(03-31-2023, 06:07 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: Mikey has told us why he's insecure. His family is from academia, and he's constantly having to prove how open minded he is.

I think in these debates, I am more headstrong than insecure. I do have insecurities, but they don't really manifest themselves on message boards. It's more a problem irl. I come from a pretty white trash upbringing, and that's not easy to shed. What's that old saying? You can take the man out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the man? Sure, it's classist/racist or whatever, but there's some truth to it. It's hard to shed that mentality. I don't want to shed it. So, I think I have a tendency to show my insecurities when I get around people who were raised in upper middle class/upper class pretty quickly. I tend to become the smartest man in the room real quickly. I hate it. Even when I know I'm doing it, I can't stop.

I think people who post on this message board are like most people- there is very little attempt to understand why someone else feels the way they do, except for the purpose of finding a weakness in the other person.   It's comforting to think "I am right and everyone else is wrong."  And to that end, we actively reinforce our own views, which is just mental masturbation.  

The one thing that does irritate me is the drive-by insults- people just popping into the conversation to insult someone, and that's all they do.  That's just weak.  I also think that when someone accuses someone else of "acting superior," they are projecting their own self-image into the other person's head.  You think he's "acting superior" because you feel inferior.  

But we're just like the rest of society right now- we've all got our fists up, defending our point of view with no attempt to understand things from the point of view of the other person.

I am going to try to graduate to the level of the curious person and not the defensive person.  It might not fit very well around here, but I'm going to give it a shot.

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