--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Ann" <awoelflebater@...> wrote:
> Thanks for taking the time to re-answer this. I was originally asking the Almighty Barry for his feedback but I appreciate yours. Let's see if I can make any sense of it and, in turn, offer something that appeals to your sensibility. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> wrote: >>> *What overriding character trait must a button pusher possess in order to want to push people's buttons? >> They must have a human nervous system, but 'character trait' is an attempt to create a definition for a certain kind of behaviour. > "Character trait" is simply describing or attributing a characteristic of someone's actions to something else. You can play the objective, disassociated party all you want Xeno, but bottom line, different people have different characters and different traits that go along with those characters. We are not some nebulous, miasma floating around in some indefinable goo. We have edges and colours and definition. On some level we are not just some abstract Absolute; a part of us actually exists and functions and has substance. On some level we are precisely abstract absolute. I do not know what overriding character trait is associated with button pushing. Anybody can push a button. I stand by what I said that when someone behaves in a particular way, we give a character trait as a definition for that behaviour, we say things like 'this is an aggressive individual', or 'he or she is pushy'. >> In the US, Democrats push Republican buttons and vice versa. You could reverse the argument and ask what character trait does a button pushee have that allows them to get their buttons pushed? Among these would be a characteristic that one possess a system of belief that does not accurately represent reality. When a discrepancy in this conglomerate of beliefs is pointed out, the button gets pushed. There are also non-conceptual buttons, such as being tickled if you are ticklish. I think the main characteristic falls on we who get our buttons pushed. By blaming someone else, we don't have to clean our own house. > Come onnnn. You are human, are you not? I mean, I think you are but you don't act human at least half of the time. You speak in complete abstractions. These abstractions, in turn, end up being meaningless because they aren't actually focused or therefore relevant... [Xeno as alien] Shhhhh... don't tell Nabby. > ...You also seem to believe that if someone reacts or even interacts with another that somehow this indicates that their buttons have been pushed. This is simply not so. Just because some people can be odiously assholish doesn't mean they have pushed buttons. It means they probably prompted someone to call them on their lying or their misrepresentation or their shortsightedness. There are those who exist to try and piss others off as if this is somehow a worthy cause. I guess I need a definition of "button" from you because it seems like you are perceiving anyone who takes exception to lies or rudeness is somehow to blame for something. Take a look at your last sentence in the paragraph above. If you like ice cream and get some and enjoy it, there are buttons being pushed. I think there are always going to be buttons. Stimulus response. I really do not restrict button pushing to what Barry does here on FFL. If you are arguing with me over a point here, it means some button got pushed. But not in a malicious sense. It is a continuum more or less. We are discussing certain stimulus responses that have certain characteristics, and to which you but not I seem to also want to characterise as having motivations of a personal nature. I was not talking about blame, that is the person who is at the butt of button pushing is to blame. It was more in the line of 'judge not lest ye be judged'. This is something that can be interpreted on many levels, so I have to explain that. On one level, one could pretend one is not bothered by certain behaviour, while nonetheless being bothered. One could adopt a stance that one is intellectually neutral toward, but the deeper emotional level may not be so neutral, even if the intellect manages to be fairly balanced. One of the effects of spiritual discipline is that eventually, if you have enough time, the mind begins to appreciate and understand activity on a wider scale of operation - seeing the universe as a kind of mechanism that functions on a scale of overriding laws, and that the stance of an individual will is not seen as being real. In that case you cannot see people as being in any way responsible for their actions. That is the meaning when, for example, Jesus is reputed to have said 'Forgive them for they know not what they do.' It is like you do not see individuals doing things, you see physics, chemistry, and biology doing things. In this state, if you want to curse something for 'bad behaviour', and you have a religious bent, then you have to curse god directly, because that is where it all comes from. You cannot go further to assign blame. At this level you cannot do anything anyway to 'fix' or change the situation because it is absolute, you are stuck. You can of course still play the blame game, but in doing so you destroy your greater integrity, which is the whole universe. If you do not see the universe in this way, your greater integrity is already unavailable to you and you can and probably will assign blame. This does not mean we cannot do things to attempt to modify a person's behaviour. But nothing really works until they themselves see their behaviour in a larger panorama of experience. Unless you lock them up and throw away the key, or get out of the range of their influence, they will not stop. So retreat is an option. You just get out of the way of the button pusher. There is this story I read some time ago on the Internet about a Zen master who was discussing something with one of his students, and a loud-mouthed pushy guy from town comes into the monastery demanding to be heard and paid attention to. No one could get through to the guy, and the master had to take his student outside of the hall to continue his conversation with him. A couple of years ago I attended a lecture in New York given by Adyashanti. He said a couple of things about behaviour. One is if a student gets a partial awakening, they sometimes become unmanageable, they will not listen to reason, it is nearly impossible to get through to them. If you have an unawakened inveterate button pusher they not going to just magically transform into a docile agreeable person because you think they are bad. Partially awake or unawake pretty much comes out the same - there is behaviour that will not change until the person realises what he or she is doing on a larger scale than personal interaction. Now here is a fun one. Adyashanti said he see things visually, in images. And family is the most likely to know what your buttons are. He says his wife then describes images to him that he does not like, and then giggles, once the effect has made its mark. >> Button pushing does get out of hand in human civilisation. War is the best example. The divergence in conceptual thinking is so great, the only way to eliminate it is to remove one or both sides of the equation. Look at what happened recently in Egypt. > I would venture to say that the escalation toward war would be best described as something other than "button pushing". There has to be a far more powerful set of forces congealing together in order to crescendo into what we define as war. Pushing buttons is the stuff of web forums and schoolyards. You seem to be experiencing the world on a much more personal level than I do. That definitely does not mean the way I see things is better, but it is different. Unless one of my buttons gets pushed in a very particular way, I tend not to see people as intentional entities or souls but rather as a bundle of properties that move in certain ways, some predictable, and some unpredictable. In other words characterising them as a person is a perceptual mistake. I can call them by a name they say they go by, and interact with them 'as if' the person hypothesis was true, even though I do not see it as true. >>> *Does a button pusher ever admit to themselves that perhaps what they call button pushing is merely an unsavoury character trait possessed by the button pusher that others take a disliking to? >> Maybe they do and maybe they do not. But by putting the onus on another person, you do not see that it takes two to tango. > Not always. There is often the instigator, the one who begins the volley. What the other does with the ball that lands in their court is something else. There can be an onus; life is not always this hazy, grey indefinable mush as you seem to indicate here. People really can offend, can splatter a bag of shit in someone's face. Theoretical is not real life, Xeno. If that person were in an empty field, and spewed forth that very same venom, and you were not there, and no one heard what was said except the person who said it, where is the offense? You have to be there and provide a template for that venom to work. Even if someone initiates the volley, why do you feel you have to respond? Every situation we get ourselves into (making the assumption, which I think false, that we are in control) is an opportunity to experience how we react, an opportunity to reduce the size of our buttons. This does not happen if we do not allow the button pusher the maximum amount of space to target us. If we constrict our mind in the attempt to impugn them, to ward off the attack, we reduce our manoeuvring room to respond with a wider choice of options. You can blame, say Barry, all you want, but then you are in collusion with him, you become a partner in the equation. The dance dances on. >>> *Is this 'reaction' ever valid or warranted by the pushees? >> First of all it happens. What happens and how the pushee responds and evaluates, and how the pushee feels their response is warranted or valid depends on their internal world view. The button pusher probably does not share that world view, and in their mind, the stimulus is both warranted and valid. > Perhaps. I think some button pushers just do it because it makes them happy, gives them smug satisfaction. Button pushers must lack excitement, stimulation in their lives as evidenced by the fact that they have to create petty drama and draw attention to themselves as a result. In Barry's case he sucks it towards himself then pretends he isn't getting off on it. He is constantly masturbating under the covers. If you respond so, he has succeeded in his quest. But like Judy you have a well defined way of interpreting what others are thinking. I like to leave it as a mystery, because I do not really know what goes on in another person's head. I discovered through long experience that interpreting what other people do through the lens of my own mind does not work very well. >>> *And finally teacher, what does is say about a person who sits by and allows others to throw shit around the room and not get up and at least leave or, better still, confront the shit thrower? >> Some of us are our brother's keeper, and some of us are not. It is a fluid social situation. This situation does not exist if the stimulus response is restricted to just the two - the button pusher, and the person with buttons. The people closest to you, like family, probably know more about how to push your buttons than anyone. When there is a group, battle lines may be drawn. It tends to happen here on FFL. > I am not sure how this relates to my question. If there are only two people involved, there are no others than you to receive shit. Three or more, you can confront one of the two others, if one of those is not involved in the attack. If both are involved you can fight two if you like. People want to defend their view of the world. I do, Barry does, you do, Judy does. When we confront something we do not like, just who are we defending? Shall I claim I am doing whatever I am doing to 'defend all the defenseless children of the world'. That is a smoke screen because that is an excuse to cover that whatever 'I' am doing, 'I' am doing because 'I' do not like something. It is an attempt to divert attention away from the real source of the the confrontation, which is 'my view of the world is the right view'. If you get up and confront, you may be having other buttons pushed than the one the button pusher is trying to trigger. It is OK to defend someone, although here on FFL, everyone seems to carry their own weight most of the time. I expect them to, even though that might not be true they can do it. >> The tendency to defend another may be a function of how defenseless a button pushee is in relation to those who push. When I was in middle school, there was a retarded kid who would get flack from the bully types. I felt a tendency to get between them and at the very least not make fun of the kid, which is actually difficult at that age - peer pressure and all. I think the family of that boy wanted him to go to school in as normal an environment as possible, or perhaps could not afford a special school. It must have been some kind of special dispensation, because the boy could not perform at the grade level he had been placed in. >> Even if we fail, the onus is on us to be a strong as possible in the face of adversity. >> If worse comes to worse, you just have to kill the bastard(s) or die yourself. (Sometimes they are bitches.) > Well, I think in this situation (we are only talking about Barry, after all) that won't be necessary. A well placed jab to the metaphorical solar plexus is all that's usually required. Barry and Judy have been sending volleys back and forth for what, 17 years? Isn't romance wonderful? If you care to respond to any of this, I will be travelling for some days hence, and may not have the opportunity to reply for awhile.
