Bomb-Throwing, or Sense and Sensitivity
Posted by deleted 10 years, 3 months ago to The Gulch: General
Guess who I just got off the phone with? None other than our own sdesapio.
He was (quite rightly) concerned with my comment regarding the... well, I won't repeat it, but it was in the "Proposition: America couldn't have been founded by Objectivists" post.
It seems I touched a nerve. This is difficult for me to recognize, because in my youth I taught myself that there are no thoughts that are unthinkable, because then you limit your perception and ability to learn. Thinking a thought is not the same as advocating what it may represent.
Unfortunately, this has made it difficult, sometimes, for me to discuss matters with people, because I inadvertently offend them without meaning to. It's made worse because there *are* times when I try to offend people, usually to get across the idea of how something *they* think is mainstream thought offends me.
I'm *not* apologizing for what I said. However, what I said was something dangerous in this day and age, especially with the discovery of government monitoring of the internet. It is important to realize that I did not advocate what I described, and find it as horrible an idea as anyone else here. That was kind of the point.
I could almost certainly have used a different, less offensive metaphor. But, as I told sdesapio, I had earlier been watching an episode of "Law and Order SVU" (I like watching Marisa Hargitay on the show, so sue me). I won't describe what happened in the episode, but the suspect was justifying his behavior in a very similar way to the metaphor I made (Or was it an analogy.... I get those mixed up sometimes).
I never, ever "bomb-throw" just to agitate people; it's either, as I said above, to slap someone into awareness of his/her own offensiveness (such as I attempted in the "Christian Mystic" argument of the Galt as libertarian Jesus commentary), or because I don't realize that the argument I'm making is going to evoke outrage rather than provoke thought.
I'm making this post because sdesapio asked me NOT to delete my original offending comment, but to take my lumps and explain myself here (and yes, MikeMarotta, I complained to him about the lack of italic and bold tags).
Had he attempted to bully or boss me around, I would have told him to catch a flying fish (or words to that effect) and stormed off in a figurative huff. So credit to him for that.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
"Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole, packed globe."
-- J.B. Priestly
He was (quite rightly) concerned with my comment regarding the... well, I won't repeat it, but it was in the "Proposition: America couldn't have been founded by Objectivists" post.
It seems I touched a nerve. This is difficult for me to recognize, because in my youth I taught myself that there are no thoughts that are unthinkable, because then you limit your perception and ability to learn. Thinking a thought is not the same as advocating what it may represent.
Unfortunately, this has made it difficult, sometimes, for me to discuss matters with people, because I inadvertently offend them without meaning to. It's made worse because there *are* times when I try to offend people, usually to get across the idea of how something *they* think is mainstream thought offends me.
I'm *not* apologizing for what I said. However, what I said was something dangerous in this day and age, especially with the discovery of government monitoring of the internet. It is important to realize that I did not advocate what I described, and find it as horrible an idea as anyone else here. That was kind of the point.
I could almost certainly have used a different, less offensive metaphor. But, as I told sdesapio, I had earlier been watching an episode of "Law and Order SVU" (I like watching Marisa Hargitay on the show, so sue me). I won't describe what happened in the episode, but the suspect was justifying his behavior in a very similar way to the metaphor I made (Or was it an analogy.... I get those mixed up sometimes).
I never, ever "bomb-throw" just to agitate people; it's either, as I said above, to slap someone into awareness of his/her own offensiveness (such as I attempted in the "Christian Mystic" argument of the Galt as libertarian Jesus commentary), or because I don't realize that the argument I'm making is going to evoke outrage rather than provoke thought.
I'm making this post because sdesapio asked me NOT to delete my original offending comment, but to take my lumps and explain myself here (and yes, MikeMarotta, I complained to him about the lack of italic and bold tags).
Had he attempted to bully or boss me around, I would have told him to catch a flying fish (or words to that effect) and stormed off in a figurative huff. So credit to him for that.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:
"Between midnight and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole, packed globe."
-- J.B. Priestly
