God’s balls, this pisses me off. Why can’t people form and support their own opinions? Why are people so quick to deflect, to defer to some other entity, any likeness of authority, so that the onus is not on them? Ram a broomstick up your ass and pretend it’s a spine, people. Grow a set of coconuts, and learn to love the way they flop about when you plant your feet and try to hold the line.
Ask a Catholic what they think about the church’s affirmed position on women… how quickly do statements about what they think morph into circumspect references to the pope and his infallible institutionalized misogyny? Damned quickly. Ditto on the indefensible homophobia. Can anyone defend the coach class seating women get on Catholic Airlines without deferring to a religious authority?
And this isn’t just a religious rant…
Want me to undertake some moronic waste-of-effort project? Don’t sit there and mumble about how you don’t necessarily think it’s worthwhile, but that it’s an edict from on high. Slink out of here and don’t leave a mucus trail. Next time, either speak your mind to your mysterious powers and come to me after you’ve got some consensus, or at least swallow your impulse to snivel and state the request as if it were your own… because if you choose to pass it along, it is.
Do me a favor, guys and gals at the subsidiary, huh? Someone run down to the corner office and fire the magic 8-ball. If you can’t tell me who made the simplest of decisions without coming down with hysterical laryngitis, at least tell me who shook the 8-ball and read the message. It’s not even that the decision is good or bad, that’s irrelevant, but the circular passing of responsibility whenever I try to speak to the person who made it is childish.
There’s so much ass-covering, blame passing, decision aversion, bald appeals to authority… someone really needs to be made an example of. A ‘torn apart by wild dogs’ type example. But, you know what they say…. Well actually I don’t fucking know what a mysterious and unknowable ‘they’ say. Tell me what you say, or fuck off.
Nothing to add here other than Right On Brother. Oh yeah, you’re pretty much pissing in the wind. Most folks I know would rather shit their pants than actually take a position, *especially * one they would have to defend. Put them in a workplace situation and the tendency only intensifies.
I recognize that there are a lot of topics that I don’t understand well, that there are people who know more then me, and that I simply don’t have either the time, intelligence, ability, or some combination of those three to attain their knowledge.
Deferring to an authority, be it a religious authority, a scientific authority, or a leader, is a necessity, and it’s ludicrous to attack the concept itself.
You miss the point by a wide mark. You are nearly into the next thread.
Where did I state that these various authorities don’t have a place? Let’s use an example to illustrate. If I’m at a restaurant, I may defer to the waiter or waitress on which special is the best. Not always, but sometimes it is good input to have. Mind you, the decision is still mine. If I don’t like the dish she suggested: tough!
Now if I want to limit the ability of another human being to participate in their church based on gender, or if I want to label another person as sinful because of orientation, you can bet your fucking shoeleather that the choice to do that is all mine. My decision, my reasons. Anything else is cowardly.
Well, the title of this pit thread is “people who defer,” and the second sentence of your OP is: “Why can’t people form and support their own opinions?”
So where I wrote "“Why can’t people form and support their own opinions?”, and then proceeded to give examples of where it was inappropriate to defer, you read “People must never, ever make use of an authority”? Sorry I was so confusing.
How about you take your demands about my decision making processes and shove them up your ass then ramrod them nice and tight into your cranial cavity with that broomstick-spine of yours?
In other words, you can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
I will choose a path that’s clear. I will choose free will.
No, neither. People who choose to defer still make choices. They choose to defer to some other decision-maker. This is a valid choice. As Rush pointed out years ago.
The irony inherent in demanding other people make their own choices when they have in fact made their own choice(the choice to place themselves subservient to some other decision-maker) just kind of overwhelmed me. Your slime trail boss made his choice. He chose not to buck the system. The religious made their chocie. They decided to follow a celestial voice. In every case you mention, a choice was made. Maybe you think it was a bad choice. Or maybe you think it was a choice born of ignorance or fear, but the reality is your demand is nothing more or less than demanding the “people who defer” make DIFFERENT choices.
This is so deep. It should be on a Snapple top. When you are done being all introspective and complex, you are welcome to explain why your choice paradox should matter to me.
It is anything but a paradox. You are pissed off that they didn’t make the choice that you may have made in their place. The choice of making your own judgement versus accepting the judgement of an external entity.
And I honestly could not care less if it matters to you or not. Your rant says more about you than it does those who refuse to buck the system or find their own truth.
No, you bore, it is not. You can up the usage of the word ‘choice’ in this thread by a count of 12, but it doesn’t change my OP. What kind of masturbatory thrill do you get from this semantic frottering, anyway? It creeps me out. Seriously.
My gripe is with people deferring in situations where it’s appropriate to form, and take ownership of, a meaningful opinion. This ‘no-choice is a choice’ derailment is about as annoying as Geddy Lee’s voice.
Situations where you judge it to be appropriate you mean. Really old bean, you must qualify these things. You consider it appropriate to stand up to the boss man and tell him to sod off rather than inconvenience poor downtrodden Waverly. Someone else decided not to fight that fight and therefore they’re pitworthy. You don’t know if they deferred to the boss man’s edict because they’re toadies, or intellectual lazy, or they had a hot date tonight and didn’t want to have to stay late writing a cost/benefit analysis to bolster their arguement with the boss, or because they knew it would cause you headache and they can’t stand your supercillious ass. Who knows?
You really should stop considering your own opinions and decision making processes as the pinnacle of perfection old bean. It’s not flattering. Or at least that’s what the voices in my head tell me. I really should stop listening to them some day and form my own opinion, but they talk like sultry supermodels and the wrong head is doing the thinking.
Nope, I don’t know. But the fact that you would accept these as legitimate reasons to defer to someone else says volumes about you.
It’s a bit disingenuous to assume that it is my own inconvenience I mind. In fact, it is a bald misrepresentation. Go back and re-read. I will diligently work on something I don’t agree with, so long as the instructions aren’t prefaced by a statement of “how you don’t necessarily think it’s worthwhile.” If that type of thing motivates you, god bless you.
I had nothing substantial to add to this thread, but wanted to say that there should be a law, similar to Godwin’s, that the first person to mention (or quote) Rush automatically wins!