Sophists can make the lesser appear the greater reasoning....through rationalization; yet, this does not make it the Truth...They are satisfied to have, even by confusion, convinced others that their thinking is of a high consciousness.  The "noble" mind seeks, in humbleness, to discover and be transformed by thinking less governed by the reptile brain...  I refer to "rationalization" in the sense of logical justification of one's philosophy, life and actions through even the most arcane and convoluted logic.......i.e.  Hitler's rationalizations for killing Jews, Homosexuals or others that deviated from his "suitable for Life" lists....transformative expression of Ego.....So many "words" have so many meanings relative to the context  within which they appear or in which they are utilized, of course.....and unenlightened creatures utilize whatever means that are accessible to convince others that they are "right".  It is the goal of enlightenment, of Buddahood, to find the Truth which is "made" manifest in The Good Life of devotion to the evolution of Mind....This evolution is demonstrated by the Lives of the wise, sentient and compassionate, who strive for the advancement of humanity over their own desires for power and control.  Certainty is a "thing" sought by the naive, who are but a synapse beyond dogma and romantic infatuation with Platonic thinking......The brave must survive without the commiserations of self-satisfaction.........Although we may seek to "starve" the ego, shriveling it to invisibility......it will rehydrate when it seeks and gains audience......It is the gizzard at the top of the brain stem....the hard-wired mechanism for survival as a Creature, largely unchanged....even by a million years of evolution......still pillaging the halls of Heorot....The Path is not through the jungle or in the clouds.....The Path is a garden of forking paths (Borges).....within which we must trust the Mind's eye to find our Way.  It is not the disingenuous Ego that is illusory,  but the presumption that we are anywhere approaching Enlightenment, which will always be at great distance from where one is......

    Mystic Journey - ancient sounds of the Diruba by Gopal

MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE

Demetrios: Does hate-filled speech and/or writings actually create/enable the mindset to harm others and/or oneself? I am of the mind that sees that the individual is responsible for their own triggers. Mind you, this is not held as an absolute, as there is the issue that people are susceptible to suggestion. Yet, rather than deny people a voice, we may find it beneficial to address why such triggers exist within.

Reed: My fear for Civilization is the irrational "fingers" of the "trigger-happy" elements of every culture who are all too reactive in their efforts to level the playing fields of hopefulness to rubble in their avoidance of social responsibility and their compulsivity to reject the wisdom that could, if unconfronted by their anger and resentment, bring them at least within sight of peaceful accordance with those whom they hold responsible for their plights. Blame is a far more primitive mechanism than acceptance and is far more accessible to unenlightened masses of humanity, alas.....I certainly believe that the evolution of consciousness is perhaps the only means to quell the unconscious mechanics of anger and aggression.....We Utopian dreamers dream of Heaven, but " Heaven is a place.......A place where nothing, Nothing ever happens...D. Byrne" The voice of unison is behind the clouds of willful imagining and beyond the dreams of those who have forgotten their own hopes, and who, in this tragic loss, target the hopes of others.

Demetrios: Reed, what you just wrote can pretty much work as a great opening paragraph in a novel! :D I too, wonder about this evolution of consciousness. It may just be that our consciousness is static and that the memes that we plug or feed into it are the l'il culprits. Memes acting like tricksters commonly found within those mythology stories.

Reed: One reason that i refer to "consciousness" is that genetic propensities, as well as cultural memes, are born from what was before, whereas consciousness develops from assimilative meditative thinking and cognition, then alters genetic makeup during the process....this process, however, is a fragile one which is easily transmogrified by even an approving look or gestural negation, evolving (not always a good thing....but that is a matter for another realm of analytics, isn't it?) toward what is perceived and accepted as "right" or beneficial, the Ego directing these twists and turns of development to it's own aggrandizement, thereby failing the greater, more subtle needs of humanity, the growth having been directed not toward illumination, but toward power.

Heartstrings by Daniel Berkman