I have come up with a sort of rule of thumb when I speak in general terms: 1) it is usually about public figures or influential academics or writers I explicitly name. Sometimes people identify with such people. I get that. There are people I follow where I would feel affronted. So I usually stop reading things if someone I respect is attacked, since that muddies perceptions. It is a personal emergency (though a dully slow boiling one) at a time of widespread unrest that sometimes is connected more directly or merely loosely part of a wider pattern of dysfunction, malice and stupidity. 2) sometimes it is about dynamics that a larger group used or uses..not DU. I have never been attacked on DU and would brush it off if I was and go on a vague tangential ramble to defuse conflict were I attacked.
But while I agree with you MIButterfly, I have found over time that I have learnt to respect even obnoxiously purveyed views where honest. At the time one may flinch, but much later you will look back finding the context it applied in.
Maybe by now I think human nature at its merely abrasive or jarring should not be suppressed when honest. Agreeability can be bad. I do prefer civility to pugilistic puffery. But sometimes you have to be clear.
I find it alarming when humans are humiliated into having their spirit broken (except the politicians, billionaires and media types..they took their faustian deals and can suck it). Or when it becomes sugary or fake kayfabe.
The war on reality is real and I cannot say I am enthusiastic about poking an opaque beast.
But ugly and inelegant as it is, maybe..lol..
I would be braindead if I didn’t have a sense of humor.
The point is not UFC style fights. Sometimes when people have worldviews that have directly and further will directly be a huge nuisance even going forward, by when we are so engulfed by the next wave of chaos.
Ed Zitron got it when he mentioned “sincerity”. If you are a human trying to make sense of reality as only honest and non-malicious humans (not rubbish ai..) can..as long as it goes somewhere other than breaking earth and enriching billionaires, it is okay by me. Zitron tore into “Dudesy” a loathesome ai comic that used George Carlin..I agree with Zitron that Carlin’s estate should sue.
I am in insincere bs in my state with no reprieve and that cannot go on.
We all pay at least commensurately for our errors and I paid well past any sane metric and so I am no longer okay with blanket pardons for unconscious greed (a thing I can truly say never motivated me)..vanity, obstinacy, anger yes. All humans are vain, obstinate some. There are forgivable follies. Greed, narcissism, solipsism, complacency because your stupidity is richly rewarded are not forgivable.
And forgiving everyone is monumentally unfair to those who bore the brunt of these errors. And it sends the wrong message about acceptable social or professional behavior.
As is I have had to pick one idiot to forgive (I chose Prof Hennessy, this amazingly doltish but not necessarily sleazy computer science professor with an administerial style that would have to go a ways to be merely negligent and that is because he can probably be bullied by the rabble uprising (which is mostly just me as of this date) into community service though not his creepy fellow travellers at Google..just him..surely he must think once in a way..he is some kind of cs professor. Can thinking be anathema to him entirely? Can he be capable only of going around grunting “GDP growth yes!”’, “canned vaguely progressive statement yes!” as stuff of no use to anyone but fraudsters in respectable drag proliferates).
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