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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rainy_Day_Woman who wrote (29327)	2/16/2005 11:25:02 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 90947

you don't think that damaged that kid? I frankly don't know. I don't have sufficient facts about this specific young man to know. Do you? Do I think that he may well have been damaged? Of course. But do I automatically assume that it MUST have damaged him, and that there is no possible conceivable way that he came out of it undamaged? No. That's prejudging without facts to an extraordinary degree, and I'm not prepared to go there. From the few times I have seen him speaking on television, I have to say he doesn't look or act damaged. In fact, he has amazed me with how mature and in control of himself and his situation he has seemed. This is not your typical 12 year old. But he still may well be damaged. I'm no psychologist. I don't know how to evaluate whether people who don't appear or act damaged are in fact damaged. Since the case is from my own state, and his situation has been fairly comprehensively covered by the local news media and legal press for nearly ten years, I do have some long-term knowledge of the situation which not everybody on this thread may have. That impacts the way I see the situation. (It's a case of facts interfering with prejudgment.) If you are a qualified psychologist and believe you have sufficient facts on which to diagnose him, that's fine. If you have such expertise and knowledge, I would appreciate hearing about it, because I sure don't. If you're of the opinion that it is completely impossible for any 12 year old boy not to be damaged by such a relationship, you're perfectly entitled to that opinion, but we have to recognize that it IS an opinion, not a medically proved conclusion. I would agree with you that in many, probably most, cases that would be true. But I'm also willing to be open to the possibility that exceptions exist. And I'm willing to be open to the possibility -- not the certainty, not the probability, but the possibility -- that this is such an exception. Do I understand how this (now) young man and not-so-young woman could genuinely be in love? I admit it's hard, for me to understand. But I'll also admit that there are many couples I see who appear to be in love and I can't understand why or how they are. Love is like that. Do I think he's making a mistake? As I've said before, frankly, yes. Frankly, I think he'll regret it. But he's now an adult. He's entitled to make a mistake about who he marries if he wants to. Isn't he? I think that what bothers me most is how people who have little or no knowledge of who this young man and not so young woman are, who have not followed their lives and situations for nearly ten years, who may never have heard them interviewed, whose only knowledge of these lives is a set of numbers and genders, can so ardently leap to conclusions about them with no specific facts about them as people on which to base those conclusions. They state a set of general facts and prejudge the situation without any specific knowledge of the particular circumstances. (I'm reminded of the people I knew growing up who thought it was terrible for any black person and white person to get married; that no matter who and how committed they were it could never work.) That sort of absolutism, the sense that we know absolutely and utterly what is best for specific individuals we don't know is what pushes my buttons a bit here and makes me want to say don't judge people until you have all the facts about who and what they are. People aren't machines. They are individuals. Maybe there is more here than at first meets the eye. And, of course, maybe not. Maybe it really is just simplistic and straightforward. I don't guarantee that it isn't. But I don't think, in the absence of knowing these people as people, not simply as age and gender numbers, you can guarantee that it is.