<A choir director at one of my schools told me a couple of weeks ago, that a girl announced she didn't believe in the religious pieces we are singing, and the kids
really attacked her until she started crying and ran out.>
It's not just in religion though. Try going against any prevailing conventional wisdom and the personal abuse is usually an instant behind, or even in front of, any rational argument of the mob.
She will have learned what a pack of ignorant bullying fools the religious cranks are, not that they are right [to put the personal abuse in front of my arguments].
Recounting a story from high school days, I liked science and one day, the Principal was visiting our class and asked which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?
After a brief silence, the collective opinion was that they are the same. I ventured to say that that isn't the case and was trying to explain, but not being completely clear on the reason, wasn't robust in my argument. I did know that if weighed in air, a low density thing would appear to be lighter than a dense thing because of buoyancy effects [like weighing a balloon filled with hydrogen would give a negative weight whereas it does of course have some weight].
Meanwhile, the mob was shouting me down as a klutz who had fallen for the idea that feathers were lighter than lead.
Anyway, the Principal said he'd leave us with it, not even bothering to say who was right and who was wrong. As I recall, he hadn't said whether the two were weighed in air or not, in which case we couldn't answer the question.
My lesson was the uselessness of most people's ability to think and listen and reason, and their desire to be in a bullying mob. Which was a good lesson. It confirmed, yet again that I do best outside the mobs.
Mqurice |
