To: Suma who wrote (23229 ) 7/7/2006 5:49:59 PM From: epicure Respond to i used to think it was relatively harmless to attack the messenger as well as the message. After all, you can be so witty (well some people can, about people you think little of, and for whose opinion you have no regard.) But after watching SI develop over time I decided that a willingness to confuse ideas with people, and attack both indiscriminately, and also to indulge in gross generalizations, is simply (imo) intellectual laziness. I have no doubt that everyone on SI could, if they wanted, separate the idea involved from the posters involved, and that everyone here is capable, after some reflection, of realizing that no group, be it political, religious, or social, is monolithic, and that while generalizations that are harmless merely muddy conversation, generalizations that hurt people pull apart society on its fault lines, and make people mad (as some people on SI obviously are, most of the time), and make it much more unlikely we can come together over all the things we agree upon- and most of us here have many more points of agreement than disagreement, we just usually fixate on the political areas where we disagree. Were we at a restaurant discussing the meal, or watching our children in a concert, or enjoying a walk in a park, we would probably find our common humanity in a way that seems impossible for some people to it find here.
