getting rid of sacred cows

[MichaelM]

As the C's have put it, "having no knowledge at all is better than having false knowledge". I'm paraphrasing here but I think I got the gist right.

For me, it means that it is hard to do a 'paradigm shift'; letting go of what you know so that you can receive, critically evaluate, and assimilate new knowledge. Using the analogy of a 2D (x & y axis) cartesian plane, new perspectives on a subject are sometimes so foreign to the way you think about the subject it is as if the knowledge is coming from another plane (axis z on a 3D plane).

Before I go any further, hello to everyone. This is my first post on this forum though I have participated on the Yahoo groups forum before but then stopped for more than a year now and have instead been browsing (i.e. lurking) through this forum as time permits.

I also have a blog located on Friendster though I am thinking about re-locating it to some blogspace that is more versatile (e.g. I can't link to other blogs from my blog page). I mostly 're-gurgitate' most of what I read from the Signs page and what (I think) my friends on Friendster may be 'ready' to read about.
(I used the term 're-gurgitate' because most of what I read on the Signs seems very well thought of and composed that most of the time there is little I could add to it in my blog and not make a mess out of it.)

And so I come about my dilemma of which any and all opinions are welcome.

I remember reading many passages about the C's not spoon-feeding information, not forcing anyone to learn things faster. I've posed myself the question, "Who am I to determine what another person needs to know? Should I 'teach' anything to anyone if it is not their desire to learn it?"

Though I may be only aware of the 'tip of the iceberg', I have come to the conclusion that one of the main objectives of the Signs Team is to bring objective news to the people who are still 'asleep' and get them to start thinking for themselves by means of the 'shocks' that (the editors of the Signs hope) they will receive by reading.
(For those reading the Signs daily and are already 'in the loop', though the daily Signs may read like it is 'preaching to the choir', it's more of being up to date with what's happening around the world)
Hopefully, enough shocks will 'force' a paradigm shift and lead the reader to 'get rid of sacred cows'.

This is also part of the reason why I started my blog in the first place. I would imagine myself as one neuron who has the job of relaying the message from the brain so that it gets to wherever it is supposed to go to.
With biology, it is easier to see that "the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone is connected to the knee bone", and it would be 'un-natural' for the hip bone to be connected to both the thigh and knee bone.
(Or maybe 'everything is connected' and I just need a 'paradigm shift' to see it... just kidding)

I think that I may be 'shocking' people who are not 'prepared to be shocked'.
Just like the people who are not ready to get rid of their sacred cows, when confronted with a piece of information that should outright 'kill the cow', they go the opposite way and 'fatten' their sacred cows (i.e. hold even more firmly to their 'beliefs').

Using my personal experience to see how I've come so far from the little devout Catholic boy I was raised up to be, I was the one looking for the information and it wasn't handed to me. (Well, I did go down many a wrong path and got 'dis-info' 'handed' to me before I came to Laura's work but that's another story for another day)
I do understand the importance of going through the experience to find the answers and not just replace the information that is 'parrot-ed', even if it is the right information.
(What I mean by 'parrot-ed' is repeating information that someone has told me without my own process of research and understanding the information that I have been taught. In other words, taking the other person's information automatically as true repeating without understanding for myself.)

But then again, if Laura did not publish her work in one form or another, then I might not have found it at all.

So have I answered my own question in this post? Is it that simple? Can someone articulate further so that I might get some more insight on why I should continue blogging, even if most of the time it is merely 'repeating' what is posted on the Signs?
(I know it is 'bad form' to 'parrot' so I do make sure that I not post anything that I do not understand myself.)


As a side note, does 'parrot'-ing the right information serve a useful purpose if only for the 'chance' that it does reach someone who will understand? I imagine someone like Sherlock Holmes overhearing an casual conversation about some trivial matter such as the weather but then serves as a clue to solve the mystery he is investigating.

I have more questions related to this 'on my plate' but I'll probably get to them as the thread progresses.

 

[Mr. Premise]

I think your blogging does serve a purpose. It is disseminating information, whether you wrote it or not. And, like what the Signs does, blogging is a good way to reach people who are asking and seeking while not violating the free will of those who want to sleep. People who come back to a blog do so because they want to. Everyone else stumbles upon it and backs off.

Whereas if you buttonhole a friend or a coworker about this stuff, you could be pushing things on them they didn't ask for.

 

[MichaelM]

I understand. The reason I chose to blog on Friendster was because of the "blog update alerts" that Friendster sends to the friends of the person who has a new entry in their blog. I thought to myself that it's kind of like 'spamming' without myself doing the actual spamming. I think there is a way for people on Friendster to turn of that 'pesky' reminder if my friends don't want to be constantly reminded that I have a new entry in my blog if they have no desire to read my blog.

I do have another question on my plate related to this matter.
If someone does a group email and casually posts about their belief in angels and that in a particular incident, he remarks: "An angel must have saved this guy because he's still alive. It's not his time yet so he must have an angel watching over him." (I've abbreviated the conversation)
Would it be an apt response to point out that his 'argument' is a 'petitio principii'(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_argument)?
I think that this would just be a simple 'pointing out the fallacy in his logic' without actually directly attacking his beliefs. And the rest of the people in the group email can freely decide for themselves between the two choices.

Or would it have been better to just not say anything and let things as they be thinking that the people with two neurons functioning should also see the fallacy of the logic as I have seen it?

It's a sort of gray area though I have some conviction that the course of action I took was the better decision even in retrospect. The only thing that concerns me is that I had no need to 'defend myself' at that point because his casual remark on his beliefs did not 'infect' me with the same belief but then I was thinking about the other people in the group email being 'infected'.

 

[Cyre2067]

Hi Michael, I do the same thing you do. Only instead of fster i use myspace (fster's slow). And i've shocked people with lots of info re: judaism, esp with the lebanon bit going on. It's not violating anyone's free will unless your force feeding it to them, and most of the time it results in debate which i believe is healthy as it not only helps me give out info, but allows me to reconfirm what i've previously believed.

I use bulletins and blog post and i mostly regurgitate Nimmo, Kaminski and Joe Quinn. Lots of the stuff that appears on myspace allows me to target info that i think will resonate or shock my particular group of friends.

I kinda think of what we're doing as acting as nodes, we relay information, perhaps satellites is a better analogy, but all in all i think it's a very good thing.

 

[rrraven]

GO BLOGGERS!!! your are a real political force now and you are the people of the world!Today I heard some american spindoctor on TV go into quiet a rant about
you guys.He was scared .Keep blogging and
linking to the Signs. RRR