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My heritage can be traced to a location in Croatia just south of Zagreb. There are many towns in the UP that are primarily Norwegian and Scandinavian, but there has been a good deal of culture mix in recent decades as it's really a beautiful place to live. Kevin Costner has a place very near my grandparents house!
Thomas: "That the Yooper coming out. Yoopers also have a big thing for concrete expression. Generalization is a sin to the Yooper mind. That's was the reason for the zietz tragedy. You are a true Yooper, and I am so pleased to finely meet one. You should recognize, though, that the whole world is not Yooper, and we Loopers (lower down folks) can't think Yooper and don't want to."
Perhaps there is truth to this, but saying Yoopers are against generalization is a generalization~ ~ my mother is much unlike myself in this respect, she's a generalizer. I could see this being true though, and am wondering what biasing effects my birthplace might have on me. Oh dear, I need an outside perspective!
I think this is a great tangent for this thread, the benefits vs. negatives of generalization. If I'm biased in this regard, I'd love to critically discuss the matter. Yet, I'm still not sure I had anything to do with zeitz leaving since I caught onto that thread a few days after all the bickering started. If there's anyway to convince him to return I'd help.
Two apparent bottlenecks that I see are accuracy and rate of data exchange. The average person knows 60,000 to 70,000 words. Many of which they have the wrong meanings for or an altered meaning for - that is accuracy. Data exchange is the reasoning that people think faster than they talk, so the bottleneck in any conversation is language.
Just before this thread goes off on a tangent (splitting threads? splitting hairs? split ends?), i'd like to say something about this comment from the begining of the thread. Certainly, there are bottlenecks to effective verbal communication but that's why we spend a lot of time organizing how we will communicate, agreeing on a protocol of communication. Of course, we have to use language to establish this protocol so communication issues may arise at that point. Also, we may be in too big a hurry to spend much time on communication protocol, or we may feel it is not necessary is some circumstances. Still, I think we do establish protocols, and I think we often use non-verbal cues, body language and other means to 'message' about how we wish to communicate and be communicated with. And on the flipside, that ineffective protocols may be a barrier to communication.
Interbane wrote:My heritage can be traced to a location in Croatia just south of Zagreb.
Interbane, if I am not mistaken, you were raised Yooper. The basis for my various opinions about Yooper culture is the Michigan apparently-Yooper schoolbook "Creating Clear Images: A New English Book," 1970. Did you possibly have this English book in school? On the front it has a picture of father and son looking at a globe and with a fire on the hearth in the background. Your ideas sound like the ideas in this book.
. . . my mother is much unlike myself in this respect, she's a generalizer.
Interbane wrote:I'm still not sure I had anything to do with zeitz leaving since I caught onto that thread a few days after all the bickering started. If there's anyway to convince him to return I'd help.
Yes, it would be nice if Zietz came back, especially as he suggested Hitchins. Also, Mary Lupin was a brief but interesting contributor - missing since the 9/2 debacle. It is the nature of the internet that you need a thick skin, politesse and persistence to participate in a forum like Booktalk. I got the impression that Zietz stormed off in a huff over an inconsequential difference with Richards1000, who was also a newbie. Zietz is an interesting example of communications bottlenecks.
Robert Tulip wrote:. . .it would be nice if Zietz came back. . .
Robert, zietz did make the faux pas of pulling academic rank, but some things are hard to say and cannot be said in a hostile atmosphere. I think he made the right choice. Anyway, here is his blog:
Well, I got annoyed with zeits, because he seemed to come on like a ton of bricks.....We couldn't know what credentials he had to lecture us.... I didn't realise that the title of his thread was the title of a lecture. I thought it was the title of a debate.
I shouldn't have jumped in with both feet....and I won't do it again.
I am not really sorry that I (personally) challenged his right to lecture us. I am however, very sorry, if I was instrumental in discouraging him from saying something that he really wanted/needed to say...... and that some people were very keen to hear.
Perhaps part of the protocol might be to announce whether a thread is meant to be a debate or a lecture.
I never stoop to personal abuse. If I don't like a poster's company, I just ignore or avoid them and I expect that person to do the same to me. And I try not to go off in the huff. Although I do go off to get my breath back and smooth my ruffled feathers from time to time.
Only those become weary of angling who bring nothing to it but the idea of catching fish.
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad....
You are a gentle, kind soul with a loving spirit. Thank you for taking the time to welcome me back. You are an inspiration to all you come in contact with. Bless you my dear.
"A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling." - Arthur Brisbane
Thomas: "The basis for my various opinions about Yooper culture is the Michigan apparently-Yooper schoolbook "Creating Clear Images: A New English Book," 1970. Did you possibly have this English book in school?"
Never heard of that book, but I'm interested. As I mentioned, being raised in the 80's and 90's, cultural entropy had by then diluted much of the yummy heritage the area had. The same is true of North Dakota, where I'd lived for 4 years. I realized a bit of this dynamic when I visited my girlfriends grandparents. They were almost a world removed from the younger generation, with thick accents, odd knickknacks, unique cooking, and interesting perspectives. I'm often teased about my Yooper accent, so I know that the culture has affected me regardless of dilution.
giselle: "...that's why we spend a lot of time organizing how we will communicate, agreeing on a protocol of communication."
Good point. This points out something to me that it would be fun to explore. Somewhere, I can't remember, I read that there is no thought without language. Our 'nuggets' of thought are also 'nuggets' of language, words or groups of words. In restructuring the delivery of a concept, it would also then seem that you'd need to restructure the thought, if that makes sense. I really wish there was a super-imaging real time 3D monitor that we could use on our brains to discover precisely what happens at the neuronal level when forming a concept into words.
The problem I often have is that I(and I assume everyone else) thinks in a hybrid visual and linguistic format. There's also something of a 'thought-ether', where some of our thoughts are neither visual nor linguistic, but something more ambiguous and harder to define. I'm not speaking of emotions, which are similar in type, but something purely conceptual and epistemological. I think Platonic forms are of this type, where a notion has more of a 'feel' to it that when communicated loses some of it's potency.
Robert and I are having an interesting discussion and it touches on this. We can't divorce our understanding of reality from reality itself, we are locked into using the brains we have. Even the understanding of an archimedian point is still in our heads. I used the example of footprints in the sand as a sample pattern. We can reason that a creature made the footprints, and perhaps even see the creature in the distance. The connection we make in our head between the creature and the footprints 'feels' as though it has substance, but the only substance there is is a mental association. Yes, the creature made the footprints, but again that is a necessary mnemonic construction to aid our understanding.
These connections I think are what makes up most of what people consider 'metaphysical'. It feels so very real, but that is simply because we've made a mental association. This is a tough concept to pin down and I'm interested in feedback.
~ my mother is much unlike myself in this respect, she's a generalizer. I could see this being true though, and am wondering what biasing effects my birthplace might have on me. Oh dear, I need an outside perspective! 
