--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning <no_reply@> wrote: <snip> > > A second, separate point, I liked Judy's post yesterday, it > > was a good counter that made me think a bit. The gist -- > > parapharsing "racism IS bad and I will speak up against it > > and try to uplift weak and/or irrational views." > > I would suggest that this is a rather superficial > example of the phenomenon, designed to support the > case that we *should* try to change other people's > minds. The example given is racism. Yeah, sure... > everybody likes to think they're against racism, > and that they'd speak up if someone said some racist > remarks in their presence. > > But that's not what we're talking about. What we're > talking about (as far as I can tell) is the attempt > by one person, unsolicited, to convince another > person that his beliefs about a spiritual teacher > are wrong. Ummmm...do you really think that relates > to hearing some racist remarks and "speaking up" > about them? > > Well, no, it isn't related at all. It was an attempt > to distract attention from the actual situation.
This is hilarious. Barry's forgotten that just a couple hours ago, *he cited my post* as an example of what he was talking about. Or could he now be admitting that *he* was attempting to distract attention from the actual situation? Here was his comment on my post: "And yet, is it our business to somehow convince them [TM supporters] that this [good people doing bad things] is what they're doing? "I ask because one poster on this forum suggested as much yesterday. The implication (possibly unin- tended) of the post was that if she encountered a friend who had come to believe something that she considered untrue or even insulting to certain minorities, she'd *have* to say something to set the person right and change his or her mind, to make (not stated, but definitely implied) some kind of stand for "the truth." "If one feels that, doesn't that imply that they feel that they KNOW the truth? "I can't speak for you, Doug, but I DON'T know the truth. About *anything*. All I have is opinions, which as far as I can tell based on past perform- ance (no scientific tests so far...sorry, Off), are sometimes accurate, and sometimes not." Barry, in other words, used his disagreement with my post to make his point, so obviously he thought it was relevant to the discussion about Rick's friend. Now, all of a sudden, the post he cited to support his take on Rick's friend was "attempting to distract attention from the actual situation." The jaw just drops at the blatant intellectual dishonesty. In any case, of course I was using racism as a kind of reductio ad absurdam, exactly because nobody wants to think they wouldn't speak out against it. As I went on to say: It's not quite so simple as saying, as "some people" here do, Well, that's your opinion. I have a different opinion. No one opinion is "better" than any other. In other words, where do you draw the line? What do you challenge, and what don't you challenge, and why? How do you make the distinction between what you will and won't challenge? Is it black and white, or are there shades of gray about which reasonable people could disagree?
