There was an article up a couple of days ago that discussed the inability to reason and communicate shown by many in today's society. I think we see that here on many hot-button issues. Instead of considering issues as abstractions, people form a powerful emotional attachment to a figure or a position, and then they are unable either communicate reasonably about their position, or to engage with other perspectives.
It gets really boring.
I had a pastor some years back who told me, "If you're upset, then you're the problem. Don't engage in any apologetics if you can't be calm and reasonable, or if you feel personally hostile or threatened." To this day, if I'm tempted to respond to a post that upsets me, I say to myself, "Father Paul said not to!" and go back to discussing the weather and fashion.
Spot on!
Hopefully my reply wasn’t too zealous and indiscrete. ;^)
Good advice by the Pastor.
However . . . Dear Heart . . .
some of my fiercest writing is when I’m exceedingly calm—no raised heart beat or increased breathing rate etc.
Most of my writing—95%?—is when I’m quite calm.
I love playing with words. I love saying things in emphatic, startling, memorable ways.
Maybe I sat through too many boring lectures and read too many boring text books on the way to the PhD.
Maybe I got what few rewards I got growing up by writing vivid, even startling things in English and Social Studies classes.
Besides all that, the instense exchanges are much more alive, authentic, real, to me. I hate shallow discourse more than I hate a LOT of other things. Actually, I don’t hate many things, at all—that is, I hate very few things, total. Hate is just not a familiar feeling to me.
And, I have been the brunt of a lot of ridicule my whole life.
And, I have seen how effective the disinformation psy-ops folks have been using ridicule against UFO disclosures.
I suspect all of that has had some part to play in my ‘style.’
It’s rarely personal—except to highlight some folks pontifications who seem to delight in making abjectly foolish, outrageous assertions. I enjoy the fray—rather collegially, actually.
I mean . . . if folks are going to BEG for such a response, who am I to refuse to be generous!
Of course, there are a few who seem to ENJOY being just personally harsh, mean and personally assaultive as though they were Saul putting to death Prottys—or wishing they could. Those can be particularly fun highlighting their absurdities, double standards and hypocrisies.
Of course, I realize that I can be absurd as well. I sure earnestly endeavor to be well beyond double standards and hypocrisies. By God’s Grace, He helps me usually succeed on those scores.
If one is going to be silly, brash, fiesty, startling in communications, one has to be a pretty good capacity to see their own clay feet.