#im curious what the general consensus is...

[sga-owns-my-soul]

new chapter in the i'm curious time for a poll series

[gayford]

ok real question time bc ive seen both takes but do you think ford actually called fiddleford "f" as a nickname or just wrote it that way in the journal for his own sake

[unplanned-parenthood]

conducting an experiment. this is an iykyk situation. idk why i keep using this blog as if it's a survey page lately but. it doesn't matter. (there's a right answer. in my opinion. and i will judge if it loses)

i'm putting the options under the cut bc they're pretty long but the poll is up here if you want to press a button just because:

Option #1:

By nature, you want to be in charge of your world and are attracted to the noble cause. You wish to shield others from harm and challenge what is unjust. You want to know the rules to feel safe to break them. Your life mission is to track the needs of the vulnerable and take action on their behalf. A true rescuer, you are happiest when you can use your people skills and desire to protect others to help those that feel alone, desperate and are in a crisis. Your blind spot is that you can be so identified with the pride of knowing how to help others that you may give unsolicited advice or meddle in the affairs of others. You over-give to others to be well-liked, which prevents a deeper connection to your true self. Your growing edge is to recognize that always rescuing others does not mean that you will always be liked and cared for in return, and that it may prevent them from learning how to care for themselves. True protection comes from listening to higher guidance and knowing when to assist others and when to let them learn for themselves.

Option #2:

You like people and want to find ways to engage with them. Your sense of pride comes from getting along with others and being of assistance. You are known for your easygoing and friendly disposition. Your life mission is to identify what is problematic and needed, then find peaceful solutions for those concerned. A true trouble-shooter, you are happiest when you can help others in conflict bridge their differences. Your blind spot is that you can be so focused on being a peacemaker, tending to the needs of others and getting along with them that you can fail to voice your own truth and act in a timely manner. You are overly identified with being a 'nice' person. Your growing edge is to recognize that being nice does not always create peace and that being passive does not mean that you are nice. True charity comes from listening to your heart and acting in accordance with what is needed without strings attached even if it causes conflict.

[starshinew]

rb sample size etc etc

[gootrude]

imo both answers make sense in different ways, i could see her crush on akio as genuine feelings being used against her or as comphet + being overwhelmed/anxious around him and interpreting that as feelings (also she is being groomed to like him it's very calculated on his end). the only wrong answer here is straight utena

[quietpossum]

Is Knuckles with Regular Gloves cursed

[lilyflower06]

Finished Dv3 and head full of thoughts rn...

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Hi! So, seeing you in my notes reminded me that I meant to ask you about that Instrumentality poll. Being as I am tumblr user 人類補完計画, I have, asyoumightimagine, a lot of interest in the topic, and I'd be very curious to hear *your* thoughts on Shinji's choice - in part because you mentioned in the tags that you were wondering whether your take aligned with the consensus view, but also because I feel like you're among the most distinctive & intellectually honest philosophical voices I've encountered on here, and I do wonder how your faith, along with your overall view on things, influences your take(s) re:EoE.

I was going to wait until the poll finally closed but i think its been plateauing for a couple of days now anyway so i might as well. This is all going to be pretty vague and mysticism-y ofc, especially given the vagueness and mysticism of the source material itself, and im going off of memory on top of that (i am not putting myself thru the emotional hurdle of rewatching EoE just for a post, sorry)

So, first off, my interpretation of shinjis ultimate choice is to reject instrumentality for all of humanity, to retain our ATFs and our individuality. And i lean towards thinking this was a mistake, on his part. I sometimes see ppl suggest that he offered everyone a choice to either join or refuse instrumentality, but i tend to think this is just projection; idr anything in the text to clearly support this

Im not really sure how to go about arguing for this position directly, beyond rebutting objections. To the extent we are given a clear explanation of what an ATF is, it is smth like the secrecy of our own thoughts and desires and personality; ie, others ignorance of those things. Ignorance is a terrible thing, just generally, in itself! Like impotence. Its terrible in proportion to the importance/value of the things one is ignorant of, and ppl are about the most valuable things there are. Thats much of whats so bad about death, which is why it makes perfect sense the dead get to join in HI as well. So, putting it all together, the presence of ATFs is a terrible imposition, and their removal thru HI is a great blessing, maybe even the greatest possible blessing. And this shows itself in the end of strife and discord and the beginning of real unity of spirit and will, but its already present in the mere dissolution of interpersonal ignorance

The narrative itself frames this as an erasure of individuality, but im not sure how to understand this. Is the idea supposed to be that we would not survive the loss of our ATFs? Im not sure thats even intelligible: the loss of our ATFs is just the lifting of certain kinds of ignorance or, in other words, the instilling of certain kinds of knowledge. Knowledge in whom? In those undergoing human instrumentality. So clearly we survive HI, if it involves us coming into knowledge, and thus being around to know these things. Is this supposed to mean our distinctive contributions to the diversity of human experience etc would all be destroyed in favour of some uniform replacement? I dont see why that would be necessary; we can certainly imagine ways ppls varying idiosyncratic quirks can all "make it into" some sufficiently rich collaborative work. Why should HI not be the same? I suppose the fact it involves everyones bodies into a homogeneous sea of yellow goop speaks against this, but my inclination is to read this as a sort of pupal stage from which a mature instrumentalised humanity can emerge. Tho thats admittedly a bit of a reach

Theres yet another negative interpretation of the "destruction of individuality" i sometimes hear: that it would somehow rob us each of our agency and ability to shape the world in accord with our desires and beliefs. This goes along with a worry that the inauguration of HI would necessarily be a violation of consent and mental autonomy, which strikes me as misguided for much the same reason. Our ignorance of one another is not an individual condition of oneself in particular one can opt in or out of irrespective of the choices of others; if my not being able to retsin my ATF is a violation of my "autonomy", why is my retaining my ATF not in turn a violation of the autonomy of the others being thereby kept ignorant of my deepest self? Mutual ignorance of one anothers mental states (including that very ignorance) is in no interesting way reducible to the ignorant subjects each having certain "individual" or "intrinsic" or "internal" states that can individually and unilaterally be shifted without affecting those of the others; it is an "external" relation. So thinking about HI in terms of individual, unilaterally revocable consent is confused; the fact it is changing is irreducibly collective, and thus consent to it and only be given or refused collectively if at all. Hopefully thats not too opaque

This reply feeds into my answer to the worry about the dilution of ones agency and control over the world. This objection makes sense against a background view on which, for an agent A to control the answer to a question Q and a distinct agent A* to control the answer to a question Q*, Q and Q* must be modally independent: any answer to the latter must be compossible with any answer to the former. Or that, if this isnt true, this is bc As control over Q or A*s over Q* must be only "limited" or "partial" or w/e. My rejection of this assumption (which is i think what lies behind the last objection about autonomy) is probably my deepest, most abstract anti-liberal commitment. Its a conception of control or freedom that i think ultimately requires a debilitatingly narrow view of what full freedom could look like, or of what facts can amount to states of a person. (For example, i think it prolly requires you to say that knowing that the sun rises, a property entailing the "external" fact that the sun rises, is not actually a state of a person, in some important sense, rather than smth like a conjunction of a state of a person and a state of the horizon/sun.) But going all the way into this would probably take a lengthy book; mb i will try to work it out slightly more precisely at some point tho

You asked how my feeling about EoE connect with my faith, and broader view of the world. This illiberal assumption is close to the heart of it. I am always tempted in this context to quote marxs comments in the 1848 manuscripts about the whole of nature being the "inorganic body of man", and i dont think im alone in seeing connections between those passages and remarks like pauls about the mystical body of the church ("So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." Now there is smth for mereologists to chew on!!) And this is a trend you see elsewhere in the Christian tradition, like dantes description of the celestial eagle in paradiso xviii-xx. I was surprised, when talking to an atheist friend about my tentative support for HI, that they said my christianity made sense of my disagreement with them about this point; not bc i dont think theres a connection but bc idt of these emphases on the unity of the mystical body as particularly prominent in outsiders impressions of Christian belief

Anyway, hopefully that was at least somewhat illuminating. Thx for the kind words ^^

[sad-leon]

Im curious

how many minutes would be considered mentally ill on spotify

because my minutes listened to are wild I wanna see what the general consensus is alskdjflaskdjf

all /lighthearted of course