# I've noticed certain topics... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 8, 1999, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561 "1999-09-08T19:35:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pluto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f08c70/32.png) [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/1 "1999-09-08T19:35:00Z")
…quickly turn into shouting matches and/or long, annotated debates: religious beliefs, gun control, political issues in general, racism, etc. (The trolls know this.) I’m not really surprised, but I’m curious about the cause of this. I have some ideas of my own but I’m having trouble articulating them. Would anyone like to share their thoughts? Please note that I don’t want to start any arguments on the topics listed above. (Otherwise I would have posted in the Pit or Great Debates.) I just want to know why we do what we do. ## As food for thought, notice that other topics get a lot of responses but they aren’t (generally) argumentative: spelling, punctuation, word usage, etc. People just like to vent. Still other topics (recollections from childhood, teacher abuse, S-E-X-!, practical jokes) get a lot of personal sharing and a lot of interaction. Finally, scientific questions tend to get long or short responses, depending on how difficult and/or how concrete the answer is. “non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem” – William of Ockham ---
**Author:** ![BunnyGirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@BunnyGirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BunnyGirl)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/2 "1999-09-08T19:52:00Z")
Pluto, I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older that I’ve become much more tolerant of other people’s opinions. I used to be much more narrow-minded with the “My way or the highway” attitude. I guess I’ve found or learned (through my experience in customer service, of all things) that not everyone looks at things the way I do and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Plus, my opinion is usually just that: my opinion, my feelings, my background. Rarely do we deal with facts (as incontrovertable things) on such highly emotional issues such as sex, abortion, etc. Some things I don’t discuss/argue about: religion, politics, abortion, sexual preference/pleasures etc. They are too based on what each individual perceives what is right for them at the time; too much personal history, too much the way you were raised to really come down to things that could be considered black-n-white on these issues. I’ll give my opinion and maybe a fact that I know, but that’s it. What bothers me is when people feel they _can_ change someones mind when the opposing side offers no more solid “facts” or “evidence” of truth than the other side does. I really dislike debate about things that cannot be logically debated. I think this is one of those instances where the truth is truly relative. ---
**Author:** ![No\_Me\_Ayudes\_Compadre](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/no_me_ayudes_compadre/32/5224_2.png) [@No\_Me\_Ayudes\_Compadre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Me_Ayudes_Compadre)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/3 "1999-09-08T20:03:00Z")
I received this in email, and thought this would be a good thread in which to include. > [@](#): > > THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW > > Crowd: Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry! > > Jerry: Today’s guests are here because they can’t agree on fundamental philosophical principles. I’d like to welcome Todd to the show. > > Todd enters from backstage. > > Jerry: Hello, Todd. > > Todd: Hi, Jerry. > > Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you’re here to tell your girlfriend something. What is it? > > Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and > it’s been nothing but fighting ever since. > > Jerry: Why is that? > > Todd: You see, Jerry, I’m a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe > that the individual self, the “I” or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the > political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse. > > Crowd: Ooooohhhh! > > Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what? > > Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today? > > Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism, we’re through. I just can’t go on having a relationship with a woman who doesn’t believe I exist. > > Jerry: Well, you’re going to get your chance. Here’s Ursula! > > Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd. > > Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer! > > She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull them apart before things can go any further. > > Ursula: Don’t listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria! Rationality equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices! > > Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to truth! Don’t try to deny it! > > Ursula: You and your dialectic! That’s how it’s been through our whole relationship, Jerry. Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment meta-narrative. “You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula.” “Post-structuralism is just classical sceptical thought re-cast in the language of semiotics, Ursula.” > > Crowd: Booo! Booo! > > Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don’t you agree that the roots of contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment political philosophy? > > Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful centrally located voices marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern! > > Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what it’s like living with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the > anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power structure? > It’s terrible. She just lies there and thinks of Andrea Dworkin. That’s why > we never do it any more. > > Crowd: Wooooo! > > Ursula: You liar! Why don’t you tell them how you haven’t been able to get it up for the past three months because you couldn’t decide if your penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind? > > Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute! > > Ursula: It’s true! > > Jerry: Well, I don’t think we’re going to solve this one right away. Our next guests are Louis and Tina. And Tina has a little confession to make! > > Louis and Tina come onstage. Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the background. > > Jerry: Tina, you are… (reads cards) … an existentialist, is that right? > > Tina: That’s right, Jerry. And Louis is, too. > > Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today? > > Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him… > > Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him. > > Crowd hushes. > > Tina: Louis… I’ve loved you for a long time… > > Louis: I love you, too, Tina. > > Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence, but…well, I just want to tell you I’ve been reading Nietzsche lately, and I don’t think I can agree with your egalitarian politics. > > Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo! > > Louis: (shocked and disbelieving) Tina, this is crazy. You know that Sartre clarified all this way back in the 40’s. > > Tina: But he didn’t take into account Nietzsche’s radical critique of democratic morality, Louis. I’m sorry. I can’t ignore the contradiction any longer! > > Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn’t you? Didn’t you? > > Tina: Don’t you bring up Victor! I only turned to him when I saw you were seeing that dominatrix! I needed a real man! An Uber-man! > > Louis: (sobbing) I couldn’t help it. It was my burden of freedom. It was too much! > > Jerry: We’ve got someone here who might have something to add. Bring out…Victor! > > Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face. > > Victor: Louis, you’re a classic post-Christian intellectual. Weak to the > core! > > Louis: (through tears) You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy! > > Victor: Herd animal! > > Louis: Lackey! > > Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle. The crowd goes wild. After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart. > > Jerry: Okay, okay. It’s time for questions from the audience. Go ahead, sir. > > Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just wanna know how you can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn’t that imply a belief in intrinsic > essences that is in direct contradiction with with the fundamental principles of existentialism? > > Tina: No! No! It doesn’t. We can be equal in potential, without being equal in eventual personal quality. It’s a question of Becoming, not Being. > > Audience member: That’s just disguised essentialism! You’re no existentialist! > > Tina: I am so! > > Audience member: You’re no existentialist! > > Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch! > > Ursula stands and interjects. > > Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is just a cover for late capitalist anti-feminism! Look at how Sartre treated Simone de Beauvoir! > > Women in the crowd cheer and stomp. > > Tina: [Bleep] you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho! Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault, bitch! > > Tina: You the bitch! > > Ursula: No, you the bitch! > > Tina: Whatever! Whatever! > > Jerry: We’ll be right back with a final thought! Stay with us! > > Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute, and Psychic > Alliance Hotline. > > Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being here,and say that I hope you’re able to work through your differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal > miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human relationship. > > (turns to the camera) > > Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it all seems like good, clean fun. > > But when the heart gets involved, all our painfully acquired metaphysical > insights go right out the window, and we’re reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It’s not pretty. If you’re in a relationship, and differences over the fundamental principles of your respective > subjectivities are making things difficult, maybe it’s time to move on. Find someone new, someone who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos > of existence. After all, in the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that’s all we’re all doing anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves – and each other. * * * “Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?” ---
**Author:** ![eden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5f9b8f/32.png) [@eden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eden)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/4 "1999-09-08T20:28:00Z")
Many of these subjects–especially the philosophical ones–are topics on which most of us have never been forced to articulate opinions, or support them with any evidence. The calmer debaters seem to be those who have taken the time to clarify their position in their own minds and gather evidence before trying to explain it to others. It’s frustrating to feel that you’re not expressing yourself clearly; I think that frustration accounts for a lot of the hostility that surfaces. Mariachi: where on earth did that excerpt come from? I think some grad students have too much time on their hands! ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/5 "1999-09-08T21:20:00Z")
[kidding] > [@](#): > > …quickly turn into shouting matches and/or long, annotated debates This is an absolutely unsupported allegation, and trolling at its worst! And you can’t shout on the SDMB, you moron, THIS IS A WRITTEN MEDIUM!!! > [@](#): > > The trolls know this. Who you callin’ troll, planet-boy? > [@](#): > > I have some ideas of my own but I’m having trouble articulating them… It’s a firmly established fact that an idea does not exist until its articulation. Now perhaps it’s possible that you have no ideas of your own, or perhaps you have them and can articulate them, just not well enough to reach the high standards of the SDMB. Well say that! Sheesh! > [@](#): > > Please note that I don’t want to start any arguments on the topics listed above. What’s the matter, now-that-I-think-about-it-you’re-not-even-a-real-planet boy, are ya scared? > [@](#): > > other topics get a lot of responses but they aren’t (generally) argumentative There is an easy solution to avoiding arguments about the topics you mentioned at the beginning of the OP. Realize that I have the facts, I am right, and that the issue thus ought to be closed. Any alleged “facts,” viewpoints, theologies, or anything that contradicts what I have already established as the truth flies in the face of Science, offends God and establishes you as a troll. So there. [/kidding] I’m sorry. I have no idea what overcame me. But I couldn’t resist. * * * Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 1999, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/6 "1999-09-08T22:18:00Z")
EL MARIACHI – I laughed my ass off at your Springer script; thanks for posting it. 🙂 PLUTO, I’m not sure what you expect of philosophical questions, if not that they turn into either shouting matches (counter-productive) or annotated debates (productive). Where else might they go? We give our opinions, ask others for theirs, and when we are challenged, we provide backup – annotations or citations. I, for one, like the annotations – to me, it’s what separates a supportable opinion from a WAG. I’m irritated by people who affirmatively state an answer as if they really know or have absolute proof, but then it turns out it’s just their opinion being presented as fact. Philosophical questions lend themselves to long debates precisely because they don’t have a fixed “correct” answer, and they also can get heated because people tend to feel strongly about philosophical beliefs (including religion and politics). That’s what I think, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Sycorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@Sycorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sycorax)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/7 "1999-09-09T00:54:00Z")
Those topics that beome argumentative here become argumentative in a face-to-face discussion, too. They are hot-button issues, and here people feel freer to express their views because no one is in your face. I have, oh, 3-4 friends maybe, with whom I can talk about these issues without them becoming arguments, mainly because I already know their views. But discuss them with people you don’t know well, and you’re in danger of getting into a shouting match, being called a religious fanatic, a racist, whatever. Of course, we get name-calling here too, but reading someone’s diatribe is not as intimidating as having that someone right there in your face shouting it at you. ---
**Author:** ![BoBettie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@BoBettie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BoBettie)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/8 "1999-09-09T00:56:00Z")
For myself, I am happy to post personal stories of interest. However, I found out early that when you express your philosophical beliefs on here, you’de better be ready for some rude comments/flaming. I don’t have the time to argue with some nit picker, so I stick to lighter subjects. I have enough stress not choking the shit out of my students (adults), so I like to just come here and discuss lighter subjects and not have some yahoo telling me my beliefs are wrong (because they don’t match theirs). Just my 2Cents 🙂 * * * An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity. ---
**Author:** ![Poto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/9 "1999-09-09T01:00:00Z")
I have no idea what you are talking about. You must be looking in one of those other forums. Here we keep the topics sufficiently trivial. ---
**Author:** ![popokis5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@popokis5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/popokis5)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/10 "1999-09-09T02:19:00Z")
Good one, El. ---
**Author:** ![Imthecowgodmoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Imthecowgodmoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imthecowgodmoo)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/11 "1999-09-09T02:30:00Z")
All you damn Christians piss me off! God doesn’t exist! Blaming guns for violence is like blaming forks for making Rosie O’Donell fat! Next you’ll wanna talk about how we need to have a diverse communtiy… ugh… Long Live Apartheid! Ok now… don’t anyone yell at me… I’m right and you’re wrong so nyah nyah nyah. BLPTH! * * * “I’m not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”-- Calvin and Hobbes (\_\_) `\/-------\ `| |-----| | …c.c…c.c… ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/12 "1999-09-09T15:33:00Z")
As Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) once said > [@](#): > > The teacher wants us to pick a topic and debate it. What’s there to debate? I’m right everyone else is wront. I got better things to do than argue with every wrong headed moron with an ignorant opinion. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 1999, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-noticed-certain-topics/7561/13 "1999-09-09T16:09:00Z")
To answer your original question, **pluto** : With the ignorant and immature, you can’t share food for thought without it degenerating into a food fight now and then, especially if they were not hungry to begin with.