What's our real stance toward the CyCons

[Enigma_Nova]

Yes... the age old cycle of influencing and being influenced.
What a bastard that can be.

What to bend to? What to resist? How to bend others? What they will resist?
It's that amusing and often annoying game that many people call 'diplomacy'.
Personally I resist bending as much as possible with the forseeable consequence of people not bending to me.

(And then I try to bend people to make them more conducive to the idea of unbending... YES I DAMN WELL KNOW THE IRONY)

But it's not a game that can be lost or won; the game itself can be bent and shaped.
But beware! In doing so, the game may bend and shape you.

[Jamski]

Perhaps that mental system of ownership will not fare well after all ...

We've had it for at least 6,000 years and I don't see what could make it change.

We humans are too attached to the idea of ownership to ever let it go. This is my house, my life, my wife, my job. We share a car, I take a risk, You give me all your love.

See?

-Jam

[Enigma_Nova]

So we own our beliefs and share our thoughts?
Interesting. I wonder what life would feel like if we did not associate things with our selves...

That good ol' idea of a Self is too ingrained in our noggins!

[Snowflake]

Give. Yes that is the word I like. By giving you are not changing the ownership. I give you my love but I still have my love. It is not possible not to assoicate things with ourselves because the existence of the self is the very base of our extension to the outside world. However, the relationship between oneself and the outside does not have to be own and be owned. I don't have to own you, and don't have to be owned by you. I give you my love, I give you my trust, I give you my heart. But I will not surrender myself to you. I still have myself, stand up for myself, fight for myself. I treasure all that you give me, but I do not take them for granted and abuse them. I'd love to be loved by you, but your soul is free from me.

Do I want to own you and be owned by you? Yes I do. But I learn from the lesson of the 6,000 years and realize no matter how hard it is, I have to let that mental system of ownership go.

[Enigma_Nova]

After all it's just atoms pushing around other atoms anyway... Ownership is a way we approximate (and hence understand) how one set of atoms influence other sets.

I also wonder about beliefs and thoughts.
Do we own them, or are they some free sense?
Most probably a free sense, some enigmatic energy.
Without a self, there's no way to associate ownership. Thoughts might exist without a self, so they cannot be owned.

But still, we share our thoughts, and give our opinions. Thoughts are still associated with particular people, and can be given and received through communication.
So are thoughts associated with us as individuals? Are they 'our' thoughts, or do thoughts just exist - moving across our inner eye every once in a while, being influenced by other thoughts...
I think the latter.
Thoughts influence other thoughts, this is what we are. Some of us find our Self in thought... I suppose Self in itself is an illusion...

Self? A concept we invent. We may see concepts, feel them and share them, but I agree that we do not own them.

[Snowflake]

Good thinking Enigma. Do thoughts exist independent of the entity that thinks them? If there were no human, or, no animals, no, how about if there were no living creatures, will thoughts find themselve a new entity for them to live on?

I'd rather think that thoughts are products of and inputs to brain cells. Like electricity, they have an origin. In other words, they may change, they make interact with each other, but they are still related to self.

An individual may not own a concept. But a larger entity may. Concepts do not exist without the entity that feels and shares them.