To Liberal: I'm not pitting you.. I'm just confused

The BBQ Pit
221

Thank you for the very polite reply. I only posted the retort to you as it seemed like you were dismissing the reasons that some have a dislike or lack or respect for **Liberal ** as being their fault and not Lib’s.

My comments about enabling concerned both Lib & PRR as Poly and at one other had refused to be the bagman. I do not believe we have ever had a problem before in even a small way, I did not realize you were **Liberal’s ** friend until very recently. I did and still do think you are a smart, savvy and interesting poster. I did not like this act of yours, but hey, eventually someone was probably going to be the bagman from the way the thread was going. So no big deal. Really, I was just hoping you did see where **Liberal ** causes some of his own problems.

I know and you are right, I was being a big wet blanket, but for whatever reason, I did care about stopping the payoff.

As long as we are all here to entertain you, did you enjoy the pitting at least? You seemed to. :wink:
Quiddity Glomfuster, I hope and fully believe we can interact on the rest of the board in a friendly matter, but arguing with you on Liberal is doing none of us any good, (well except maybe Bryan). I believe we have had no other problems. We obviously strongly disagree on this.

One last note: I do not hate Lib, I have never said I hated Lib. I have no problem with his politics. I largely stayed out of religious debates and had little problem with Lib. You and **Lib ** and apparently Bryan, do not understand why I think buying off an annoying poster to go away is such a lowly thing to do. **Lib ** insists that I just do not understand his reasons. I insist he does not understand my point of view.

Jim {Bryan, thank you for allowing me to add a little levity to my post. It is much appreciated}

222

Is there a snarky, asinine form of Buddhism?

No, I said I think you were full of shit. I think you’re being hypocritical and cannot acknowledge it.

Instead of that, I’ll ask you if that is what you think you’re doing here. Are you telling people to develop warm hearts? It seems more like you are being a snarky, hypocritical, ankle biter. But boy, you’ve warmed my heart.

I’ll say it another way. If one is routinely finding themselves in a variety of dramatic interactions with others and can’t understand why, one might consider that they’ve failed to account for the common denominator in those circumstances.

223
  • snerk *

Speak for your own irregularity, sirrah; my bowels of compassion run like clockwork.

:stuck_out_tongue:

224

Well, I couldn’t claim I am. I’m Catholic but not a churchy Catholic. I’ve had a bunch of spiritual influences including Earnest Larson and Hermann Hesse and various clergy I’ve known of various denominations and the Antioch movement and my own retreats, etc. Ellis and Buddhism came later but have informed my opinion quite a bit.

True. No reason that it oughtn’t be suggested they look into it, particularly since science has shown us that anger is actually damaging.

Yeah, but whence derives that ‘righteousness’? You knock yourself down quite a few pegs if you ask yourself ‘who the hell are you to think you get to make this judgement’ because the answer is, invariably, ‘nobody, really’.

No and I don’t care by what means people come to peace. I’d just like to see it more widespread than it is.

Do I appear angry? Am I calling anyone names or cussing them out?

Yep. Klaatu and I discussed the latter.

I find the semantics around the word ‘attack’ very interesting. Like too many English words, it is too imprecise, IMHO. I have said and will continue to insist that it’s one thing to tackle a poster for bad logic, bad, unsupported arguments, or complaining or getting mad over something foolish and quite another to attempt to hurt a person’s feelings. I enjoy the former, too. What I’m protesting is the latter, and I would hope that my protesting of general behaviour is not perceived as a personal attack of anyone, because it’s not.

Thank the lord I’ve never seen a bunch of people pile on and vilify someone the way groups of people do to Liberal. I hope you never do, either.

I would hope you would not without reasons of your own.

You know what? I might agree with you if people were saying they’d been hurt by him. Other than twickster, who got an apology, nobody has. Their big complaints are that he’s an ‘attention-whore’, ‘crazy’ and some other dumb thing. And that’s where I’m saying to myself that there is just no justification here for going postal all over someone. Basically, all I’m hearing is a variation of ‘I don’t like him because he’s a banana-nose doody-head’. And people wonder why I’m not persuaded! :wink:

225

Probably. But I just ate some fibre.

You ask what I’m doing? I’m questioning peoples’ motivations and behaviour in hope they’ll question their own. I know that there have been times when I’ve been challenged to present a reason for why I’ve done or said something, and in the examination of the issue, I’ve realized that I’ve drawn an illogical conclusion and I’ve changed it.

I used to get in a snit about a lot more things. Then I had a talk with me and realized, as I told olivesmarch4 that, really, I was not entitled to think that my wrath was justified over a lot of things. And once I sorted that out, and started changing my own attitudes, I found the result was that I was overall happier and more peaceful - and healthier!

Liking someone feels much better than hating someone. Allowing other humans a break because they are flawed (you know - glass houses, stones, etc) is much easier on the spirit. In essence, the payoff of dropping the angst is big.

This doesn’t mean you drop all indignation, but you question yourself about whether the issue is worth you expending your health on - and most things aren’t. Certainly getting all in a snit because you don’t like how a poster posts isn’t.

So I’m suggesting people examine their reasons for allowing themselves to raise their blood pressure and otherwise do violence to their own bodies to the extent that they feel moved to write a lot of angry, hurtful words aimed at damaging someone and maybe dial them back for their own sakes and just because there’s not enough love in the world so why not try to add more rather than subtract some.

I’m not getting answers that sway me towards ‘hate is better’. I don’t expect to.

226

You are quite welcome.

Oddly enough, I don’t think it’s their fault either. It seems inherent in the medium. The most difficult skill of all in internet posting seems to be that pesky page down key.

I am guilty of it myself, of course. Give me a tough day at work, and a pet position being mocked, or a many times refuted claim being repeated, and I turn all teeth and claws myself. I have learned to delete those posts before sending in most cases, but every now and then, when defending the core of right and truth from the beleaguering hordes of willful agents of evil and their unwashed barbarian dupes I slip in an uncharitable generalization or two. :slight_smile:

But, if they don’t like it they can kiss my rosy red ass.

Tris

(we are in the pit, right?)

227

I know I said I would stop posting, but I cannot let something so stupid pass!

This is not what people have been saying, you idiot. People have given you ample evidence of Liberal’s past behavior, and even he has admitted some responsibility for the circus acts he has brought upon us. But you choose to ignore all of it. If this is your MO, I beg you to stay out of GD.

Furthermore, since when does a person have to be personally hurt by an individual to not like that person? Liberal has never hurt me, but we’ve had some spats here that made me not like him very much. During those fights, I felt like he wasn’t being a fair debater. Is disingeniuity not a good reason to dislike someone? Or is that, along with attention-whoring, something that isn’t worthy of villication to you?

One can dislike a poster also based on how he treats others. I’ve disliked a number of posters on this board and never once interacted with them, because I’ve seen how they operate with other posters. Is that wrong too?

The messageboard is not some alien space. It functions just like the real world does. Maybe you go around loving everybody you meet, even when you see them acting like a jerk, but that’s not how most of us operate.

228

I can see how you could draw that conclusion, and I can see why someone else might do it for that reason. But if I personally reasoned that way, I would have paid a lot of other people first.

229

Thanks for the reply, Quiddity.
I made a mistake, I think, in that my whole post looked like it was directed at only you. Really the first paragraph was directed at just you–the rest just general musings on the topic at hand, personal perspectives, etc. Which is not to say you can’t respond to that stuff, just that I wouldn’t take it as a personal comment. So when I say, ‘‘I can’t feel angry’’ I’m not implying you must be angry at everyone, just musing out loud, in general. I’m having a weird sort of personal reaction/moral dilemma thing going on with this thread even though I don’t have a personal stake in its outcome. Just trying to work all of that out.

230

monstro

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn why people dislike him. I think it’s stupid that people expect me to adopt their reasons to dislike him, however, and I feel free to ridicule the reasons I’ve seen thus far because I feel most of them are unfounded and the rest just amount to personal gripes.

My objection is to mistreating someone and being vicious and vituperative about the person merely because you dislike him.

231

We often find annoying in others what we dislike about ourselves, whether it be sanctimony, smugness, superiority, or whatever.

232

OK, cool. :slight_smile:

233

:rolleyes: Jesus, you’re a fucking mess, aren’t you? Are all of your arguments this disingenuous, obtuse and full of strawmen? Has anyone suggested that you or anyone else should hate Liberal? If you want to attempt to adopt some sort of sanctimonious position in which you guide the unwashed masses into the light of harmony, you might want to try to actually understand where they are coming from first. This will help you lead them to where you want them to go.

Telling them that they only feel this way because they are part of a mob hell bent on hating someone for no good reason isn’t going to get it done.

234

Yes, that’s certainly objectionable, isn’t it?

235

Actually, no.

People seem to be quite upset that I don’t.

Well, no. I was just saying that I benefitted from making some changes and am glad of it so others might wish to give it a try.

Explain what I am missing. I asked what was so egregious about you-know-who, got a bunch of answers, saw nothing even close to egregious. I did see what appeared to be a lot of people misconstruing some posts and, when the poster tried to correct the misunderstandings, was accused, as I now am, of ‘lying’ and being ‘disingenuous’. :rolleyes:

236

Of course I respect your opinion. In fact, I value your opinion. And I would do what you suggest but for one thing. I like the passion of the Pit. It’s a lot like football. What I used to love most about playing football was the hit. I was a tight end, and I loved being hit. (It may be tied psychologically to my brother’s beatings, I don’t know, but still…) Yes, it hurt to get hit. But unless something just downright breaks your bones, it is edifying to suffer and recover. When I first came here in '99, I had the thinnest imaginable rhetorical skin. DavidB advised me to thicken it up. My emotions have both hardened and softened, becoming more in balance — as you can see. I’m nowhere close to the dreaded “meltdown”, and it has been heartening to learn that other people (plural!) have seen things from my point of view, to the extent that such a thing can be done. But I’ll meet you half way, and at least attempt to avoid personal tongue lashings in the manner of my recent dressing down of ETF for attacking Lissa. Quiddity has provided the exemplary model for dressing down an argument as opposed to a person. Compare how she talks to Giraffe, and how he talks to her, for example. I believe I can learn from it.

237

This one is too much fun. This is the kind of post that just needs to be laughed at.

Who suggested that **you ** should dislike liberal?

At very least, a few others and I suggested that new posters should of course remain open minded. Was this all an exercise to try and convince you to dislike Liberal? I wish you told us that up front. :smiley: Og knows you do not need to agree with us, but you should at least have the decency to acknowledge that we can feel what we feel without your needling ridicule. As someone that wants to spread love and joy, I think you need to work on your delivery methods. You appear to be using a pickaxe where a cup would work much better.

BTW: Please give us a straight answer to **ETF’s ** post. What is your position on **Liberal’s ** vicious and vituperative post?

You have now pushed over to the sublime in your posts in this thread.

Jim

238

Which was what I just mentioned to Wring. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have defended Lissa without attacking you on a personal level. I’m sure an apology would fall flat, so I won’t insult you by offering it. But I am curious about one thing. Can you recall, without searching, how you and I became so opposed?

239

An objection that applies to me in more than one instance. More in times past and less now, but still. Of course, it applies to all of us. People just choose to provide links to mine rather than to their own. :smiley:

240

Three words: Double bladed lightsaber.

Come, child, you know you want one. It can be yours, all you have to do is give in, accept the haaaaate…