Battletard wrote:
You ask questions of others in more posts than you don't.
Questions can do nothing but good.
Questions are a means of sharing and expanding knowledge and developing new ideas.
Statements - are pretty useless. Especially in this day and age where people get most of the basis for their statements through the narrow view of the world they get from whatever parallel universe media they subscribe to.
So why is it a problem, really? Just don't like being challenged?
And me? My views have changed a great deal over the years, which is why I have such great confidence in them. More than any other poster here, more than most people, my views have been shaped by exposure to many sharply conflicting influences and experiences.
I've read materials from socialist pamphlets to John Birch Society magazines. I've familiarized myself with Classical and Christian ideas all the way forward to modern pseudoscience. I've personally had in-depth conversations with people from almost every state and all continents. I've read histories written by people ranging from Black Hundreds members to Nixon administration officials, from Khrushchev to Schwarzkopf. My cultural influences are equally diverse - from Anne Rice to Dumas.
My views have gradually changed from Zionist to pro-Palestinian. From moderate Democrat to national socialist. From libertarian to traditionalist. I've gradually become both more idealistic and more skeptical. I've swung back and forth about my views on democracy - from seeing it as a natural and perfect system, to fatally flawed, to an imperfect system that is viable only when other factors are in play. I've gone from seeing culture as a purely superficial trait to something that has a fundamental influence on life at all levels.
I've lived on a Quaker colony; I grew up in the suburbs. I've spent copious time with neo-Nazis and feminazis, with former CIA spooks and Iranian spies, with people from over 20 countries. I've spent time at flea markets and pawn shops, on skid rows, and at symposiums and parties at entire rented four-star hotels.
Of all those experiences, nothing has ever made me believe that any one way of life currently in existence has all the answers.
But I have come to strongly believe that those answers do exist. I feel quite confident saying my views have changed far more over the years than most people's ever have or ever will. And right or wrong, my views are still better if only because of the development that has gone into them - agree or disagree, right or wrong, there's ideas and notions that have been worked out through diverse experience and deep thought.
I have no home, no affiliation. I have no particular sympathy for any individual ethnic group or element of society. I do not romanticize any period of history or think anyone is infallible.
What I believe is as close to objective truth as you can find, and of tremendous depth. I strongly believe that my views are therefore inherently more credible.
People can profit from them - or they can stick to their own willful ignorance.
And that's the basis of my sig.
Because, generally speaking, people prefer to get mad rather than get better. Because nothing continues to surprise and frustrate me quite like people's inclination to go through the motions of rational discourse then insist that knowledge and logic are suddenly arbitrary distinctions when they don't like where those roads lead.
