re: #30 The Other Les

I actually prefer to discuss certain issues online than in person, like politics.

Usually when I discuss political issues face to face with someone else, someone usually ends up screaming.

I’m the same way. After a while, it gets a bit tiring, when someone you know;

1. Asks your opinion of a political/social issue;

2. You give it (politely);

3. They don’t agree;

4. They “go nuclear” on you, refuse to listen to your reasoning, accuse you of various heinous crimes/beliefs/ etc., and finish up with “I thought you were an intelligent person!” (I.e., someone who had the same views they do.)

I finally realized that the reason this often happens when dealing with “progressives”, at least, is that many such prefer a more “mystical” worldview (New Age, etc.), in which “feelings” are more important and “true” than Western, linear logic, which they regard as “cold”, “unfeeling”, etc. As such, when you present them with an argument based on factual reasoning, you and they are literally not “reasoning” in the same way. And to them, your method attacks the very foundations of their belief system and reality model. It is comparable to trying to explain the Copernican system of planetary motion to a Persian priest/astronomer of Xerxes’ time, to whom those planete’ in the sky are not solid bodies moving according to immutable physical laws, but gods traversing the heavens as they will, in patterns intended to convey their orders to mortals through the insight of the priest/astrologer. In short, you are committing apostasy, blasphemy, and few other juicy ecclesiastical crimes all at once.

Believe me- the Lizard Legion knows far more about my sociopolitical views than anyone except one or two people who know me “face to face”, who have known me literally for decades.

cheers

eon