But you’re not telling her how to feel about your dad. You’re just asking her not to express those feelings around you. You do understand the difference, right?
FWIW, I’ve encountered a few people that do a lesser version of this (tell their worst needle stories when they find out I have a phobia, for instance). I worry that expressing my opinion of them here would earn me a warning by analogy.
I’m trying to figure out the guidelines I use when deciding whether to comply with an irrational request. I think the answers to the following questions must all be yes:
- Is the request couched in polite language?
- Does complying with the request have negligible material, social, and pyschological cost to me?
- Is the requester making the request out of a moral or aesthetic background that I find innocuous?
- Is the requester someone that I find tolerable in other respects?
- Is this request an exception from the norm from this requester, rather than the norm?
A single “no” answer might be enough to persuade me not to comply; but if they’re all “yes,” then I’ll probably comply.
I have no such board persona. I have never been hostile to people just for believing in God. I have never been hostile to religion. You are conflating me with other posters. I can sometimes be tough on specific factual claims, if they are demonstrably false or falsifiable, but I am not hostile to non-falsifiable claims, or to religion and religious people in general. You are probably conflating me with other posters. I guarantee you can’t back up your characterization of my posting history with cites.
A phobia is a psychiatric condition. Religious indignation is not. The psychological effects are not the same.
Dio, though I generally agree with you, and I certainly agree with you on this issue, I have a question. A few months ago I posted about a coworker who wanted to stop checking my blood sugar at my desk (I am diabetic) because of her needle phobia. Shoudl I have accommodated her request? If so, how is this different?
I don’t believe there’s a meaningful difference, but no, I don’t believe it’s my place to tell people how to express their feelings. There’s no point. Tell them not to say it doesn’t stop them from feeling it, and speech can’t hurt me. If I really think they’re wrong, I’m more inclined to try to engage them on the feelings themselves, not the mere expression of them. If I think they’re unreachable or irredeemable about something, then I believe the appropriate response is to end (or at least minimize) my association with them. Asking them “politely” not to honestly express themselves does not make me any more comfortable with them, and I think it’s passive-aggressive.
Well, the obvious difference is that you have a compelling medical need. Accomodation of other people’s phobias only goes so far. You don’t have to endanger your own health for it.
It’s also clear that this is a conflict (a medical need vs. pschological discomfort) which (I am assuming) could be easily resolved by one of you going somewhere else…that someone being the one who is not risking going into diabetic shock if she doesn’t monitor her blood sugar. I might also point out that she has the ability to alter her field of vision with a simple operation of neck muscles.
It raises a question, though. There must be diabetic people with needle phobias. What do they do?
I said, you’d have to make a value judgement.
How important is it to you to show your affection to Mrs. Rhymer in front of these people? How important is it not to offend them?
(I think you tacitly admitted that circumstances matter by referencing the armed Klansmen.)
Yes. To do otherwise would be rude.
As a type two diabetes person who currently just has to lancet myself, not inject myself…
…we (I) try to lose weight in a hurry and stave off the inevitable as long as possible.
When it ceases to be possible, I anticipate problems on the order of imperilling my life by avoiding the medicine.
Really? If I say, “I don’t want to discuss this subject,” that’s the same as saying, “You shouldn’t have an opinion on this subject”?
Okay, you’re a man of iron, unaffected by the petty squabbles of lesser mortals around you. But, you can at least understand that other people react differently, right? That some people find it distressing to hear people they care about being run down? This concept is not entirely alien to you?
Having mastered that concept, can you not see how, to a devout Christian, this attitude might extend to Jesus himself, and how they might similarly be distressed to hear you insult someone in whom they have considerable emotional attachment?
So, your position here is that if someone believes something you find objectionable, you must either seek to correct them, or cut them out of your life? There’s no middle ground, where there’s enough stuff you like about the person, that’s its easier to just avoid the stuff you don’t like?
You know what? Let me make an adjustment to my earlier hypothetical. Instead of your parents getting divorced, let’s say it’s you and your wife. And you’re very much the wronged party in the break-up. You’re understandably and justifiably angry over it, and are not shy about explaining why. You daughter (for our purposes, let’s suppose that she’s an adult at this point) asks you not to tear her down, because even though you have every right to be pissed, it makes her uncomfortable to hear her mother talked about like that.
Do you avoid the topic around your daughter, out of respect for her discomfort, or do you continue to cut loose on your ex, because no one has a right to tell you how to feel?
I wouldn’t have to be asked. You’re talking about children, now, not adults. That fundamentally alters the hypothetical. Of course you behave differently around children than adults.
I believe that saying “you shouldn’t say X” is the same as saying “you shouldn’t say what you think.” I WANT people to say what they think.
Not unaffected, just pragmatic about how to address it, nand how much power I really have over it.
If they’re distressed by it, then they don’t really have any faith. How can God/Jesus be harmed by my words? What am I even saying about God that’s insulting? How is simply saying the name “running him down?”
I’m not suggesting I would do that for just ANYTHING they say that’s objectionable, but for cases where they have feelings which are so fundamentally counter to my own ethos that I can’t in good conscience ignore it. even if they don’t talk about it. Could you remain friends with someone who you know is a neo-Nazi even if they never say a word about it in your presence?
For stuff I just think is objectionable, but not ethically uncountenanceable (like, say, being a Packer fan), I can hang, and not die because they’re wearing a [del]Favre[/del] Rodgers jersey.
I think there’s a game, set, match in here somewhere. Lemme see if I can find it.
and
Even if she was an adult, I still wouldn’t have to be asked. It would not be in my personality to trash my kids’ mom in front of them.
I still dn’t think it’s comprable, though, because saying “Jesus” or “God” doesn’t trash or insult anybody.
Why on Earth not? If you think your ex is a shrewish hell beast, why shouldn’t you say exactly that? Why does it suddenly matter what anyone around you thinks about what you say? You aren’t suddenly taking into account how someone else feels about the language you use, are you?
To SOME people though, it is.
I’m taking into account the potential for emotional harm. There is no such potential for invoking the names of deities.
I don’t think so. How is saying the name of a deity injurious or insulting to that deity? How can an impervious god be compared to a vulnerable human being?
There is no insult to anything or anybody in saying the words “God” or “Jesus Christ.”