[ganzuul]

But are you on the path of self-liberation yourself? 'The police man in your head' doesn't need the vestiges of technology to take control over your life. Just having children to care for makes being wild like an animal near impossible.

Who is in control? Who wrote the narrative of your life? Who decided to believe in that story?

[re-al]

These are great questions.

I am absolutely on the path to self-liberation - the policeman in my head is gone. Its been a work of years.

Why do you say wild animal? Are you a wild animal if someone doesn't tell you what to do? I think you need to check your assumptions. We are naturally joyful, trusting creatures, but this is used against us.

And having children personally made me double up my efforts. I needed to find answers - I didn't want to commit my children to automaton living.

I was not in control - I was not the author of my life. I was provided a story, and that is now rejected. I write my own story - and fyi here is a good essay that captures how I feel:

https://kateofgaia.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/behold-a-whit...

The job we have - as I see it - is to act according to what we know. There is a big difference between what you know and what you *think* you know. Eg, do you know your date of birth? No, you do not. You do not remember it - you only know what you are told. Knowing is personally verifying! Say what you see and don't lie to yourself or others.

If you do not personally verify the stories you are told, you will be 'lost in stories'. Someone else (not you) is controlling the narrative. Technology is just the latest iteration of the stories - we also have government, religion, law, our 'educated' peers, etc.

[ganzuul]

I tried to say 'wild like an animal' to make a distinction from the familiar concept of a 'wild animal'.

A wild human animal is not domesticated and does not care about what society thinks is normal acceptable behavior. It treats feeling as equal with reason; both mere qualia to be either utilized or disregarded...

I'm sure naturalists will gladly heap entire dictionaries of verbage on what I'm trying to communicate: all explainable in an instant by an upredictable, fundamentally not-safe look in one's eyes.

[captainredbeard]

You might have control preferences which are not shared across the population.

[ganzuul]

I would assume that control preferences form a distribution, mine one among many.

[afpx]

It sounds like you’re saying to not trust reason without evidence. For example, it’s reasonable to believe climate change exists because the news reports that climate scientists overwhelmingly state that it exists. With that knowledge, I may reason that the likelihood of that claim being wrong is little. Do I need to actually read all of their research to believe that?

[bsenftner]

I tend to think the issue is learning not to trust, not to grant unreserved trust to anything without the ability to either verify personally, or the issue at hand exists in an environment of shared verification, an environment where it is possible if not easy to verify and many do, which they then make public.

In addition, the issue of learning to live with uncertainty, being mature to the degree that unknowable answers and their questions simply set in an unknowable and ripe for exploitation category in one's mind. Grasping the power granted to others when they claim answers to unknowable questions is the true source of evil in this human society.

[re-al]

My thinking exactly! Do not extend trust - extend the attempt to try to verify, if you think the matter is important.

On living with uncertainty - this seems to be our major struggle. We can't say "I don't know", we would rather the life-raft of a comfortable story that assuages us. Most of us are both arrogant not because we know/have verified but because of stories/beliefs. It is hybris!

[captainredbeard]

That only holds water if the news orgs are truthful