Pointing Back At Me

Posted on July 10, 2003 in Agnosticism Attitudes Crosstalk

I’ve got an attitude. Maybe it’s a problem, maybe it’s a necessary check that others need to value and heed.

My attitude has to do with people with booklearning who syllogize and patronize. “If you read these books like I have,” one rattled off at me the other day, as if my ability to defend my agnosticism was deficient because I was not as erudite as he. At another blog, I showed my impatience with a fellow who started to analyze my comments about why the Iraq War did not meet the standards of Just War. It sounded to me like he was being an apologist for the war. Plus he pulled out one of the fashionable conversation-stoppers for me, talk of “making judgements”.

I laughed him off as one of those people who mocked others for judging and then turned around and used judgement to judge them. And I called him an apologist.

He was angry. He “corrected” me. As is my habit when I am accused of screwing up I went back and read what he said. I scratched my head, wrote a badly worded response, then a better one. There was no way of telling, when I reread his response, that he wasn’t advocating the war in Iraq as a just one. He was showing his “superior” rhetorical skills. The problem was that I had to know him and his history. He didn’t fill me in on what he believed himself at all, just started picking at me.

I fuck up and I fucked up there. On the other hand, at least when I write, I tell what I believe, where I am coming from. I make every effort to treat those I speak to as an equal except when they launch into either jingoism or philosophizing. Then I turn mean. It’s a fault of mine. Do I want to change it? I’ll consider it.

To tell the truth, I would rather not discuss issues, either with jingoists or rhetoricians. There’s a place for subtlety, I will grant you, but all too many people use it either as a vehicle for self-promotion as intellectuals or for dodging key issues as was the case with the fellow who attempted to rebut my agnosticism. They think I don’t understand them. When they write incompletely, that can be the case. But otherwise, I can follow their thoughts quite well.

This week I am angry about some things and I am becoming a pain in the ass. It’s a good opportunity to take time off, to write about the mottling on the walls of the office and the way my eye deceives me into taking the yellow light of the lamp to be as bright as that of midday. The memories that you have seen me dredge up are coming out for a reason: I need to drain that blazing pool of resentment that fuels my temper a bit so I can act more civilly towards others, even the know-it-alls and those who are so certain of themselves.

I’m in no mood for sophistry. If you have a point of view tell me what you believe, not what you think is wrong with me. I am not as interested in what you think of my ideas as what you think and how you came to think them. I’ll listen if you’re civil and not hateful.

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Key phrases for all who discuss their differences with others: I think, I feel.

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Related: yesterday, after the writing practice, we got to talking politics, particularly pundits. It was the first I learned of Michael Savage being canned (so sue me for saying that). I confessed that I didn’t watch television or listen to radio. How could I live, so uninformed? my friends asked. These weren’t conservatives — I’d characterize them as middle of the roaders, decent people who are upset by the way the Resident is acting and by the shenanigans of the Extreme Right pundits such as Coulter, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh. They’re my friends, good people who think. They just wanted to know how I could consider my thinking well rounded if I didn’t listen and read these people.

I simply said “When I listen to that kind of stuff, I feel the anger well up in me. I don’t like living like that.”