Hiya X ! ! Hey, thanks for the update.
I find this to be astounding. OK, I'm gonna say my thing here and I'll be done with it. I said something already, in post 133 on the Boink thread, but I'll try again in a different way.
I went back and read all those posts, and a bunch of others as well. I even searched for the word "evil" and found some interesting stuff. Lots of people communicating about their beliefs and viewpoints and so on.
I see these posts break down into pretty distinct categories. Almost all of them are people, lots of different people, who are doing the best they can to learn and interact. I have a buddy that calls it, "climbing their own mountain." That's a good thing. It can be the source of friction at times, and I've been on both ends of a private "Hey, if I offended you, I apologize" message. That's a good thing too.
A few (a few) are people who are consciously intending to make someone else feel worse. These people seem pretty easy for me to spot. I dismiss them utterly! I assume they have no power outside their own minds, and I refuse to conduct social discourse with them. They certainly have no power at all over me. This is why I do not watch the "news" on TV or read the tripe that is called "news" in the newspapers.
The annoying thing to me is to see people that I know and like be sucked into the web of these few people and get pulled down to a level where they feel they must interact with them on the Internet. It is a losing battle, in my humble opinion. It's an evil game, and I personally just choose not to play. I don't need to get upset about this stuff, because I just don't play that game.
Let me, if I may, share the definition of a word. This comes from the Century Cyclopedia, which is a 10 volume dictionary that was published in the late 19th century and the early 20th. I have the definition memorized. If you think the word "power" has to do with force, you have a late 20th century definition. Here's what it really means:
"Power: in general, such an absence of external restriction and limitation that it depends only upon the inward determination of the subject whether or not it will act."
[The bad news folks can't touch me. It's a swell place to be. Let's move out. Zombie 3, over.] |
