Paphitis wrote:I can't help the way I feel mate. You just have that look that triggers something. I can't explain it.
Doubt 'looks' has much to do with it. People often respond to being challenge over their beliefs with anger.
Some highly edited excerpts from the most excellent book "The Consolations of Philosophy" by Alain de Botton from the section on Socrates (which luckily I already had to hand in electronic format and forum post format)
Every society has notions of what one should believe and how one should behave in order to avoid suspicion and unpopularity. Some of these societal conventions are given explicit formulation in a legal code, others are more intuitively held as a vast body of ethical and practical judgements described as 'common sense', ... To start questioning these conventions would seem bizarre, even aggressive
They [contemporaries of Socrates] would have been confounded and angered to be asked exactly why they sacrificed cocks to Asclepius or why men needed to kill to be virtuous.It would have appeared as obtuse as wondering why spring followed winter or why ice was cold.
But it is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. We stifle our doubts and follow the flock because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown, difficult truths.
Socrates spent much time out of the house, conversing with friends in the public places of Athens [forums]. But his most curious feature was a habit of approaching Athenians of every class, age and occupation and bluntly asking them, without worrying whether they would think him eccentric or infuriating, to explain with precision why they held certain common-sense beliefs
If we refrain from questioning the status quo, it is primarily because we associate what is popular with what is right. Socrates raised a plethora of questions to determine whether what was popular happened to make any sense. Many found the questions maddening. Some teased him. A few would kill him.
And NO I am not comparing myself with Socrates, in terms of intellect or anything else. Just offering a rational possible explanation for your apparent expressed 'hatred' or 'dislike' of me that to me is more conniving than 'how I look'.
