hey. yeah, i think i get you. it is hard, though... examples help. loads of examples. i've encountered some good ones over the years, but i have an immense difficulty remembering them.

i remember this statement that came from somewhere: 'people have a preference for single mindedness over completeness'. the thought is that when you get contradictory / conflicting cues from your visual system (e.g., in binocular rivalry setups) people report rapidly shifting percepts rather than experiencing an integrated whole. we see the duck, then the rabbit, then the duck, then the rabbit. one can't really see the duck rabbit, though, because of our preference for singlemindedness over completeness.

sigh. maybe that is what makes dialectics so hard? fairly easy (fairly natural) to swing from one pole to the other pole to the one pole to the other pole. figuring out a synthesis can be much harder, though... so hard... superstring theory isn't progressing so well either. sigh.

i do hear what you are saying though, i think.

bobo... there is something weird going on there. it does take considerable energy to hate him so. it does hurt me so much to hate him so. and yet... i continue to hate. maybe i bundled up all the hate in my life and threw it his way 'cause he is about the safest person in my life for me to hate? he knows i'm not going to physically hurt him or attempt to sue him or whatever... that it isn't all hate all the way down. i don't know. don't know what is going on there. can't figure out appropriate assertiveness, maybe. it is NOT okay how he hurts people. it is unacceptable. but... there is nothing to be done and there it is. i wonder sometimes if hating him scares him away. i hope so. because given the way he acts... i really do have trouble seeing how things are better off for having him around. horrible huh. i wonder if he has risen to meet the way i represent him as i rose to meet the way he represented me? maybe....