The baby and the bathwater...

[fajrdrako]

If the temperature in the bathtub is raised only one degree every ten minutes, how does the bather know when to start screaming? - Marshall McLuhan, 1911 - 1980

When it starts to hurt, of course. This is one of those statements which - it seems to me - confuses the theory of an event with the experience of an event. We don't scream because water burns us at a certain temperature, we scream because it hurts. Doesn't matter what the temperature is. Pain is pain.

Reality does not depend on our knowledge or understanding of it.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

superficial thinking, in my opinion.

It's applying subjective experience to a situation where subjectivity is beside the point.

lift a calf the day it is born, and lift it on every day after that, and before you know it, it weighs 300 pounds and you still are lifting it

The moral to that story is: Lift weights every day, and you'll be strong!

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

The moral to that story is: Lift weights every day, and you'll be strong!

Or: believe, and you can. You do create your own reality. Something like that.

I encounter smaller versions of this daily, with my coworkers who refuse to speak up to stop jobsite bullying "because it won't do any good even if I do." Therefore, the bullying goes on, and their helplessness continues, and at a certain point you'd think they'd realize what a self-fulfilling prophecy that has become...? But they do not.

Anyway. If you believe you can't, then you can't -- hm?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I certainly believe that if you think you can't, you can't.

I'm not sure if I believe that you can if you think you can. I do believe it's usually worth trying - sucess is not a guarantee in this world, but you'll never know unless you try. And sometimes (as with the bullying), trying is very important.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Agreed, "I think I can" does not mean you actually can. But trying is what matters. And, as for the bullying, if you try to stand up against it and fail, that's also a success, because someone else will then try, and someone after that, until you can all stand up together -- and that will do it. Fear is a great motivator, but people also have a strong need to protect other people, I have seen.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

True on all points.