Okay. This may not make much sense to most people, but I figure a couple of you will know what I'm talking about.

Most people are Insiders. They take the world for granted, accepting it as it is - not as a conscious choice, but because they do not see an alternative. Every thought of an Inside mind is within the world. The Outside mind, however, questions that which the Inside mind does not consider questioning. An Outsider sees herself as outside society, humanity, the world - and so they can ask "Why?". Every philosopher is an Outsider, because that is what an Outsider is. The Outsider cannot choose not to question the whys and wherefores of every commandment, law, and social and sexual more that the Insider takes for granted. An Outsider is a congenital philosopher, whether she recognises it or not.

That didn't make much sense, did it? Thought not. I should sleep.

makes sense to me.. I think I'd consider myself an outsider..

I understand what you are saying. I'm an outsider.

imma outsider.. i dont think i've ever been an insider... skerry thoughs...hummm

yep yep... i s'pose im an outsider..... <sighs>

I am most definitely an Outsider. I know this because I used to want to be an Insider when I was little. I sometimes thought about things that my friends didn't even want to contemplate, and it wasn't incredibly fun. But a few years ago I really learned to embrace the fact that I would always be an Outsider. Perspectives are more interesting this way anyhow. Screw the Insiders...

I'm not an outsider. I enjoy life and I feel that I fit in well with society's regulations, along with the occasional rebellion. I've never had a problem fitting in or making friends, or generally feeling alright. But I think people use the word outsider too liberally. If one has their friends, they aren't completely isolated. Simply not fitting in with the media's idea of alright isn't being an outsider. Society has come to embrace the unique, and since people have been like that for a long while, unique has become normalcy. So I believe that your definition of outsider has to do with social struggles, and not being completely outcast. Define the true meaning of the word outsider, instead of formulating that it means you're not a prep or don't "fit in", because I don't think that's what one is. My perception of it is much more broad.

Ditto. I find questioning everything within the world is bad for the human phyce (sp?)
although saying that, its been proven that we use only a small percentage of our brains...so maybe we're all great philosephers of our time.

To quote John Stuart Mill:

"It is better to be a man dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

I'll have you know, pigs are intelligent creatures.
I'm happy with creature comforts and blissful ignorance instead of the troubles of philosphy and the ways of the world.

Call me ignorant if you wish but I just want to keep my head down and get on with my life.

I'll give one a game of chess any time.

If we don't question everything, and seek to learn, then what is the point of our existence?

To survive.

The point of our existence is to exist? I've survived so far, what have I acheived? Anybody can exist.

So why do plants and animals exist? To strive to get good grade and go to Oxford Uni so they make an impact on the world? They too are here to survive.
The only reason survival has become so easy within the human race is because we have technology to mass produce things such as food and shelter which are life necessaties.

Thats my theory anywho.

Plants and non-human animals lack the intelligence to give their existences meaning. We have sentience and intelligence, and to my way of thinking it is wrong to waste the gift of intelligence by not using it to its fullest.

Good point.
i just think that with the crumminess of the some of the situations within this day of age, I prefer to stay ignorant. I know thats a sh***y attitude to have but I have my own life to lead.


I sound incredibly selfish. I don't mean to say I don't care about certain issues and philosophies...I just don't have the time to ponder as in depth as people of the past.

True, certain things about life are indeed terrible, but if we ignore them, if we don't think about them, will they ever get better?

I agree with Commie somewhat, the reason for existence is to evolve. Our evolution has gone beyond fitter, stronger, more able to survive and has entered a new phase of creation and understanding, we're finding out how the universe works and learning how to use it to open up new opertunities. We're also the heading towards creating a whole new form of intelligence and evolution in sentient machines which is something to be blooming proud of and we could never have got this far if we'd only tried to survive.

I'm not talking about the race as a whole. I'm just talking about me.

Im an outsider what you said made sense if people accepted everything without question there wouldent be any room for development in society and the way we think

I personally don't think that a life lived where someone just "exists" is lived to its fullest. I don't see the point in a life without questions. It seems like such a person would be just blindly following whatever they are told.

For instance: religion. I don't understand why so many people just blindly accept the religion that their parents forced on them without questioning it at all. If they do question it, and find that religion is indeed the best for them and goes along with everything they think is right, then that's great. But if they haven't explored other options, how can they say that they truly believe in this one religion? They haven't even given others a chance...

I don't know if I would consider myself an outsider. I do think and question things a lot, but I also have a group of friends that I do fit in with, so it isn't like I don't mesh well into society. I guess I'd sort of be somewhere in between insider and outsider.

I agree with syuu, everyone wants to be an outsider, to appear unique and different to distinguish themselves from the pack. It's really quite an old desire, you stand out from the mediocre to attract a mate.

But I also agree with Commie, erm.. I don't know if people have heard of Maslovs (Sp?) Heirarchy of needs but he was a scientist who presupposed that people after meeting their basic requirements of food and shelter would go on to acheive self actualization, and that's what outsiders are attempting to do. By questioning the world around them, they challenge assumptions and can go on to learn about themselve's and others, if that makes any sense. Insiders are content with simply meeting their basic needs and when those basic needs are met, they will only think to meet more basic needs.

I agree with Candice on the two points she raised.

As stated elsewhere, I'm a Catholic - but I find that my religious beliefs are strengthened by the ties I have to friends and family who worship other religions... I feel that I can challenge the church on issues I disagree with - because I've seen how ppl of other faiths deal with serious issues.

As far as being Outside or In, I feel that the very polarised nature of the statement means that the choices are too black and white...

I believe very strongly in society - which is why I question it on every point I feel that needs to be checked. It is my love of the inside which causes me to question - and never just to accept at face value. Only by challenging the status quo can we determine if there is a fault. If society has got it right then our questions will be satisfactorily answered. If not then we continue to question, and then to suggest alternatives and changes.

Philosophy isn't just about questioning - it is also about developing new ideas, and solving existing problems.

I suppose I am an insider.

i dont know weither im an outsider or not, but i seem to disagree with alot of the things that people my age who live on my estate consider to be fun pass-times, such as "joy"riding, beating people up, theft and burglary, etc.
oh, and i forgot that age old pass-time of getting a girl pregnant, denying that your the father, and badmouthing the girl to everyone.

I quite often feel like an Outsider. I've never been one to make friends very quickly (or at all...). My first instinct when encountering a situation is to philosophize about or second-guess the meaning, origin, and intention of it. A lot of the little things in my life are outside the mainstream, I guess you could say, because I don't see the point in a lot of things that are fed to us as natural or obligatory, and the differences often become evident when strangers try to make small-talk with me and make assumptions based on my gender, appearance, age, etc. For example, I don't drink and have never been drunk and don't have the desire to, I have never really (voluntarily) been to a party where the objective is to drink beer and socialize, I carry a wallet instead of a purse, I don't enjoy being around children, I don't have a driver's license and don't want one, my original reason for going to college was not simply "to get a good job," etc. And even my reasons for all of the above are not what they immediately would seem (for example, most people assume that anyone who doesn't drink was an alcoholic in the past or has alcoholism running in the family, but that's not the case with me). In addition, many of my other social, political, and sexual philosophies really don't match up with what we're "supposed to" believe. I'm not going to go into that here because a lot of it is pretty radical and misunderstood.

I've never been impulsive at all, I can't jump into something without rationalizing about it before actually making the final decision and acting on it.

I get the feeling that others perceive me as strange and/or unapproachable because of my almost antisocial shyness. At work, when there are no customers to serve, I choose to clean up the dining room, separate from all the other employees, and I deliberately make that last as long as possible rather than to stick around in the kitchen and socialize with everyone else. I'm sure I come off as very aloof. Socializing makes me uncomfortable and I never know where to begin anyway... Even on these boards, I don't seem to have any other friends than the real-life friends I started with before I came here (Lolo and shuilong), because I'm too intimidated by the intimacy of PMs most of the time, and that seems to be the only way to make real friends here. *shrug* I guess all or most of that qualifies me as an Outsider. I sure feel like I'm in isolation a lot of the time, and not just because I have very few friends -- my ideologies and reasons for doing the smallest things are so different from what's expected.

did anyone esle see this and think "yes a awsome book" or am i the only loser that read it 9 times... i dont know tho ive learned the best way to be is the type of person to question everything and break it down as much as you possibly can because if you blindly follow somone else your a sheep and that just makes you look like a moron and actually you *are* a moron. but dont hate me for this opinoin. but othewise ive found that im the kind of person that everyone is freinds with but im never really freinds with anyone, its rather strange really. so i guess im right in the middle of the whole thing.

Somebody's been reading Albert Camus

Outsider, most surely

Oh yeah, it is society's nature to destroy things it doesn't understand, like the outsiders I think I'm gonna cry now...

Who? Heard of him, never read anything by him. I'm interested now, would you recommend him?

Damn straight I would! He was a french philosopher who wrote, among other things The Outsider

French philosopher? Goody! I like Voltaire myself.

I'm a bit of a german philosopher sort my self. Mostly Neitzsche... Freud's good aswell but most of his stuff isn't philosophy... cept Civilisation and it's Discontents which is a really good read. But it just doesn't compare to his stuff on psychology.

Nietzche...I don't know. His philosophies are rational and certainly make sense, but they tend towards the brutal and Darwinistic...that and the fact that he was an anti-Semite mean I'm inclined not to agree with him. Marx and Engels I like, however.

Being a Jew by decent and a bit of a Nietzsche scholar i would disagree with that. His work was appropriated by nazi intellectuals and his racist sister after he died. He was actually a bit of a nihilist if anything (tho he curses nihilists later in The Antichrist)

Marx I like, being an Anarchist I can sympathise with socialists alot more then most people... people seem to discount socialism's potential just because of one or two failures. Capitalism has had alot more failures to get where it is today, why is socialism impractical just because of Russia and China?

Allow me to quote from The Geneaology of Morals, Chapter 7:



All that has been done on earth against "the noble," "the powerful," "the masters," "the rulers," fades into nothing compared with what the Jews have done against them; the Jews, that priestly people, who in opposing their enemies and conquerors were ultimately satisfied with nothing less than a radical revaluation of their enemies' values, that is to say, an act of the most spiritual revenge. For this alone was appropriate to a priestly people, the people embodying the most deeply repressed priestly vengefulness. It was the Jews who, with awe-inspiring consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God) and to hang on to this inversion with their teeth, the teeth of the most abysmal hatred (the hatred of impotence), saying "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God, blessedness is for them alone -- and you, the powerful and noble, are on the contrary the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity; and you shall be in all eternity the unblessed, accursed, and damned!" . . . One knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation . . . In connection with the tremendous and immeasurably fateful initiative provided by the Jews through this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall the proposition I arrived at on a previous occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, section 195) -- that with the Jews there begins the slave revolt in morality: that revolt which has a history of two thousand years behind it and which we no longer see because it -- has been victorious.

Edit: Anarchist, eh? Check out the "Freedom, Etc" thread in this forum by Righteous, our resident anarchist.

I'm familiar with The Geneaology of Morals although i will admit that quote slipped my mind. I have always thought of Neitzsche as an anti-zionist rather than an anti-Semite but I conceed the point. On the other hand, though one might call Neitzsche an anti-semite he could never be called a racsist. He affords every race the same disdain, even his own, there is no discrimination, only his pure nihilism. But as I said, he trashes nihilism too (and anarchists) as Christians (who he seems to dislike even more then Jews).

I'm really wishing I wasn't cut off from my book collection right now, all I've got is a copy of Antichrist with Fragments From a Shattering Mind in the back. Not exactly a comprehensive library, I'm sort of tempted to head over to my place and get them but it's 3:16 AM and the trams don't run till 6:00

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

that quote about sizes up my thoughts on Nietzsche. I perfer Hume more... much more of my taste...

Gee thanks for that

...are we hijacking this thread or is that sort of thing ok here?

Anyway, I feel that opinion is rather misinformed I'll accept that you've a right to your own thoughts on the subject and assume you're well read. Tolstoy isn't really one of my favourates... oh well.

Generally, going off-topic is frowned upon, but it's my thread so I can do what I want. So it's fine. I was getting bored of the original topic anyway.

No it isn't! Most people don't mind, anyway... I do it lots, an I'm a mod!!

Besides, this thread is more interestin as a result, so go ahead!

*shrugs* Maybe I just saw a few people get pissed at their threads being derailed. This is nothing compared to my old board though. I think there was an unwritten law that no thread could go for longer than 20 posts without completely changing topic. A thread on Goth clothing became a Time Team appreciation thread.

Yeah, same with my forum. Which incidently has no one on-line when it's normally full. *curses being in for the first time in ages on a Saturday night*

Anyway, I think that most philosophers were 'abnormal' and he may have been an anti-semite but he was alot smarter than you or me despite his shortcomings. And he was a ruthless thinker, which I sort of admire because I could never be like that.

It really depends on the thread...and the type of derailment.

This I would agree is fine, cause it's an intellectual discussion...there are other types of derailment that are not so fine. I'm one of the people who Commie saw get angry about a thread being derailed, but the way that happened was very different from this. Completely the opposite, really. I personally usually don't mind unless it's a good topic that is being spammed to death.

Anyway. Juiceisgood mentioned liking Freud. I have to say that I strongly dislike him. Well, his philosophies may have been entirely right, but his methods of proving them were uh...less than desireable. For instance, if a patient protested his diagnosis, he would take their denial as an affirmation of his correctness. If they had said, "You know, I think you're right.." he would undoubtedly have pronounced himself correct as well. By his logic, there was no way for him to be wrong!

Freud actually wasn't much of a practising psychoanalyst, or wasn't at all, I forget which. He worked on the theory but very little on living patients. But the thing is, frued had more insght into the working of people's brain then the people. So he actually was always right. Also, the whole denial thing, well you would most probably deny having an Odedpus Rex complex (even though almost every young male has it) too, the denial and the fact that it's completely subconcious does prove is point, the fact is that you, yourself can't know that sort of thing about yourself without the training that frued and every other psychoanalyst has to go through. In a sense it has nothing to do with the patient's concious opinion, freud was working with the brain, not self awarness.

What evidence do you have to support the fact that almost every young male has the Oedipus complex?

True, young males do feel resentment toward their father figure, but this does not mean that they want to usurp his role and sleep with their mother. In some cultures, it is not the man who sleeps with the mother who raises the child, but the mother's brother. Boys in such societies feel resentment towards the man who raises them, even though he is not their mother's lover, does not sleep in the same room as her, and is rarely affectionate with her (and even if he is, it's just a brotherly hug or something of the sort).

How do we know that Freud had more insight into the workings of peoples' brains than the actual people? He never supplied any actual evidence to back his theories...some of which, are very hard for me to personally believe. He could have been always right, but there's no way of knowing...

For instance, do you believe that all people who masterbate are mentally deranged? Freud did.

Terry Pratchett summed up the Outsider quite well:

"'Aye, you're a born hag, right enough,' said the kelda, holding her gaze. 'Ye've got that little bitty bit inside o' you that holds on, right? The bitty bit that watches the rest o' ye. 'Tis the First Sight and Second Thoughts ye have, and 'tis a wee gift an' a big curse to ye. You see and hear what others canna', the world opens up its secrets to ye, but ye're always like the person at the party with the wee drink in the corner who cannae join in. There's a little bitty bit inside ye that willnae melt and flow[...]'"

I think it has summat to do with the fact that every young man wants a woman who'll take care of him like his mother did. So in my case, I'd want a woman who'd hit me whenever anyone did summat naughty, lock me in the cupboard under the stairs, insist on a blow-by-blow account of what I'd do whenever I go out, and hate everybody I was friends with.



Mentionin summat that I heard once - Oedipus didn't know she was his mum before he slept with her.

Nor did he know who his father was. It was the nearest parallel Freud could find. Though personally I think "The Motherf*cker Complex" has its charms.

LMAO!!!

I'm sure Freud shoulda used your suggestion, really. Pickin on someone who unwittingly slept with his mum isn't really a fair comparison to those people who consciously harbour such desires.

And once again I prove my superiority to one of Western society's geniuses...

I personally find most of freuds work to be quite accurate. People only seem to look at oedipus complexes and the likes. I loved his works on pain/pleasure principles, and the id ego and superego.
Another thing people seem to look at sometimes incorrectly is that they seem to think most of his theories spoke of latent homosexuality alot. Well they kinda did but it was more just sexual in nature, not just homosexual, which is very true seeing as how under all of our intellect we are a sexually primative society. Wherein grown men still giggle like 8 yr olds at the word vagina.
As for the oedipus complex, mother is the first woman a boy knows. Mother is the first woman he grows attachted to. Hence mother is the standard by which he will judge other woman. Oedipus is not literal in its naming but metaphorical in it's replication of the role of the father.