GENIUS FORUMS

Hi,

I just signed up for an account here. I've actually browsed this board for many years, five or six at least, and so I am familiar with the core concepts of Genius Forum. I have read the writings offered by Kevin Solway, David Quinn, Dan Rowden, and nearly all of the supplementary material on David's site and Kevin's CD / Thinking Man's Minefield. I find much inspiration in the material.

With that said, let me introduce myself with a thread I happened to start on the social site Digg. I provided a spirited comment on an article dealing with a study that claimed girls were performing just as well as boys in academic mathematics, and it set off a small debate with a couple of different commentators. The last half of the thread was a back-and-forth exchange with a female who clung to her personal experience and outright ignored the essence of my statements. She provided what I think was emotional appeals as to why women have not produced first rate examples of genius. At the end I realized she was simply incapable of seeing my point and thus I bowed out politely and gracefully. My comments are under the same name I post as here, kissaki, and while there are a few misspellings and grammatical mistakes in my comments, I trust you'll forgive them and that they don't obstruct the message.

http://digg.com/educational/Girls_math_ ... t=17236288

Weak sauce! Men have given women the highest honors of praise, near and dear to their hearts, throughout history. Women has had a platform unlike any other creature. If the endless parade of love songs and artistry dedicated over time to the pursuit of women is a 'gross inequality' then I hate to see what 'true equality' is going to mean. And yet all of this is still not enough for women to show case her mental goods? Her other goods have been WELL showcased!

Consider that perhaps matriarchal societies vanished because the men were too pussy-struck to work for a future vision.

The rest of your post is just emotional positive-think.

Your mind-fu is no match for kissaki!

From Max: I stand by what I have said and do not at all disagree with your sentiments. However I ask you not to just look at the most modern society on Earth to draw your comparisons, but to look at societies such as in the Sudan, in the Middle East, parts of Europe, China, South America, where sexual slavery exists, and women are constantly and truly degraded my men, have little or no rights, and then still turn to me and say the same thing.

Men also are truly degraded by other men in those areas, although perhaps the more sexual type is reserved for the females. Nonetheless, what is it you are trying to say? That until all women everywhere are perfectly free, then and only then can their genius arise? That certainly hasn't been the case for masculine spirit, thus already we have a strike against the case for equality of the feminine intellectual drive.

Besides, why are you so concerned about the 'disadvantages' of others, especially those in extremely dire situations? Better to focus on your own person and Void it. Then you will see how your talk of advantages and disadvantages is a silly game you play.

We assert that this enslavement of women is directly from physical attributes of the male and not mental. Brute strength has allowed male dominance over the female, and little expression of female genius is allowed to surface.

I recommend you read "Brain Sex" by Anne Moir and David Jessel. The link is to some excerpts, most of which can be found in the opening chapters.

If women are so easily dominated across so many cultures, that should be telling in itself about the minds of women and how easily they are conquered. Women's physical shortcomings have little to do with this, for if they did, surely lions and tigers would be dominating the Earth, not men.

I wonder how the ratio goes for physically disabled intellectuals, male vs female. I'll see if I can find any statistics.

[edit: I haven't found any clear statistics yet. Results from Googling "statistics disabled intellectuals gender" are very unhelpful. It is apparently a non-PC sort of search.]

I don't think I'll have any luck. The statistical research on disabled intellectuals is usually conducted by universities, who generally have gender equity policies. They publish gender statistics like which degrees and PhD subjects non-disabled female intellectuals tend to choose, usually focussing on improving services so that there are equal numbers of males and females in every discipline. Disabled intellectuals supposedly tend to choose as their non-disabled peers do. What strikes me is the general notion, portrayed by these university researchers, that women are much more likely to choose disciplines that provide services for their gender, not those disciplines they actually prefer.

I think it's as Paglia wrote: women don't like to do intellectual analysis that is isolated from other people. If they're physically handicapped, they'll still prefer the humanities - disciplines like sociology, medicine and psychology. Not science, maths, and philosophy.

The whole irony is in getting women to think for themselves, since women tend to go with the crowd, and do what others say. How can you teach a person to think, when they are naturally disposed to obeying blindly?

One woman in this list:

http://www.peopleonwheels.com/big_wheels/

According to this article on the psychology of high-achievers, they function "almost independently of what is happening around them. They develop the power of contrary thinking and create a goal-focused cocoon in a world of negativity. These people see opportunity where others see problems, and that enables them to remain focused in the midst of turmoil. They are enthusiastic, but not blind optimists."

And, as Camille Paglia wrote, in Sexual Personae:

Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome.

Poor Paglia. To have been so weak as to need to annihilate, and not fulfil, her earlier visions, must have been a bitter pill to swallow.

Discovering that women weren't goddesses made of sugar, spice, and all things nice was a painful adolescent experience, as was the fact that I am programmed to sexually respond to them. Imagine the relief upon learning that there is no one to take blame or credit.

Yes, I can imagine that.

My own experiences with becoming celibate weren't a smooth road at all, so I can understand those intense but irrational feelings of shame. It is really a process of finding out for oneself how to push Woman aside.

I think what really boosted my progress was a decision to abandon humanity. It was somewhat like Dave Quinn's idea of making judgments and abandoning life, but it was totally my own decision. I just decided I was going to quit being interested in worldly affairs.

That decision generated a very helpful technique, of creating my own ideals. I made new things, and I made them more sexy and more interesting. Instead of actual persons, I started looking for genius. I started looking for a relationship with Emptiness, not only in what people say, but in how I was experiencing things.

I started seeing my ideas taking the foreground in my experiences. I'm still working on strengthening my mind to "see thoughts" more clearly. I call it the Form Realms.

With this depth of mind, I could hardly desire the puny consciousness of others. So I left humanity. Not with disgust and hatred, rather with understanding. What I think of as "stellar love", experiencing the down-to-earth reality of the Infinite.

Kelly -

Mind expanding on the idea of seeing thoughts ?

I don't mind.

I think the best way to expand on the idea of seeing thoughts, is to talk about thinking. Instead of paying attention to the smell of air, or the temperature of breath, or those sorts of senses, I focus on thoughts. I'm stimulating thought, so I can "listen" to what is surfacing in the mind. I'm scanning for false thoughts, moods, emotions, agitation or dullness, and other signs of delusion.

I have an intuitive habit, that the scanning runs on. It races through a line of reasoning, to find a belief about Reality. That belief is then consciously reasoned about, reflected on itself, and cast away. I then get the key to Truth. That is the basic intuitive experience that deconstructs delusions. The whole aim of the thinking is to come to Truth, and to apply Truth, wholesale. Putting it in practice has the effect of making fixed ideas (delusions) dissolve. The more Truth is realised, the less that delusions leak in.

When there's enough headway made with this free-thinking, and it becomes natural and effortless, then forms appear very clearly. There's no muddiness or fog in one's experiences. This is what I call samadhi, where the mind is very limpid and pure. Thinking just runs along in its simple, obvious way. There's no attachment either to things or to thoughts; there is no separation between experience and intellect. This is the Form Realms. This isn't the highest, but it's something I try to bring into my consciousness as often as possible.

Non-dual samadhi... What's the highest...?

kissaki wrote:Weak sauce! Men have given women the highest honors of praise, near and dear to their hearts, throughout history. Women has had a platform unlike any other creature. If the endless parade of love songs and artistry dedicated over time to the pursuit of women is a 'gross inequality' then I hate to see what 'true equality' is going to mean. And yet all of this is still not enough for women to show case her mental goods? Her other goods have been WELL showcased!

The idea of inequality was likely beyond the minds of pre-modern man. The male-female configuration existed to benefit all, and all gave something up to be part of the family configuration. Men were made disposable in work and war, and women was dedicated to the family sphere.

Now that upper-body strength is being replaced by micro-chips this social condition no longer exists but the institutions that perpetuate them are still in the process of adapting. So yes, the public sphere does have a disposition for the masculine. It is still in the process of integrating the essence that woman brings to the table.

Consider that perhaps matriarchal societies vanished because the men were too pussy-struck to work for a future vision.

Matriarchal societies vanished because we as a species are/were in transition from horticultural to agricultural means of production. In horticultural societies farming was done with a stick which both men and women are equally capable of. No surprise then that the ratio of matriarchal to patriarchal horticultural societies is about 1 to 1. Agrarian societies use plows and heavy animals to do the farming. This requires upper body strength and can complicate pregnancies. So man and woman both chose these aspects of gender roles according to recent conditions setup several thousand years ago.

yougene wrote:Now that upper-body strength is being replaced by micro-chips .....

A replacement created and driven by men ......

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A replacement created and driven by men ......

Considering that the public sphere has been closed off to women for several thousand years I don't see how anyone else could have driven it.

I think the idea that men are the primary acting agents is a little partial. Sure socio-cultural structures have placed man as the acting agent of the public sphere, but at the same time there is a whole socio-cultural structure that man is dependent on.

It's easy to take the masculine view as ontologically primary and completely dismiss the feminine. But that is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Although qualitatively different the feminine is just as fundamental as the masculine.

Kelly Jones wrote:According to this article on the psychology of high-achievers, they function "almost independently of what is happening around them. They develop the power of contrary thinking and create a goal-focused cocoon in a world of negativity. These people see opportunity where others see problems, and that enables them to remain focused in the midst of turmoil. They are enthusiastic, but not blind optimists."

And, as Camille Paglia wrote, in Sexual Personae:

Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome.

Poor Paglia. To have been so weak as to need to annihilate, and not fulfil, her earlier visions, must have been a bitter pill to swallow.

What do you know about C Paglias annihilated visions?

Camille Paglia has published two distinctly different views on the relationship between women and philosophy (or genius, which is essentially the same thing).

From Sexual Personae (1990):

"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." - pg 38

"Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper." - pg 247

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. . . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species." - pg 653

--- but then!

From "Ten great female philosophers: the thinking woman's women" (2005):

"It has become tiresome to constantly blame every blip in women's lives on sexism and discrimination by men. Today's lack of major female philosophers is not due to lack of talent but to the collapse of philosophy. Philosophy as traditionally practised may be a dead genre. This is the age of the internet in which we are constantly flooded by information in fragments. Each person at the computer is embarked on a quest for and fabrication of his or her identity. The web mimics human neurology, and it is fundmentally altering young people's brains. The web, for good or ill, is instantaneous. Philosophy belongs to a vanished age of much slower and rhetorically formal inquiry. Today's philosophers are now antiquarians."

"... The term "female philosopher" doesn't even make sense to me. Simone de Beauvoir was a thinker rather than a philosopher. A philosopher for me is someone who is removed from everyday concerns and manipulates terms and concepts like counters on a grid or chessboard. Both Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, another favourite of mine, have their own highly influential system of thought, and therefore they belong on any list of great philosophers."

"... Now that women have at last gained access to higher education, we are waiting to see what they can achieve in the fields where men have distinguished themselves, above all in philosophy. At the moment, however, the genre of philosophy is not flourishing; systematic reasoning no longer has the prestige or cultural value that it once had."

"... I feel women in general are less comfortable than men in inhabiting a highly austere, cold, analytical space, such as the one which philosophy involves. Women as a whole - and there are obvious exceptions - are more drawn to practical, personal matters. It is not that they inherently lack a talent or aptitude for philosophy or higher mathematics, but rather that they are more unwilling than men to devote their lives to a frigid space from which the natural and the human have been eliminated."

However, Paglia did show back in 1994 that she herself viewed the highest liberation for a female as having control of her sexuality... So it is very possible that she never did understand that "meaning of life" is timeless. In which case her vision was not annihilated at all.


From Vamps & Tramps (1994):

"Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free comtemporary women than feminism itself." - pg 38

"The prostitute has come to symbolize for me the ultimate liberated woman, who lives on the edge and whose sexuality belongs to no one." - pg 58

You're dead right about her I think, she is limited.
Id ask her about Simone de Beauvoir- Well which is it, thinker or philosopher!?
She seem confused.
She write the books for particular audience so she take liberty to satisfy, remember she has to eat! I think is some of that.
Also
Her idea of philosophy is some man-made (mankind) thing, not a great quest.

You should write your own book about her 10 female philosophers, and she makes 11, but this time include real truth.
Advertise smartly and you then will sell at least half as many books. Easy project too.
If you write with skill maybe her defenses not rise up, then you reach her too.

(remember me when you become famous! maybe I earn a small cut for idea, ok)

yougene wrote:

DQ wrote:

Now that upper-body strength is being replaced by micro-chips .....

A replacement created and driven by men ......

Considering that the public sphere has been closed off to women for several thousand years I don't see how anyone else could have driven it.

Micro-chips have only been around for a few years.

I think the idea that men are the primary acting agents is a little partial. Sure socio-cultural structures have placed man as the acting agent of the public sphere, but at the same time there is a whole socio-cultural structure that man is dependent on.

The cultural structures themselves were originally created out of the biological differences between the sexes. As such, their roots are deeper than that of a mere contrivance.

It's easy to take the masculine view as ontologically primary and completely dismiss the feminine. But that is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Although qualitatively different the feminine is just as fundamental as the masculine.

If by "feminine" we mean a dim form of consciousness emanating from passivity, submissiveness, aimlessness, lack of logical skill, lack of empathy for truth, etc, then I'm pretty sure it is a quality we can do without.

-

This paragraph of Paglia's seems very stupid to me:

"... The term "female philosopher" doesn't even make sense to me. Simone de Beauvoir was a thinker rather than a philosopher. A philosopher for me is someone who is removed from everyday concerns and manipulates terms and concepts like counters on a grid or chessboard. Both Simone de Beauvoir and Ayn Rand, another favourite of mine, have their own highly influential system of thought, and therefore they belong on any list of great philosophers."

She begins by saying that Simone de Beauvoir was a thinker, and not a philosopher. And here Paglia is totally correct, for de Beauvoir was certain capable of thought, but she definitely wasn't a philosopher.

Paglia then ends the same paragraph by saying that de Beauvoir was a great philosopher!

Unless I've missed something, that is plain stupidity.

Her writing here reminds me of what one might expect to hear from some kind of Christian priest. Meaningless and spineless nonsense.

Women are out of excuses.

There is more than enough material in and orbiting around this website for a reasonable person to mentally chew on and annihilate any doubts about the nature of women. Put it to use and you'll pass through barriers others can't even see!