05-10-2019, 10:45 AM
(05-10-2019, 02:06 AM)TheNomad Wrote: Everyone here saying "it never stays on topic" and "he doesnt want to hear other opinions EVOLVING in the conversation" you are not getting it.
There could be a billion threads in here with a billion names. But why does it always devolve into ppl arguing the SAME EXACT political and ideological tropes in every one of those billion threads? ISNT it because most are not in here to communicate at all? They are just here to be some kind of living billboard for their ideology and are looking to hose down everyone else with it.
There is no "evolved conversation" I am against. There is no "evolving topic". The topic gets thrown out ASAP to make room for ppl who ONLY want to spout their beliefs AT others. They even do it while claiming the person they are responding to "never listens and is dumb".
This reflects the ideological divide in America, one between people with largely egalitarian but personally libertarian ideas -- and people who believe in extreme inequality, with most people having responsibility to elites of ownership and bureaucratic power who have no responsibility to the common man.
Many Americans no longer distinguish between fact and belief. They like their news as entertainment, which explains the commercial successes of tabloids as awful as the National Enquirer. Some get their Orwellian "Two Minute Hate" from the "news" that they select. Accept such as news and one is more propagandized than informed. With the acceptance of malignant propaganda as truth one goes from not knowing to knowing what is completely wrong. (OK, all sides in a struggle use propaganda, and the truth about vile causes such as Bolshevism, fascism, Ku Kluxism, Ba'athism, and ISIS is knowledge of the vileness of the causes in question.
Evolution as understood by one side means that one accepts the whole agenda as truth beyond question and accepts one's role as the elites of that side insists.
Quote:Why do that? It's beyond empty. The topic does not EVOLVE, it is changed ASAP! As soon as someone can throw their logic bomb into the thread and cause everyone to back up into their respective caves and start throwing rocks.
Some truth, typically mathematical and physical laws, the basic rules of logic, linguistic conventions, and established facts of history, are beyond rational debate. Never mind that there are fools willing to debate the reality of the Holocaust, as an extreme example of folly. Someone who contradicts the historical existence of Abraham Lincoln would simply be wrong.
But values cannot be proved. As Bertrand Russell put it of the Nazi abuse and eventual extermination of Jews, one cannot prove it wrong, but one can find it so abominable that a good person cannot tolerate it. The abolitionists could not prove slavery wrong; they could only expose it for its odiousness. On the other side, slave-owners saw slavery as not only necessary for their ways of life but even as beneficence toward slaves. Abusers and exploiters often see themselves as the best things to ever happen to their victims.
Quote:I make threads because I am a thoughtful person who wants to learn. Whoever keeps saying the phrase "butt hurt" please just logout from here and mosey down to the local tavern in Alabama and revel over how the new abortion law is going to help do god's will and AL will be on "the right side of history" after the rapture comes and places like LA and NY burn in the fiery furnace of god's wrath.
I mean for real, what I just said is what EVERY thread here ends up becoming.
For good reason, the best education used to be understood to have literature as its core. In practice, human nature is so complex that it does not reduce easily to behavioral laws except in extreme circumstances such as a slave labor. It is easiest for commercial and bureaucratic elites if they can reduce human existence to "you work adequately for us, and you eat -- and if you fail to serve us adequately, you die". The value of literature is so high that the strongest authority on some important issues including politics, social organization, and purpose in life remains... William Shakespeare.
It is the oversimplification of human existence that debases life. We have multiple facets of existence or we are pitiable. To describe parts of America as Sodom and Gomorrah and the rest elect of God is to ignore both the huge number of innocent people in "Sodom and Gomorrah" and the large number of people in the "shining city on the hill". Maybe some people are too easy to label for their own good or at least for the achievement of their dreams, and that is horrible for them as well as for any so unfortunate as to be their victims.
Quote:it's disrespectful and a disservice. And the thread maker should have the option to remove it.
I concur.
Quote:ESPECIALLY when I make a thread and then ppl use racial slurs in it, the frakkin moderator does not care, and then my handle is associated with people using such vulgar and offensive/ignorant language. The frakkin moderator is in the shadows when it comes to that, and I cannot even delete the thread I made for that reason. And then the MOD comes flying out on Mjolnir to punish anyone who says they might SPAM.
Priorities. Responsibility.
The spam is easy to detect for its commercial qualities and especially should it have objectionable content (Pornography of all kinds!) Maybe if I had a site I would sell classified ads. What is so wrong about trying to sell a house or a car? Obviously, advertising makes information less costly. Maybe one could operate a news site for free to readers contingent upon them seeing advertising. Read the story -- but only after you have seen an ad, and perhaps a classified ad or two. Avoid the ads? Sure -- if you subscribe. But isn't that how broadcast television and radio operate?
We should all have to explain why we feel compelled to use vile language, including racial, ethnic, religious slurs and they usual filthy stuff. Reportage? Sure. We all know that the secret recordings of Mob meetings are full of f-bombs, and that the discussion at the local Klavern is about... well, it is as a rule unflattering names for people who do not look like the people in the Klavern. Many people have difficulty in control of their impulses, which implies that they have vile language as a norm. I do not like being around people with Tourette's syndrome.
But there is plenty about me that one can dislike. Isn't that so of us all?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.