Viscerally Visceral, by Robert Gore
The dictionary defines “visceral” as: “Relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect.” I was trying to get the woman to define the principle supporting her assertion and perhaps extend it to other issues. She had a deep inward feeling, that’s all, no principle, a product of the intellect.
It was some years before I realized that “visceral” was a key to understanding the world. Its definition is not just a definition, it’s a description of how most people perceive and interpret reality most of the time—with their emotions rather than their intellects.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
It was some years before I realized that “visceral” was a key to understanding the world. Its definition is not just a definition, it’s a description of how most people perceive and interpret reality most of the time—with their emotions rather than their intellects.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
Viscerally Visceral Delta airlines based in Atlanta reneged on a discount for NRA members to fly. It was an expensive emotional outburst.
On Friday, a new Georgia tax package that removed Delta’s $40 million fuel tax break was signed into law. The move follows the announcement by Delta, which is based in Atlanta, Ga., to severe ties with the NRA, USA Today reports:
“The Georgia legislature removed a jet-fuel tax break from a larger tax package Thursday. Lawmakers were upset that Delta, which is headquartered in Atlanta, dropped the National Rifle Association from a discount-fare program in an effort to appear neutral on gun policy.”
“But the airline said only 13 passengers ever bought tickets with an NRA discount. That translates into each discount costing the airline about $3 million in tax breaks.”
Meanwhile, interest in NRA membership has skyrocketed, according to Daily Mail:
“The NRA has seen a huge surge in membership interest in recent weeks, after drawing noisy backlash over the shooting in Parkland, Florida.
“Google searches for 'NRA membership' have risen roughly 4,900 per cent since the week before the February 14 shooting, with new members flocking to support the gun owners' rights group.”
An observation of the herd tells me that the hope for their permission to live objectively and free is almost nil. The best we can do is live unobserved. It was after all the quest of 'the Gulch' to live where others could not observe them and employ the use of government violence to extort the property of others.
Not only is the government watching without permission (warrants) it is gathering and storing intel on its people and working on storing and developing strategies based on the intel it gathers to control its citizens. The largest data center in the world is being built in Utah by the NSA (when it was first formed we deridingly referred to it as 'No Such Agency' because most agents refused to admit to its existence or that it had any kind of existence. I don't think the NSA is going to acquire this data and just store it to find if it is useful later. Real time tracking of citizens at every moment is possible through the electronic devices that are used. When the requirement for RFID's is required no one will be able to do anything without permission. Scanners have been developed that can scan a home and pick up RFID's that are there. Government officials will not be pleased when they discover that Chad and Robert are meeting together on a frequent basis.
With the advent of secret courts it will be easy to get 'permission' to turn off their accounts making travel, eating or anything else impossible until they have compliance, or simply eliminate the bothersome pair with a secret warrant to protect America from a secret terrorist threat. (FISA courts) When the first cameras were put in use in the late 80's there was an uproar and it stopped their use for awhile. Now warrantless searches are the norm, cameras and intrusion is ubiquitous and the citizens are happy about it and distrustful of anyone who wants to be left alone.
My children refer to me as a socially functioning misanthrope. I can get along with people but I don't trust many of them.
Not that the beginning is at all less cogent, but that most audiences these days are only interested in hearing about the "latest" exciting "disaster" to emote about, and don't care or even think about abortion until somebody shoots up an abortion clinic. THEN that will come to the forefront again. Pillar to post....that's what this new young audience does....from one thing to another, kind of like a pinball machine.
Dead center bullseye, Robert.
Liked the cousin to the above quote at the end of your article, which was superb, as always.
You nailed it!
I will give you an example. A friend of mine did a series of transactions around multiple states. He logically owes taxes on these transactions. He believes he is an honest/righteous person. Do you think he paid the taxes? Would you? Is injury on the state somehow allowed, but injury on a person not?
Another example. A friend had a child via c-section. Found out that the insurance they had did not exist. It was a scam. The hospital stuck him with the full cost of the services rendered. Had they been illegal, it would have been free (mind you).
This amount exceeded his annual salary. He should have negotiated down the price, but did not. Instead he started paying them $50-100/month, every month. Years later they settled the balance.
He signed the paper that said he would be responsible for all fees, if the insurance company would not pay them for any reason. He was truly responsible for them. But it seems unfair.
Here is the difference, IMO, one followed the letter of the law, and probably paid a lot less than was required, but it was mutually agreed upon... No one was harmed. Everyone worked through a bad situation... In the other case, I believe the answer is that "I am honest" has an asterisk that says "Only in dealing with individuals, but not our government!"
We are VERY COMPLEX beings... And I agree with Scott Adams. Most of what we think is "Logical" is reverse engineered to look that way to keep some FAKE INTERNAL Consistency. When I confronted my friend, he said "Fxxx the government!"
And YET I would trust him with my life!
Emotions predate abstract reasoning, rational consciousness, and free will, which developed later on the evolutionary timeline. Emotions are the visceral function of the animal level of operation, stimulus response, instinctive reaction playing by the cause-and-effect laws of nature. That is by far how most people still function; it's built in. Who in an emergency will reflect calmly and dispassionately when the fight-or-flight adrenaline starts pumping through the veins? In fact, people who don't get rattled and emotional are looked down on as sociopaths or worse. Even those capable of rational thought do not always engage it. Not everyone is or can be an Ayn Rand hero. It may even be a case of "If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you"...
own destruction. But this doesn't always happen soon enough to do the victim(s) any good. Still, one must fight.
[snip]
Collapse will have its compensations."
When you said this before, you said it jest. Given the path irrational fearful reactions to a monetary crisis can take, though, you have a dark sense of humor I don't get. I might get the joke if you wrote "---Adolf Hitler" right after "Collapse will have its compensations," but it's too soon. In millennium it will be like the Punic Wars or something, but it's still within living memory.
When were the good times in human history?
Clinton fake dossier to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trumps campaign and the same toilet paper to create a special counsel to discredit a duly elected President.https://www.vox.com/2018/2/2/16957588/nunes-m...
But the partisan crap about President Obama and Secretary Clinton--- it doesn't even taste good loaded up with salt and spice like Taco Bell. I don't know why anyone not getting paid says that crap.
If her visceral reaction were one's right to one's body, life, mind, and everything they create were absolute and the person used it as a starting point, this is consistent with how I see things. Ayn Rand fans tell me if I had understood Virtue of Selfishness, I would understand that human rights are not an axiom but rather flow logically from reason. I'm really fascinated by this because I don't follow it, but I like the notion. I like the notion that my belief in human rights are given by our creator or my visceral feelings but rest on reason.
Many people who know how to derive the origin of rights think people like me who hold them as axioms are contemptible philistines. If the less philosophically sophisticated of the world just took human rights to heart for unsound reasons, that would be an improvement.