Why has it almost Become Impossible to Converse with and Enjoy Those Who Differ?

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

and you are still evading the question: why are we now either unwilling or unable to be together?

Even answering the question buys into its premise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

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@Setanta,

I remember those times, and agree.

It now seems odd that Michener was such a popular writer, and made so little lasting impression. He did well up till Tales of the South Pacific. I think that was also his first.

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The problem, as I see it, is actually a simple one.
All of us, myself included, are guilty of the mindset of "my mind is made up, dont confuse me with facts".
It affects all of us at different times, regarding different subjects.

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@mysteryman,

i gave up on facts years ago, i just make up whatever reality best suits my purpose, things are great in my world

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I see a few different trends going on. On A2K, I do think you get a distorted view because the people with polar opposite views debate while those in the middle usually just follow along and read the arguments. The players may rotate around, but there are a lot more views on a typical thread than comments. I also agree that when you are debating a faceless screen, niceties of human discourse fall by the wayside. As for the population in general, we are seeing a complete revolution in communications and we really haven't figured out how to handle it. It used to be that you had an opinion and some sources for "facts" that you trusted. When Cronkite said the Vietnam war was wrong, public opinion started to move. Now there are many sources shouting information at you with all sorts of spin and the average person who is trying to raise a family and make ends meet can essentially only choose to hear the news that comforts him rather than the news that challenges him. Thirty years ago, some distraught parent would blame a vaccine for his child's illness, a scientist would show evidence it wasn't true and the story would die. Now it lives on, repeated over and over in the news cycle. To me it seems the problem we have now is that everyone is choosing who their authority for information is not by how accurate it is but by how it fits their world views.

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@hawkeye10,

Something I was thinking about a few weeks ago.....

Being somewhat of your typical southern boy/redneck type, in real life, I have no - zero - nada, gay friends. I do know a guy that is gay, and we have a decent, but mostly professional relationship....we are often dressed the same....sans the cowboy hat of course. Honestly, I would not feel comfortable hangin with a gay dude, as I have said before, I love Elton John's music, but if I were trapped in an elevator with him, I'd choke his little nancy ass to death within a few min.

I'm not trying to be an ass, just straight foward.....I can't stand sissy boys, you know the flamers....I want to slap the hell out of them. But on the internet, I have had several gay friends, in fact one of my closest internet friends was very much a sissy boy...we met in person, he came here for a week, I took him to a lot of places from StL to Memphis, but there were many places that I did not, I was actually afraid someone might start a fight.

And no, I'm not afraid of gay guys, it's just that I will never understand the whole "touching another dudes dick" thing. And of course this makes me a bigot, or homophobic or whatever other Freudian bullshit that I could be labeled as. Freud can go shove cigars up his Austrian ass for all I care, he's the one that needed to see a shrink...flippin weirdo.

Speaking of Freud, anybody ever seen "The Seven Percent Solution", I finally watched it, or tried to.....the whole tennis battle, with the "big powerful hun" vs the "small but wiley {Alan Arkin} Jew"....yeah I said tennis battle, was probably the worst scene ever. Nicol Williamson, stars as Holmes....who I really like but mainly because he was in Excalibur....playing Merlin. Robert Duvall plays Watson, I guess all the English actors were busy that month.

Anyway, my point is....someone that I would probably never talk to in real life, or only in passing, I generally have no problem chattin with on the net. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either. I've even had a communist friend, and several full blown socialist friends, they were all smart, engaging, funny people.

I also have a friend that lives in Jersey, and when trying to describe to her how life is where I live, it's easiest to mention Texas....she said, ohhhh that's were everybody carries a gun in the back window of their pickup truck, yeah they are all crazy down there.....this was after she had told me about her husband and brothers and cousins that were all wiseguys....so of course carrying guns in your sock or pocket or the crack of you ass is just fine, but not in the window where everyone can see it.

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@engineer,

Quote:

To me it seems the problem we have now is that everyone is choosing who their authority for information is not by how accurate it is but by how it fits their world views.

aka choosing to go with their prejudice over facts.......sounds right.

but why? Why does fantasy now outrank fact for so many?

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@hawkeye10,

Drew Dad has already pointed out that you're begging the question, something which should have been obvious to you if you had employed simple reading comprehension skills when you read my posts. You're using a straw man again, too. I said nothing about "the counter culture." The divide ran much deeper and wider than that. I was there, i know what i'm talking about. If you were even alive in 1965 (i suspect you weren't), you were too young to understand. It wasn't about some journalistic catch phrase, it was about deep and bitter divisions between generations, and political points of view.

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The problem here is that Whackeye starts with the state of affairs at this site, but not content with that, or to extrapolate to the interwebs as a whole, he wants to translate it to some grandiose statement about the condition of contemporary society.

This is typical Chicken Little horseshit.

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@mysteryman,

mysteryman wrote:

The problem, as I see it, is actually a simple one.
All of us, myself included, are guilty of the mindset of "my mind is made up, dont confuse me with facts".
It affects all of us at different times, regarding different subjects.

not really simple.....peter pan is a great fantasy sure, but how did we get it in our heads that trying to live that way is a good idea?

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

peter pan is a great fantasy sure, but how did we get it in our heads that trying to live that way is a good idea?

and real life is any better?

as a wise man once said

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3iwqmaYse1qbatawo1_400.jpg

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5224649)
I see the lack of willingness to put our differences aside and work together everywhere more than I did decades ago, this is not strickly an internet problem or even an american problem, though the internet may have something to do with it.

Yup...it definitely is not just an Internet problem...but as you can see right here in this thread, Hawk, it happens so easily here in the Internet.

Good thread, Hawk. I hope it stays reasonable...but...

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Because the relative anonymity of the internet removes the necessity of civil discourse. When you talk with someone face to face and realize that they're "just folks" like you only with different views, it's a different story. The internet removes any requirements for polite discussion, compassion or empathy. For any number of reasons you wouldn't speak to people in real life situations the way you do on the internet. JMO.

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@roger,

Roger to Set wrote:

I remember those times, and agree.

I don't remember those times but I've read about them. In the US back then the establishment shot fleeing students, nowadays i'ts lone nutjobs. That's an improvement, right?

The vague oddity about Hawk's original question is that all his examples involved family - and he contrasted that to A2K behaviours.

I'm pretty sure families of oddballs still get together and have passionate arguments, heysus - I have an uncle who's proud of his sticker aimed at refugees that says '**** off, we're full' overlaid on a map of Australia, but I know he's not an asshole - whereas if a stranger told me he was proud of that sticker he would almost definitely categorised as 'asshole' - and that's the diff - A2k is often a shallow interaction on particularly contentious points. If we even shared a workplace we'd know more about the type of person each was, and the good and bad, and maybe spare the flak for past good deeds and the possibility of future ones...

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@hawkeye10,

I think it is human nature to choose comfort over discomfort. What is different now is how easy it is to be comfortable. It seems someone, somewhere is completely willing to tell you you are right in order to get you to look at advertising or send it some money. It probably has always been that way but now the megaphones are bigger.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

I think it is human nature to choose comfort over discomfort. What is different now is how easy it is to be comfortable. It seems someone, somewhere is completely willing to tell you you are right in order to get you to look at advertising or send it some money. It probably has always been that way but now the megaphones are bigger.

and now there are lots of firms willing to feed you the "news" you want to hear, aka feed your prejudice. I do think that this facilitates the making of small closed minds, which is certainly a part of the lack of coming together.

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@hingehead,

Quote:

The vague oddity about Hawk's original question is that all his examples involved family - and he contrasted that to A2K behaviours

many people have commented that they view A2K as a large dysfunctional family, so me pointing that my family can argue with the best of them but also put them aside for more important matters is relevant in questioning why increasingly we now cant/wont do it here. but my major point is that this lack of coming together is pervasive, A2K is but an example of the new norm.

1 Reply

@blueveinedthrobber,

blueveinedthrobber wrote:

Because the relative anonymity of the internet removes the necessity of civil discourse. When you talk with someone face to face and realize that they're "just folks" like you only with different views, it's a different story. The internet removes any requirements for polite discussion, compassion or empathy. For any number of reasons you wouldn't speak to people in real life situations the way you do on the internet. JMO.

super. now kindly explain why Congress no longer works.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

blueveinedthrobber wrote:

Because the relative anonymity of the internet removes the necessity of civil discourse. When you talk with someone face to face and realize that they're "just folks" like you only with different views, it's a different story. The internet removes any requirements for polite discussion, compassion or empathy. For any number of reasons you wouldn't speak to people in real life situations the way you do on the internet. JMO.

super. now kindly explain why Congress no longer works.

/quote]

some people are nasty cunts regardless.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

many people have commented that they view A2K as a large dysfunctional family

That doesn't mean it's true. I get lots of things pointed out to me that are complete bullshit. I don't know about you but I've never had an entire family I've never met, or never had a christmas dinner with.

Quote:

so me pointing that my family can argue with the best of them but also put them aside for more important matters is relevant in questioning why increasingly we now cant/wont do it here. but my major point is that this lack of coming together is pervasive, A2K is but an example of the new norm.

I understand your point but you are comparing apples and oranges. My point was that families are still the way they were back in the day, but back in the day there were no A2Ks for us compare to - so you may be right about general fractiousness on A2K but a comparison to families doesn't provide any evidence - it's a different kettle of fish in a barrel of monkeys.

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Why has it almost Become Impossible to Converse with and Enjoy Those Who Differ?

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