Re: The Need for Debate

Chris Bates scripsit:

> Why can't people just try to
> take things less personally, to not interpret a critism of american
> foreign policy as an attack on individual americans, to not interpret an
> argument about the Bible as a personal attack on Christians? I might
> argue about contradictory aspects of the Bible as I see them, but since
> I am not omniscient I could be wrong and I know that, and you are free
> to either ignore me if you choose, or debate the issue with me, and you
> may convince me or I may convince you.
Here's a quotation for all to think about, *not* addressed directly to
you necessarily:

"That question, as phrased, is both inflammatory and inaccurate.
I can stand a little inflammation, or a little inaccuracy; but the
combination is poison."
	--Ursula K. Le Guin

> It is very easy when there is no tone of voice, no facial expressions,
> as in email, to see the worst in what someone has written. Will everyone
> please please just try to assume the best, and then (since a lot of us
> happen to be argumentative, as several people have pointed out) maybe we
> can all just talk happily and not have the constant angry replies to
> what was probably not intended to be offensive in the first place.
It's not up to the offender to decide what is and what is not offensive,
unfortunately.  Only the offended can forgive.

I was attending a lecture by Marion Woodman (Jungian psychoanalyst,
author of many books, lecturer) on Friday night.  A man, a minister,
asked her for her advice on the problem he was having talking to
narrow-minded co-religionists, how angry they made him.  I spoke to him
at the break and gave him two quotations, one from Pauline Oliveiros,
"Speak your experience as your truth", and one from William Blake,
"We become what we behold", or as Stephen R. Donaldson phrased it,
"We become what we hate".

"But what can I do in my persona as a teacher, when talking with my
brother -- and these people?" he asked me.  I said, tentatively, "Mercy,
pity, peace, and love?"  He tapped me on the shoulder, and I gave him
a hug.

I didn't see him at the second part of the lecture.  I wondered whether
he had gone off somewhere to weep.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand."
        --Gerald Holton

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