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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9711891" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Again I do not see any desire for belonging. I see "experience this thing I made." I have already said why "have an experience over which I have total control" does not, to me, look even slightly like seeking belonging. This is just a different flavor thereof, where it's an abstract assemblage rather than a physical toy made of plastic or whatever material.Like, one of THE greatest problems with the human need for belonging is how much it results in people experiencing the brutal consequences of enforced conformity. Belonging arises heavily--almost totally, I would say--out of submitting oneself to the judgment, and thus control, of others, unless it specifically takes the form of acceptance, where a person is allowed to belong with very minimal judgment. But even in that situation, acceptance, it requires the person receiving it is showing vulnerability. I don't see vulnerability in this--at all. I see control. I see a world criscrossed by those "bright lines" I mentioned in a recent reply to someone else. I see a person who..."expects prompt and uniform acquiescence", if you will, since my terminology is apparently disliked...which has nothing whatsoever with showing vulnerability to others, with desiring to connect with others.To quote one of the best-written (but, as I've seen recently, not the best-coded) video games of all time: "The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning." We seek belonging-ness because we need it, and because we need it, we kinda get a little bent out of shape about it--in both directions. Someone exerting this much power over others isn't doing that to seek belonging-ness. They might, potentially, be trying to communicate, but that's a very different thing.Connecting with others requires respecting them as peers--not ensuring the strict and perfectly enforced hierarchy where I'm on top and everyone else is beneath me. (There are some very evocative parallels I could draw here, but I don't think they would be appreciated. Suffice it to say I think this specific thing is an incredibly, cosmologically important concept here in our own real world.)</blockquote>

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