Subject: Re: Societal differences and rudeness calibration
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/09/26
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3147376944948358@naggum.no>

* Marcus G. Daniels
| I'm not implying that.  You claim that it is healthy to vent frustrations
| or feel joy when those emotions occur.  I claim there is flip side and
| that is, for some people, there is a slippery slope to absusive behavior
| that occurs when no effort is made to think-about or control their
| [angry] emotions.  I think the psychological dynamics of these things are
| more complex than have been described so far.

  your introduction of no effort to think is quite typical of people who
  believe emotions to be irrational, which certainly explains why they (1)
  remain polite as long as they can, and (2) go ape when they can't.  I'm
  not sure it's worth the trouble to point out to you that you don't have
  to insert this premise into the argument, and that by so doing, you have
  changed the argument into something it was not.

  it also seems entirely pointless to attempt to dispell your desire to
  make this a dividing line between uncouth barbarians and sophistication.

| It's not suprising to me that a few people who would ordinarily prefer
| polite behavior would continue non-polite discussions if that was the
| only way to proceed.  I don't see how that makes them hypocrites unless
| they explicitly said earlier that they would not do this for moral
| reasons.  People have preferences, and they needn't be absolute.

  sigh.  I said "go ape", not "be non-polite".  at issue is why people who
  pretend to value politeness lose _all_ moral pretexts once the have to
  let "polite" go.  please read what I write, and please try to refrain
  from answering something I don't.  it wastes a lot of time if I at all
  want to waste the time it takes to answer you.

| Maybe, rightly or wrongly, they will explode due to this kind of prodding.
| Or, maybe they *are* behaving irresponsibly.

  I was trying to suggest that the _way_ they explode is indicative, not
  that they become angry, although that, too, is certainly a part of how
  people react.  you, for instance, assume that I'm angry over time, which
  I find utterly amazing given the fact that I give you a truckload of
  evidence not only to dispell that notion, but to give you a solid
  foundation for understanding what else is going on.  I'm annoyed with
  people who make such a fuss about their insight into other people's
  intentions and mode of thinking who can't even manage to update their
  silly notions in the face of evidence to the contrary just because they
  can't hold onto their beliefs, anymore.  such _is_ the root cause of the
  problems that some people get into, and not because they are polite or
  not, but because they are fundamentally unaware of what they are doing.

  I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by shifting the blame onto
  me for everything, but one thing I do know: those who consider their own
  behavior to be somebody else's responsibility, be that derived through
  biochemistry or whatever other mushy circumventions, will never learn
  from anything they experience.  I'm interested in the rest of mankind.

#:Erik