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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (68039)	11/25/2002 5:53:58 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

If you're going to demand accountability, demand it for both the speaker and the hearer. I agree with that. Neo speaks about the foreseeable results of words. "Forseeable" is not always so easy to see. We can foresee responses often in people we know. We can foresee responses where they are pretty much universal, like people cooing when shown a baby or getting angry when you cut in line in front of them. But much is gray and unknown. There are all sorts of cultural and individual differences. You never know when you're going to inadvertently touch someone's hot button. Seems to me that the only reasonable approach is to shrug off most of what might otherwise bother us. Seems to me that's the "duty" of the hearer. The flip side of the "duty" to apologize. In many ways this subject is like the PC business. While there's a right to free speech, there's no right to not having our feelings hurt or our sensibilities affronted. There's only so much that people can and should be protected. The hearer has some responsibility, too.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (68039)	11/26/2002 9:28:51 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

There is, to a limited degree, control over one's responses. However, much is predetermined by nature, culture, and habit, so that our choices are at best narrowed, for example, we can refuse to get into a flame war, although we cannot help being angry. Certainly people, including you, who engage in insults do so with the intention of being hurtful, as a result of resentment, and therefore expect (at least as a probability) the result sought. When I say that one is responsible for the result, unless one cannot avoid the action, I do not mean that one is necessarily guilty. Martin Luther King was responsible for getting his followers hosed down, by persuading them to march in places like Selma, but that does not mean that he was guilty, insofar as the action was justified. But it does mean that King had to behave responsibly in encouraging confrontation. I do not mean that there is no culpability on the other side, even if, as a matter of established character, the individual did not have a choice at the moment of action, but rather broader responsibility for the formation of his character. But my focus is different: if I wrestle a bear, I am likely to be mauled, and it will do no good to say "bad bear". One must either be constrained to wrestle the bear (there is no good alternative), or one must have an awfully good reason for doing it, or one is a fool behaving irresponsibly. Muddying the water with the culpability of others, instead of analyzing one's own responsibility, is just evasive.......