Folks,
I've been concerned recently about the number of posters in our thread who adamantly, without any doubt whatsoever in their mind, are of the opinion that the majority of our thread participants are on a path of self destruction caused by their ignorance and blindness of the so-called inevitable truth. Regardless of the opinion or the subject, my skepticism is aroused when I see posts that tend to profoundly and categorically offer a viewpoint without showing any hint of wanting to know other people's opinion on the subject, without offering even the slightest possibility that things might go differently than they project, or that events of the past might have come to be for reasons that might be different than the author perceives.
I'd like to clarify that I'm not the least bit concerned about people who disagree with the basic thesis or the specific tenets that make up the thesis of this thread. Just the opposite, I openly welcome that sort of disagreement and enjoy reading well articulated, contrary thinking. Instead, my concern is with regard to the adamant style of presentation that tends to make many readers think the author couldn't possibly believe that s/he could ever be remotely wrong about anything or that the author's primary purpose in posting is to teach, rather than learn.
When I see Bruce's second post in as many years (maybe in less than a year?) about the loss of a young life in his family, I'm reminded that no matter how strongly we think something in the future is or isn't going to happen, or regardless of how strongly we feel about our perception of the causes of past events, we don't have to look very far or very hard to find evidence that none of us should be so arrogant as to feel so certain about anything. Who would ever have thought that a young woman would go for a daily bike ride and not return, or that a boy would be beaten to death on his doorstep?
In these days when all of our thoughts go to Bruce and his family, let's honor him and show our appreciation for the immense uncertainty evidenced by his family's unexpected losses by making a special point of writing posts that outwardly show that none of us should be particularly certain of anything, especially about something so relatively trivial as our net worth.
--Mike Buckley |
