Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Obvious example

Jon Schwarz posts the obvious, digby suddenly is able to understand it.

I at first took her "It is so outside the range of mainstream belief that it takes a couple of readings to actually grok what he's saying" as embarrassingly dim, but really what it is is an example of what I was talking about yesterday.

Now, whether it will stick, whether it will lead anywhere, is another question. Signs point to no, as far as I can tell. Still, there's potential there.

3 comments:

Quin said...

Good for you for taking a higher road. It's a good policy in general. If nothing else, it feels nicer to do, I think (or at least I think so on those rare occasions I manage it).

Ethan said...

taking a higher road

Well, thanks for saying so, but as far as I'm concerned I only manage to do so on very rare occasions. More often than not I'm calling people ignoramuses and monsters. This post was an attempt to remind myself not to. And hey, maybe if I keep posting like this and you keep encouraging me, I'll turn into a better person! (I joke.)

Quin said...

Not funny. ;-)

Don't worry, I don't think there's anyone out there for whom this isn't a struggle. Even the most revered spiritual leaders all began as regular, short-sighted guys and gals. It's probably a natural human reaction, when facing an opponent we strongly disagree with, to have trouble seeing them as quite a full human being with just as much as a capacity for change as we do. Dehumanization, I am convinced, is not a skill we are taught, but rather a natural instinct we are born with. Even so, it's worth attempting to overcome. Homo sapiens' ability, as an animal species, to occasionally transcend our naturally programmed tendencies is one of the few things that gives me hope about us.

So what I'm saying is, keep it up!