Vic: Yaknow, Moonie, I do appreciate your confidence in me, but I'm not always sure that it helps my cause.
I have to guess at your cause. I see you as a superb example of intelligence and rational thinking, a proponent of the notion that the way to truth is via critical thinking, dialogue argument and dialectic interchange accompanied by a lamentation for their lack.
Myself, I believe that folk don't have that capacity, not because they never learned in school, although that is partially true, but because they are emotionally unhealthy, they hate themselves and every line of reasoning will lead them back to that fact if followed completely. It's where it lead me. But for reasons I can't fathom I seemed to have been a glutton for punishment.
So I only occasionally attempt to reason with people, either because I think they or somebody else can hear the arguments. Otherwise, I just try to hold up a mirror because until people see who they are, on those rare times when they might be willing to the primary hope they have is to see who they are.
I operate on a completely different dimension, then, one of instinct and feel guided by a completely different moral belief, that the truth is reached not by intellect alone but by inspiration, an intuitive flash of self consciousness. I am more like an ape in a room full of thinkers, who knows where the banana is. I want to play, let's find the banana.
Vic: In the ugly world of social media, you tend to repel people with your over developed sense of empathy, which most people sorely lack. I'm sure you already knew this.
M: The way I see it, I tell people they hate themselves and because it's true they hate me for it. They hear insults rather that facts because they are stuffed full of ego, the armor that we have built to keep away our real feelings. It is the exact same armor that makes us impervious to reason. The monster of self hate is always there waiting in the dark. We do not know what we feel. We do not know we do not know what we feel. We do not want to know we do not want to know what we feel. Only the deeply curious or the deeply hurt seem to have any chance. I would like to touch some of those.
Vic: Anyway, it doesn't matter to me if some guy who posts to the blacklivesmatter hashtag is a white who chooses to identify as black. It's an attack against a person and nothing more. And if it is indeed somehow so beneficial to be black, then I wonder why more of them don't do the same.
M: That empathy seems to have gotten you in trouble with some.
Anyway, I love the rational folk who post here. But for me personally, reason is too constraining. I enjoy meeting the insane on their own turf unconstrained by any notions of personal dignity, free to be who they are so they see themselves when they see me. You notice the clown avatar and the various interpretations one could glean from my handle.