@Phoenix_Rising hello I see you around... I like your posts in TI today. I haven't had a chance to go back and properly read them. Something you have in one ties in with this.
@CheerBear ok for example... there was a podcast on rhetoric and ways it is used to persuade thinking. The focus was on marketing but it also touched on other ways it is deliberately utilised to sway our opinions without us realising. It highlighted a need to critical think and the importance of recognising these deliberate tactics of emotive language manipulation."
Now the way my mind works it takes this stuff and reworks it into an "ok how can I understand this so I can best relate and remember it " scenario. So I thought of the forum discussions over the weekend.
For example your interactions with the various mental health representatives, also there is a post today from phoenix to appleblossom on the turtle island thread that illustrates why this type of rhetoric mechanism is important to understand, even as individuals in our own reactions.
It delves into words being "triggers" for emotive reactions and how these reactions are based on pre-formulated responses we have unconsciously built or may have been deliberately built for us.
I'll use the impetus of Phoenix's post to give an illustration. She suggests to @Appleblossom a link between words and emotions. In this case it is "rules".
Now as you know, to Phoenix rules triggers calm. Phoenix likes rules because she feels it gives a sense of structure. Apple on the other hand seems to have an anxious reaction to the idea of rules, it makes her feel restricted and to some degree gives her a sense of entrapment. As you know, I don't like rules either but I don't feel trapped by them. I more just see them as blah blah whatever I'm going to live by my rules and they can tell me to do whatever. If I don't want to do it I'm not bothered by their rules they can shove them where the sun don't shine for all I care.
So.. if I was a marketing company and wanted to trigger fear or a state of anxiety into Phoenix, I'd suddenly send messages of immediate rule changes, that the old was immediately obsolete, that nothing was as it was before and the rules are now basically the opposite of what they were and the old must be swept away and replaced by the new right now, immediately and without delay or w e are all doomed and the world will end tomorrow. - Ok that maybe an exaggeration but you get the idea.
Whereas if I was a marketing company and wanted to make Appleblossom feel all at sea, I would send out messages of a whole lot of rules, designate they must be followed or a whole lot of adverse effects would be further imposed to restrict freedoms even further. Each time she stepped out of line I'd send her an email advising her to step back into line or else.
For me, the marketing company would probably lay down rules hey knew I would not follow, surveil me, then arrest me when I predictably broke them.
I found it interesting because not only does it give insight into how politics, marketing and "acceptable" culture is manipulated for us to perform the required way., it also is important for us on a personal level. Understanding what words might be having which effect on us, so we can start thinking through the emotions they bring up and cloud our thinking.
To me, and phoenix may disagree with me, but to me this also is the mechanism our brains are using for triggers in general and even the word trigger itself. I find it interesting that so many on the forum have a negative emotional reaction to the word trigger when to me I have a neutral response to it. For me we can have positive and negative triggers. I like to think I use positive triggers to nullify negative triggers.
I also notice the word boundaries is another one. I see boundaries in positive and negative contexts. I think setting boundaries, as in knowing your own set of "acceptables" and not allowing impingement of those, or at least defining our own set of parameters we choose to live by, as very positive. Whereas I find the more colloquial use of the term can feel quite offensive at times. When the term is used more as an abstract throwaway or ill-defined random nomenclature.
OK I've rambled... but I just found it very interesting and how it tied in with culture, forum dynamics as well as on a personal insight level.
