And what am I doing every night? Every year, Linus sits in a pumpkin patch on Halloween night waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. Each year the Great Pumpkin invariably fails to appear, and a humiliated but undefeated Linus stubbornly vows to wait for him again the following Halloween. Never discuss religion or politics with those who hold opinions opposite to yours; they are subjects that heat in handling, until they burn your fingers; You probably would not convert your opponent, and he will not convert you.
I think your final conclusion is sadly very true. I try to remain open minded, but I've been guilty of leaping before I've looked many times. Then afterwards, really digging into the skeptical side, I found that there were far too many questions that had fuzzy answers. The same goes for so many other issues, Civil Liberties, FairTax, Gun Control, Abortion, I'm finding myself increasing torn, drowning in the noise that gets screamed out by both sides - that I want to shut myself in and avoid, as you put it, the unnecessary drama.
But in good conscience, I can't I have a small circle of friends, and rarely add to that circle, specifically because I openly discuss anything and everything: politics, religion, and sex are off the table with the vast majority of Americans in my experience. It all depends on what you define "polite company" as. I openly discuss many "omg hot topic" issues with my friends, but there's a difference between talking to them, and talking to my family, who has a vastly different outlook on many issues.
Bringing up the Iraq war, and how horrible it is, during a dinner with them, will bring nothing but awkwardness. Hello there, and welcome to the Soapbox! How was that for polite? However, and here I'm not sure if our experiences were alike, this was never an admonishment to refrain from discussing politics or religion, ethics etc, per se.
Rather, looking back at it, I see it as a kind of guideline not on acceptable discourse, but on the nature of social interaction. In more formal settings, such as dinner parties and so on, where you are not intimately familiar with other participants, avoid subjects that likely involve deeply held convictions, and reserve such topics for more private environments. I don't know if this is a good thing, really.
I guess it comes down to culture. In Sweden, where people are generally rather reserved towards strangers, but where people tend to be very loyal to each other once a bond is created, I think it's a good thing.
In France, what little exposure I've had to it, people tend to bond by disagreeing or some such, so it's not as applicable there. In my experience. The politeness factor aside, quote: Mankind is a social animal, yet as we learn more and more about the universe and planet we live on, the more and more issues arise that cause us to polarize I think this touches a bit on a debate we've had in another thread, and I would say that it's not the volume of information as such that is problematic, nor the special interests, but rather how it is structured and who 'owns' it; the primacy of the intermediary.
It used to be that the adolescent citizen would form their political and etc world view through a primarily associative model. Your own experience, your family --immediate and extended, your church, school, your colleagues and labour union, any 'hobby' or 'interest' groups, and so on. Apart from that was the non-associative, newspapers and radio, but their role was limited.
I don't see much reason to be nostalgic: most people were probably horribly under-informed, or outright misinformed, by having much of their thinking shaped by participatory forums; indeed, the whole model tends to frame discussion according to its peculiar composition. However, in today's society, information has been to a large degree de-socialized, it is no longer primarily shaped by participatory association, but by a broadcast model where the recipient is primarily a spectator.
To put it as a caricature, it used to be that public issues in the life of the citizen was to a large degree bound to human to human interaction, with all the flaws inevitable to such a structure, while today the media has to an astonishing degree supplanted those forums.
A problem one would expect in this is that since the media typically thrives on the piquant and controversial, that will colour their narrative. When two people sit down face to face, they will generally try to get along.
Take the same two people and sit them down in front of a TV, and what would they be most likely to watch? Two people generally agreeing, being respectful and extending good faith where they disagree? Or two blowhards having a shouting match? So, media tends to push a polarizing narrative of public life. You put focus on what separates people, not what unites them. In itself, that's fine. The problem arises when that becomes the completely dominant form of defining public life, when there are not other spaces or models to counter that.
One interesting effect of this is that it normalizes the margins, and as such may marginalize the normal. If people have that as their primary source of political socialization, no wonder you see polarization.
And so on. Fortunately you both seem to have the kind of friends I am seeking, I am both glad and envious of you both I am fairly new in the city I live in here in the U. If your political beliefs weren't arrived at through rational analysis please, for the love of god irony intended , don't vote. Polite company means if you go out with people who you don't know very well, or in a "Jane Asten world" go around to another country house for tea. Also, "polite company" has been a euphemism for "women".
Now we also say "mixed company", like the delicate flowers will wilt at our harsh words, but somehow only if the crowd is heterogeneous. I think in this instance it's traditionally more "strangers", though. Moderation: No content. Fuck you. I love this.
All objectivity is lost. No topic. No debate. A total rant and troll, and the mighty UWSalt. You're a waste of my time, boy Moderation: My apologies for being rather curt. It wasn't that big of a deal, honestly. The point was that your decision to drop in just to make a snarky complaint about what you perceive to be a bad topic with little else twice now is not appropriate. You received an equally snarky rebuke that also should have made clear that there's no real need for moderation here; that would have been that.
Except that now there is a need because you've decided to blow a gasket and make another off topic, contentless post that manages to also personally attack the OP and me. Surely you also see the irony in this second post you've made, complaining about debate, objectivity, ranting, and trolling. You've been around long enough to know that: 1. Contentless posts, such as yours, generally get a negative presumption 2.
Especially when they employ armchair moderation or personal attacks 3. We have an email address, mods ars, for these concerns 4. That in light of the above, your subsequent response is even more inappropriate that your first post Furthermore, you may or may not have noticed that I personally take a dim view of people crapping on new posters here, which is what your first post amounted to. That's all the more true when, in stark contrast to your contributions to this thread, they've provide some thoughtful remarks which do contain at least one proposition worth discussing.
Whether it could be honed, narrowed, or clarified is one thing -- but I think you're smart enough to realize that there are more artful and appropriate ways to deal with that. I'm not sure what you expected to accomplish with this post, but I'm going to advise that you bring any further comments on the subject, or on moderation here in the Soap Box, to the mods ars email address. There is a whole raft of moderators, including two sort of three other Soap Box moderators, who have no qualms expressing their opinions in reviewing the actions of other mods; if individuals are aggrieved by moderator, little if any good will be accomplished by further derailing threads with complaining about it.
Meanwhile, back to your regularly scheduled discussion I had to give up my bipolar thinking in the light of multi-polar arguments. Let the contradictory information work on you to make you smarter.
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