Belittle, belittle, belittle.
Badger, badger, badger.
Whine, Whine, Whine
Must be terrible to have such low self esteem one has to constantly try tear
others down, to build himsellf up.
Quoted message said:Subject: Re: Jan: A retraction is appropriate
From: Eric Bohlman [email hidden]
Date: 2/17/2004 11:09 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <[email hidden]>Rich.@. wrote in news:[email hidden]:
Quoted message said:On 18 Feb 2004 04:31:58 GMT, [email hidden] (DEBBEE1023)
wrote:Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Doesn't Jan or anyone else here for that matter not have the right to
"freedom of speech" in the U.S.A? ....isn't this exactly what the ACLU
promotes? What religious group founded the ACLU in the first place?Once again Debbee confuses criticizing statements as trying to
suppress a person from making the statements. I am not sure if Debbee
is that obtuse or whether she is just putting us all on. Can anyone be
that stupid???How does criticizing a person's statements add up to trying to stop
the person from making them?? Any thoughts to understand the
cognitive processes that would result in someone thinking like this??
I'm afraid that Debbee is *nowhere* near alone in that confusion; in fact,
it's become an epidemic in American society. I see it on all ends of the
political spectrum, and it scares me, because the fundamental assumption
it's based on is the very antithesis of free speech, namely the belief that
one should have the *power* to *control* other people's reactions to one's
words. The "right" to have the last word on any subject is only possible
if one has the *power* to force other people to shut up.
I see we now are talking about Debbee.
ZZzz.
How did this state of affairs come about? I'm not sure. Authors like
Wendy Kaminer and Frank Furedi who have written about "therapeutic culture"
have hinted that it might come from the "no invalidation" rules of some
therapy and recovery groups. Some people definitely exploit it
commercially; you can hear or read, for example, conservative pundit Ann
Coulter claiming that her ideas are being "censored" or "suppressed," and
you're not supposed to notice that she's making those claims in the best-
selling books and national TV appearances where she expresses those ideas.
Um, Ann, people who are "censored" and "supressed" by definition *don't*
have access to those kinds of outlets for their views.
Some academic postmodern doctrine also asserts that there's no real
distinction between criticizing someone's *ideas* and attacking that person
*as a person*, but that doctrine has very little influence outside of
academia, and I suspect that its incorporation of that concept is merely a
symptom of the problem rather than a cause of it. But for some reason, a
lot of people have gotten the notion that everybody is either a wimp who
walks around on tiptoes for fear of stepping on others feet or a bully who
deliberately stomps on as many feet as possible.
The idea that one can politely and diplomatically, but firmly, point out
the problems inherent in someone's statement seems to be lost on a lot of
people; you're supposed to be either "politically correct" (i.e. regard all
opinions as equally valid, and regard all statements as statements of
opinion) or "brutally honest" (i.e. sling insults, epithets, and putdowns
the way 11-12-year-old boys are famous for). Now that I think about it,
what both "alternatives" in this false dilemma have in common is that they
represent triumphs of *process* over *substance* and of *attitude* over
facts and genuine, thought-through opinions. The "politically correct"
mode of expression is supposed to communicate a "caring" attitude, whereas
the "brutally honest" mode merely communicates a contemptuous attitude. In
both cases, you're merely communicating your emotional reaction to the
other person's statement; you're not supposed to talk about anything other
than your feelings.
And that, in turn, seems to be related to the pernicious notion (which I
think does stem from "therapeutic culture"😉 that a person's emotions and
fantasies are what truly defines him or her. And that ties back into one
of the problems with "alt-think"; when you adopt the assumption that people
are defined by their feelings and fantasies, you start evaluating their
actions and statements not on their own merits, but on their motivations.
You start excusing harmful actions or factually incorrect statements on the
ground that they were sincere or done out of good will. You start to
confuse passion and self-certainty with truth. You start to regard
rigidity and pigheadedness as signs of strength. You start to value
"caring" over indifference, even when the "caring" takes the form of
spreading urban legends. You wind up thinking that the factual truth of a
statement doesn't matter as long as it was made from the heart, and end up
devaluing statements that were "merely" made from the head.
I could go on about this forever, but suffice it to say that I think
there's plenty of evidence that the confusion can only be explained in
terms of societal factors rather than personal psychopathology.
Where is your next lecture being held?
Jan