I’m not going to read the whole thread again but to my recollection, I made two, count them, two factual assertions:
My kid was jumping on a couch.
It was reasonable for me to allow it.
Both of these things were true, and any thought anyone had which made them seem incompatible with each other could only be had by way of some assumption or other.
Any such assumption displayed the vice of lack of charity. To display that vice is to be a jerk. I don’t justify myself to jerks. Hence the tenor of my posts here.
If you’re interested in an answer to the question you’re asking, read the thread, in which I explain what the answer is to the question you’re asking. A very brief version of it is in the post I just made in response to Sarahfeena.
It is my superior-to-your intuitive genius that allows me to do so, if I may in all humility say. Your plebeian manner of communicating does make it a challenge!
What you’re looking for is the concept of conversational pragmatics (specifically, conversational implicature). I know a little something about it. That certain assumptions are often made, even if they are made predictably, does not make those assumptions any less of an indicator of vice.
He’s right, folks. Classically, the Seven Deadly Vices of Mankind are:
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Making Assumptions Based on the Unclear Words Other People Wrote
Wrath
Envy
Pride
It’s right there IN the Bible! Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians! Look it up!
And Dante has it in his Inferno, The “Making Assumptions” one is in the 7th Ciricle, between the Outer (Violent People-Atilla the Hun, Mike Tyson; Immersed in Boiling Blood) and Middle (Suicides–turned into trees and torn apart and poo’d on by Harpies)
On the border between the two, is the vice of Making Assumptions Based on the Unclear Words Other People Wrote where people who do this are strapped to tables and have molten tar poured into their ears and molten sulfur poured into their eyes. (They grow back).
He’s right again. “Lack of charity in assuming that someone means what they wrote” was a 4th Century Deadly Sin added by the monk Evagrius Ponticus. Dante put those people with Hoarders and Wasters up in the Second Circle. Hoarders and Wasters would roll those boulder-sized diamonds over the toes of people who show “Lack of charity in assuming that someone means what they wrote”. Then the Hoarders and Wasters would point and laugh at the Uncharitable Assumers, causing their feelings to get hurt.
So in other words, “I wasn’t actually allowing him to jump on said couch so much as I had other, more important things to worry about right that second. Otherwise, I would’ve told him to knock it off.”
