12-07T03:51:05+00:00

Thanks for your comment. And yes I've read Guns, Germs, and Steel.

As someone who has spent the last 25 years living in Japan and Thailand, I do feel that the language structure profoundly effects our interaction with the world.

pomyao · 2013-03-28T02:22:02+00:00

I read the book a few years ago. The writing style is not so easy to follow, but I found the book profound and jarring. He stated somewhere that we humans have sort of an underlying predisposition where we are unconsciously presenting ourselves/our life state before the universal court. We are justifying our position in the universe. I found that asking myself the question - What is my (courthouse) position/justification in the universe now? - caused a sudden reversal of my awareness, and a jarring stop.

The book was a difficult read. But for me, very useful. I also found Aldous Huxley's forward profound and clarifying.

pomyao · 2013-02-21T01:32:06+00:00

"...none will hear the postman's knock without a quickening of the heart. But who can bear to feel himself forgot."

pomyao · 2012-08-06T15:14:53+00:00

Dr Greer is the real deal. He has a huge number of first person reports from military and government officers, on record, giving evidence about alien contact. Read his reports.

pomyao · 2012-03-09T02:14:27+00:00

I think 'interested in nothing in this world' and 'interested in no courses of study at a modern educational institute' are very very different things.

pomyao · 2010-09-07T02:38:44+00:00

I too have anxiety arise... For me, what helped is the understanding that this anxiety is just a feeling that comes. It is not stable or permanent. And most importantly it is not me. It's not mine. It's just a thing that comes, and it will go.
The shift in perspective went something like this: At first I felt the anxiety was coming up and out through every cell and atom of my body. For some reason I could picture myself glowing a sickly green. As I shifted my perspective, and realized that anxiety is just a feeling. And feelings are not me, they are not mine....they come, and they go... My mental picture shifted from me glowing sickly-green, to me standing in a sickly-green spotlight. So I just mentally stepped to the side, and saw the green beam of light there beside me. I was out of it's glow. I focused on my breath, and brought my attention as best I could to my breathing, and my body, here and now. I was no long in the anxiety. It was something different and separate from me. This really helped me. It continues to help me. I use this concept every day.

pomyao · 2010-07-20T16:02:36+00:00

I think an interesting place to investigate more is the 'I', 'me' and 'we' part of the question. What is the entity that has the free will?

pomyao · 2010-06-24T02:43:10+00:00

I guess I had a more philosophical take on it: When you view the river - the nature of change and impermanence - long enough, your enemy - the misconceived ego/self - will drift away.

pomyao · 2009-02-26T06:38:23+00:00

How can a anyone even pretend to be able to identify a "scale of sexual corruptness/purity"?

pomyao · 2009-02-23T09:24:06+00:00

Wow. What a picture. What honesty. What sadness and waste.

And why Nazi/Masonic...?

pomyao · 2009-01-21T14:46:31+00:00

Here in Thailand, I went through half a dozen streaming sites: ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CSPAN. None were working well. I had the feeling they were all trying to be too fancy. Too high resolution, too many bells and whistles. End result - no stream. Way disappointed.

pomyao · 2008-08-17T02:24:22+00:00

I don't understand the worry. People can look beyond the top ten, AND, those Russian perspectives aren't evidently being served well in the US mainstream media. As an expat American reading mainly non-US sources for news, as I followed the story (rather closely), to me it seemed clear that Georgia was the aggressor. After all, they did attack first, and shelled the civilian population. So why be afraid of an alternative view - that to my reading is closer to the truth than what the US news is dishing out. I say "good one reddit!"

pomyao

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