--- In beyondismscience 41, HarkenBane wrote:
> > With one notable exception, the Jews I have known
> > have not struck me as especially disagreeable, but
> > that may be a lucky accident.
> You know, that may be because Jews are intelligent. Personal
> experience suggests that smart disagreeable people easily
> fool others into thinking they're nice, friendly, team
> players. This is probably how politicians do it!

Perhaps they have a strong need to believe that they agree
with "good" people and "disagree" with bad people and
reinterpret anything said to them -- by persons they are
having pleasant conversations with -- as being along lines
that they already agree with.

It seems to me that I have had this experience. Example:
I try to explain some novel interpretation to someone and
he superficially agrees and says that that is how he has
always seen things -- then it becomes clear that he is
projecting his own non-novel interpretation onto my words,
no matter what phrasing and rephrasing I use. It sometimes
gets to the point where the person is almost violently
insisting that my interpretation is not novel and in fact
perfectly in agreement with his own -- apparent to me --
starkly opposing interpretation.

There is the concept in the study of Borderline
Personality Disorder (BPD) called "splitting." It involves
interpreting individuals only as either pure good or
pure evil. It seems to me that when a person is
interpreted by a splitter as a Good that everything he
says must be reinterpreted as agreeing with everthing the
splitter already thinks is true.

That would be a Plotonic ideal case, and perhaps we see
a little bit of splitting action in everyone -- and
perhaps more often in certain races and populations.


-Chris