Immanuel Can wrote:Yes, but let's be careful here: examination is fair, and so is support and defeat of propositions. We "break" delusions, and we "break" the grip a bad idea has on the public imagination, to be sure; but we do not, in the process, "break" people -- not even the people who have held the bad ideas.
I note that in another thread, on being pressed about personal details, you ask to be judged purely on the quality of your posts. That is entirely your prerogative, but if all you are to me is the things you post, if I don't like them, I don't like you. I quite like your sense of irony; being cautioned about humility by someone calling themselves Immanuel Can makes me laugh. In the spirit of that humility, I admit it isn't in my power to break people and I have no interest in doing so. It is entirely possible to dismantle people's logic and demonstrate that there is no foundation to their beliefs, but it is quite another to rid people of those beliefs.
Immanuel Can wrote:I'm sure that's what you meant. Perhaps I'm being unnecessarily cautious. I have just observed how often hatred for a person's ideology spills over into hatred for the person.
Indeed. I don't actually have a problem with that, there are certain beliefs that I find intolerable and if people air them, I have no qualms about saying so. I usually get told off for doing so.
Immanuel Can wrote:At a certain point, they start to look intransigent to us, perhaps;
Who is this 'us'? As I said, people generally are intransigent with regard to their beliefs.
Immanuel Can wrote:and at that moment, our worse impulses invite us to become angry at them for their refusal to see reason or their own "best interests."
That may be what you do, personally I don't expect people to respond to reason with regard to their core beliefs. You can't use logic to persuade people one way or the other about the 'Truth' of the words attributed to Jesus Christ for instance, any more than you can persuade them that they like Marmite; such beliefs are held for essentially aesthetic reasons, a Kantian 'fittingness' if you will.
Immanuel Can wrote:Then we start to bully and berate them, and maybe even feel justified in harming them, all the while convincing ourselves we are acting in the best interests of humanity.
Again; do you really mean 'we'? If by bullying and berating people I can harm them by damaging the part I find objectionable, then good. However, those parts are usually very deep and bitterly defended.
Immanuel Can wrote:Here again, humility helps.
I am not so lacking humility to think I am doing humanity a great service, I just really don't like some ideas.
