Who appointed you arbiter of all things rational?
I said “I feel like”. That’s not appointing myself an arbiter of anything. An arbiter is supposed to be objective and rational.
I had the feeling of all the people around me acting like they are windup toys operating on mindless scripts, saying the same irrational things over and over again. It feels like I am being battered by the wind.
We don't debate here, this isn't a place where one even can actually debate.
This place is called a discussion forum actually, where people from a variety of backgrounds and belief sets come together to DISCUSS the issues of our day as well as our faith.
Look at the top of the screen please. This is the Discussion and Debate section. If you can’t take the heat, please get out of the kitchen.
Are you seriously making personal insults?
No. I have spent 10 years in state university and professors in the English department do exactly as Landon Caeli claims he wants to do. It was a legitimate suggestion.
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Really, this is just a rehash of the debaters versus empaths debate, which, the biggest problem with it is that it is a debate, and since the empaths will not take the fact that it is a debate that needs to be, well, debated, it quickly turns into a fight. Any time one sees:
“debating is unloving”
“this is a discussion forum, we shouldn’t be debating”
“debate is too angry, anger is wrong”
An empath problem has arrived. The problem is, there are actual debates in this world that need to be, well, debated, and suppressing the debates leads to flaming, insults, and personal accusations, which are lower, nastier, and even more unloving than a simple debate.
A simple hierarchy of human interaction looks like this, from lowest to highest:
War —> abuse —> personal accusations and insults—> political opposition—> debate —> discussion—> agreement and professional alignment (working together) —> friendship —> intimacy. Demanding the top levels of interaction produces the bottom levels because demands are on the levels of abuse and immediately shove the whole interaction down there. Human interaction falls to the lowest level in the group of humans.
I’ve found it’s pretty easy to elevate interactions from the personal accusations and insults level to the debate level - just name the debate and point out the sides’ positions and evidence. Debate goes to discussion when neither party to the debate knows what they are talking about and they realize they need to do more research to discover the truth. But you can’t force the latter transformation. It happens or it doesn’t.
It’s all the “you don’t feel what I’m feeling, so you’ll never understand” stuff too. The fact is, I probably have. But I made two choices that you did not or could not make:
1. I am responsible for my own emotions. This means that my feelings are independent of what happens around me, they are internally produced and I control them.
2. My beliefs control my emotions, not the other way around. I subject my beliefs to my intellect, and when someone is trying to manipulate my emotions or insult me, I go to my intellect (not my feelings) and I chose how to respond.
Proverbs 12:16 said:
Fools show their anger at once,but the prudent ignore an insult.
Admittedly this skill takes practice to learn, but once you do, the world of debate (and admittedly, chess) opens up to you. Also, I had no choice but to learn it, but it’s useful to learn anyway.
Empaths blame other people for their emotions and want to subject truth to them. In truth, this is just allowing themselves to be victimized and defending their self-victimization through insults and personal attacks. Which is precisely what state university professors do in literature departments, cut people into groups based on what people feel instead of referring to a mutually shared truth. Of course, since I’m not an emotional victim and am responsible for my own emotions, I’m dangerous because I have power over everyone in that room. No one can victimize me because they can’t say anything to hurt me. After all, everyone else in that classroom is responsible for what they say, that’s a function of their own problems and has nothing to do with me.
Once we declare truth and facts superior to internal emotional responses, we return to a Christian worldview based on absolute truth and absolute morality. Let us be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, taking the road of power, love and self-discipline instead of fearing the next insult and hurtful comment our opponents may express.
Finally, there are some individuals who cannot learn the above cerebral skills due to the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) condition. But they are responsible for managing that condition and acknowledging the disability aspect of it. Nor do they have a license to judge the non-HSP population, as per Matthew 7:1.
