The other day I was in a room with self-proclaimed liberals, the type who say everything they think is great and everything everyone else thinks is (I don’t want to repeat their words). One of the people was bragging about how when Mormons knocked on their door they tried to give them copies of Dawkin’s books. Everyone laughed, ha! Take that Mormons, but I sat quietly and then said, ‘that was cruel.’
I was instantly shot down by the liberals tolerant to any opinion that mirrors theirs and/or comes from within their group (see Sumner) who laughingly expressed ways that they could be cruel as the others whooped and agreed with themselves. I shrugged and said, ‘I like Joseph Smith’, and then told the story of how Mormons were persecuted and chased across America, eventually making Salt Lake City, and then Smith being arrested and murdered in his cell by, it seems, a ghost or the invisible man. The response was ‘he was arrested for fraud, he made a fake religion’. At this point I, eventually, realised the futility of engagement and stopped talking, thinking to myself, maybe but maybe his ‘fake’ religion saved lives by giving hope to those without hope? judge not less ye be judged and be kind to those whom you meet for they are struggling too etc.
Recently a friend of mine was banned from an internet forum for arguing with the mass population about Trump (he is pro-Trump). When I found he had been banned I wrote a message saying that I found the conversation stupid so I stopped reading it and it was the personal responsibility of everyone to stop reading/engaging with it if they do not like it. Of course, I was vilified for suggesting personal responsibility (The bank sold me 4 mortgages on my one home at 200% its value each time! How dare they! Um, you could have said no…)
Too often nuance is lost in the blindness of ignorance. Certainty is the name that we give to the ignorance of our ignorance however, people have some absurd notion that they can think and see things that others cannot. Many seem to assume that they see with 20-20 vision and the rest are bumbling in the dark yet most cannot see the wood from the trees (pun intended- ‘You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.’)
The same people as the previous conversation were then speaking of how animals should be given rights and how important it is. Whilst they were talking I was thinking, I agree but how can you expect to do so if you cannot even respect another human with a different opinion and would (if we could read the thoughts and understand the language of animals) you be so eager to defend the rights of animals which may be a big fan of Genghis Kahn and want a speciescide of humans?
Who knows?
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 