Oh god. Look, everyone else is going to troll you and shitpost you to death, but I'm going to try and explain this. I will honestly try.
Look, it's not blunt honesty that's the problem. I'm blunt, and honest, and generally, I don't have problems with most people... It's that people have emotions. Four billion years worth of evolution of emotions. Powerful, potent, incredibly persuasive emotions, that serve as the fundamental drive for perpetuating any belief or action in the world. These emotions are an inseparable part of the human mind, of how we analyze and comprehend and interpret the information our sensory organs compile. When we're dealt personal attacks, we generally respond poorly, because we've evolved an extraordinarily healthy (some might say obsessive) sense of self. Ironically, we're actually better at handling these kinds of issues now, than we ever have been. We used to resolve conflicts first with brutal, unending violence, that dragged our species through five hundred years of an ideological dark age.
You don't convince people by making personal attacks on their character, you make them defensive. That's not weakness: That's a basic, logical response, to a personal attack. There's a difference between blunt honesty, and a complete lack of empathy for someone else's emotional condition. Remember when I made a public apology to you? That was my attempt to bridge the gap we had, because I realize I had gone and done an incredibly weak minded thing. You know how we had a discussion in the species sapience thread, that went somewhere? We didn't completely agree, but we were able to respect each other at some level?
That's the very definition of compromise, and of respecting each other's emotional states to some degree. We evolved that capacity because words by their own connotations can be inverted to mean anything. That's the greatest beauty, and greatest flaw, of language: Is any word can be used to create, or destroy. To tear down, or enlighten. To attack, or defend. To be used warmly, or cruelly.
You can still have a discussion with people and state your points. How you state those points will influence the reactions of others. If you are a cold, blunt, brutal, idiotic cave man, who threatens physical violence against people who disagree with you? You shouldn't be surprised that their natural, four billion years in the making response, will be defensive. If you initiate conflict, don't be surprised that others respond with it.
It's not hypocritical for others to point at you and tell you to fuck off, or that you're wrong. It's not abridging freedom of speech; it's a perfect expression of it. If you state something in a blunt, cold manner, someone else is completely free to tell you off for it. You're completely free to tell them off back for it. You're even free to threaten physical harm on people, for whatever macabre reason you can think of for it, so long as there's no evidence you're actually going to try and attempt it.
In essence: They're completely allowed to try and get you to conform to what they think, because that's freedom of speech. You're free to reject or accept that, because that's also freedom of speech, and of association. If you go against the grain, expect to find a lot of people who will reject your assertions, no matter how well founded they may be in reality. If I were to join a Christian role playing forum and then started spouting on about atheism and Richard Dawkins, I guarantee you, guaran-fucking-tee you, that community would reject it. They would be free to reject it. They would be free to choose their own way, and because that website is private property, even free to ban me if I refused to conform to their way.
If this bothers you, good for you. You can join the "I'm offended" hug box hate speech spewing brigade on Tumblr. Otherwise, complaining that people respond poorly to you tearing into their personal character, whilst simultaneously making physical threats toward people who do the same to you, makes you the hypocrite. I mean in this thread, you already accused half the forum of having ADD because they didn't read one of your posts where you explained why you used the letter "v" instead of "w." You immediately go on the attack, and attack, and attack, and people close up when you do that, because nobody wants to deal with that shit.
Seriously, if you attack people on a personal level, and they decide to tell you off and stop dealing with you? That's not hypocrisy: That's getting rid of someone who annoys you. Which they're perfectly free to do so, because, I'm pretty fucking sure, you don't listen to the "western liberal" media on a regular basis. I bet they annoy you. Just like how you annoy some other people, and because of freedom of association, people are free to choose not to associate with you in any manner.
If you still don't get it, then just think to all the times other people made you angry in your life and you chose to shut them out. Because if we chose to viciously attack everyone who refused to capitulate to the way we think, we'd go back to the dark ages in a nuclear holocaust the likes of which would be unmatched in human history ever again. An eye for an eye only makes the world blind.
Nice to finaly see a real answer.
I'm expecting them to shitpost. The more they do it, the more they prove my point.
Secondly, I did not make any personal attacks on anyones character. At least no more then I seen others do all the time, as part of a joke. Why their "jokes" like that arent reacted upon, but mine are, escapes me.
Now I'l just go on a tangent, and comment on the diference in the resolution of conflicts today, as oposed to in the past. Today, conflicts are never resolved at all. They are just supressed, "sweeped under a rug", conveniently forgoten, or soothed-down vith some heavy-handed diplomacy until they pop out again. Or even kept in perpetual limbo, vhile the people suffer, and bad blood keeps building up like a pressure-valve... until one day it wil burst, and it wil be unlike any war ever seen, just because of all that pent-up supressed rage of the opressed. Just take a look at the vhole Middle-East situation since mid-1950s onward. One never-ending, never-abating, simmering, free-for-all. In the past, conflicts may have been more visceral, but in long-term, they got resolved much faster, one way or another. 3-4 years, tops. And after they did, come a period of peace. Real peace, for at least half a century or so, before some other conflict poped-up. Enogh time for the people to recover, at least to a point. The way things are today, I very much doubt the world wil ever have peace again, not this perpetual state of simmering war that culd erupt in-to a World War 3 any second of any day.
Now to return to this... yes, our discusion was civil. Because we didnt resort to thinly veiled attacks on each-other at all. We accepted each-others points of view. And also vhy I had a feeling you'd actualy give me a adult post on this topic, and not childish shitposts like they do right now. I respect you, Brovo, and I see its wel-earned.
I dont understand the part about threatening physical violence, I dont recall ever doing that aniwhere. If you can show me one, single post vhere I did that, that wuld be enlightening, because I dont remember it.
If you initiate conflict, don't be surprised that others respond with it.
Thats the problem, right there. Just because I'm stating a diferent opinion, and being honest about it, does NOT mean I'm initiating conflict. How they see it, is ther problem, not mine. But I do respond to conflict, vith conflict. Always have, always wil.
And sure, I dont have a problem vith ppl disagreeing vith me, I'm used to it. But I'm suprised by the repetitius nature of the atempts they make to make me see how "wrong" my view is, even after I maked it perfectly clear that its how I think, and that nothing and no-one wil convince me otherwise. I accept ther view. They dont seem to be able to accept mine. Once again, ther problem. And no, I'm not bothered by it, just pointing out that double-standard. If you recall the debate part on animal dietary habits, I didnt start that debate. I responded to a question posed to me. And that response then evolved in-to a vhole slew of ppl trying to convince me how "wrong" I am, in more then dozen posts. Trying and failing. Now, I culd have simply ignored them, and I wuld have, if I known that it wuld eventualy degenerate in-to shitposting. Now I wish I had that fore-sight.
I get it. But vhen I choose to "shut out" people, I do just that. Shut them out. I dont ansver to phone calls from them, I dont talk to them on the street, etc. I dont try to "reform" or change them in any way, because I know its futile. I just leave them alone.
Also... eye for an eye is the only kind of real justice. And the only equitable one. Anything else wil always make the victim feel cheated and angry, and like they didnt get justice at all. One of the main reasons vhy conflicts today are never resolved.
And thank you for a relevant, wel thoght out post Brovo. I ment what I sayed about how I respect you, and this is why.
