May an occasional - VERY occasional -- lurker make a few comments?
1) Terrence, I counted no fewer than 53 posts from you to this thread made between 6:57 p.m. yesterday evening to 4:37 a.m. this morning. You started up again at 1:47 p.m. this afternoon, and in the four hours since, you have already posted 16 or so messages. I haven't read them all (who could?), but they seem to be getting more and more irascible. The sun is still shining; go outside for a nice Memorial Day picnic.
2) You charge a fellow regular with justifying values she FEELS are correct (from a "collective mindset"). Isn't this thread supposed to be about FEELINGS?
3) This leads me to a more general point. Although ostensibly about "feelings," for the most part discussions on this thread are really about "beliefs," "ideas," and even "ideologies." If you'll forgive me for saying so (I know, I know, I'm an interloper), this confusion may be one reason why your discussions get so heated, and (again, forgive me!) often so banal.
Let me take an easy example: religion.
One person may say - "I feel good when I believe in God, therefore He exists." From the pragmatist Jamesian point of view ("if it works for you"), this is perfectly acceptable. But just because something makes you feel good, does not necessarily mean that it is objectively true.
On the other hand, someone else may say - "I believe in God because I have become convinced of the truth of the proofs of His existence." That means he was led to his belief by his reason, rather than by his feelings (although it is hard to imagine that the latter did not play a part). Therefore, you may (if you wish)challenge the validity of the proofs he accepts -- and you may actually get somewhere.
But you can't argue about feelings -- feelings are what they are. If I feel blue, for example, don't argue with me, and tell me that I ought not to feel blue. (It wouldn't do any good, anyway.) Just hear me out (hopefully with a sympathetic ear).
If my blue mood leads me to a general belief -- e.g., the world is a rotten place -- then what you can do is to suggest that what I feel is true is not necessarily true (although it might be).
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that there are many things I would like to be true, or feel to be true (whether I like it or not), which I cannot prove to be true. This makes for an interesting tension, I think.
Perhaps if you were to bear in mind (and perhaps even analyze)the complexities of the feelings/beliefs/ideas interrelationship, you might come up with some genuinely interesting discussions.
Now -- I'm outta here (before the stones start flying).
jbe
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