Seriously, it's hard to gauge "being ignored." A failure to respond to your posts could be anything from awestruck wonder to downright disbelief. Most of the time I don't get a reply either, and I think that's common for people posting non-provocative stuff anywhere outside of All Saints. (Lewdness and/or misery will always get you a reply, heh.)
Two states of affairs that are observationally indistinguishable might as well be the same state of affairs, to an observer. "Not responded to" and "ignored" are functionally indistinguishable. It leads quickly to "Why do I even bother?" and then withdrawal. Which makes the place all the more Anglican.
quetzalcoatl: I thought the free speech argument today is mainly a right wing complaint.
You are probably right, but it gives me little comfort to find the field deserted by others. It is as if the writings of George Orwell, and in that I include a number of his essays, had never existed.
Or it's the case that free speech isn't under any serious threat in the west
Yours certainly isn't.
Whose do you think is?
Anyone who disagrees with the zeitgeist on issues such as gender or sexuality for a start.
Except they're not are they? They may not be given a platform where the gatekeeper for that platform chooses not to, but there are thousands of homophobes and transphobes out there not being prosecuted for their views.
There are thousands of people out there who have not been told what transgender people find offensive and do not move in places where they will encounter them. Being ignorant of what is offensive is not the same as being deliberately offensive, something the liberal-minded need to be reminded of.
At some point, ignorance is not a good defence. It is not excusable in this day and age to not be aware of what women and black people might find offensive, why is it of trans?
For starters such things vary between cultures. Calling someone "coloured" in the UK makes you look ancient and clueless at best and racist at worst. In South Africa (if I've understood correctly) it remains the accepted term for certain mixed heritage populations. The use of certain vulgar terms for female anatomy vary substantially in how severely they are regarded, and whether they're considered misogynistic or merely rude, including by many women. I would consider it a matter of courtesy to try and be aware of such things, and to accept with good grace if one makes a mistake and is corrected, but demanding that everyone keep track of evolving attitudes to language without error is asking a bit much.
A simple "It is what we say in South Africa" should be sufficient to clear that up.
At what point does a person get to say such a simple thing? After the outrage button has been hit?
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
Seriously, have you ever done this yourself? Have you ever deliberately left a group because you decided you couldn't be associated with them any more? What exactly did it take? How simple did you find it?
Seriously, it's hard to gauge "being ignored." A failure to respond to your posts could be anything from awestruck wonder to downright disbelief. Most of the time I don't get a reply either, and I think that's common for people posting non-provocative stuff anywhere outside of All Saints. (Lewdness and/or misery will always get you a reply, heh.)
Two states of affairs that are observationally indistinguishable might as well be the same state of affairs, to an observer. "Not responded to" and "ignored" are functionally indistinguishable. It leads quickly to "Why do I even bother?" and then withdrawal. Which makes the place all the more Anglican.
Well, I’ll say I’m always very glad to see the Orthodox perspective, since it’s not a perspective I’m as familiar with but one that I typically find valuable. So my apologies for when I’ve failed to at least acknowledge those contributions that I very much appreciate.
And yes, I’d agree that, in Kerygmania and Ecclesiantics, there often seems to be an assumption that Anglican is the default.
I don't particularly want my conviction that people starving to death because their benefits have been cut off is wrong challenged. Nor my conviction that deporting British citizens because they're black is wrong.
Your problem is going from 'wrong' to 'therefore absolutely a definitive reason to not vote Tory and therefore anyone who voted Tory must not think those things are wrong'.
That's just demonstrably false reasoning. An election is not a referendum on specific issues, and treating it as if it's a referendum on specific issues is every bit as bad as a victorious party claiming that an election win is a definitive mandate for everything in their policy platform. It isn't. That's not what the ballot paper asks.
You're simply not bothering to inquire what factors someone weighed up in deciding which way to vote, because you've decided in your own mind that certain factors simply must be conclusive ones. For EVERYONE, not just for you personally.
This is really the correct position. Before going to the ballot box, a voter may well have thought "I don't agree with everything either party says, and in the case of the government party I don't agree with all the things they did. But on balance, I think that what they are proposing to do about A,B, and C is right and for me those are really important matters. I'll vote for them."
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
quetzalcoatl: I thought the free speech argument today is mainly a right wing complaint.
You are probably right, but it gives me little comfort to find the field deserted by others. It is as if the writings of George Orwell, and in that I include a number of his essays, had never existed.
Or it's the case that free speech isn't under any serious threat in the west
Yours certainly isn't.
Whose do you think is?
Anyone who disagrees with the zeitgeist on issues such as gender or sexuality for a start.
Except they're not are they? They may not be given a platform where the gatekeeper for that platform chooses not to, but there are thousands of homophobes and transphobes out there not being prosecuted for their views.
There are thousands of people out there who have not been told what transgender people find offensive and do not move in places where they will encounter them. Being ignorant of what is offensive is not the same as being deliberately offensive, something the liberal-minded need to be reminded of.
At some point, ignorance is not a good defence. It is not excusable in this day and age to not be aware of what women and black people might find offensive, why is it of trans?
For starters such things vary between cultures. Calling someone "coloured" in the UK makes you look ancient and clueless at best and racist at worst. In South Africa (if I've understood correctly) it remains the accepted term for certain mixed heritage populations. The use of certain vulgar terms for female anatomy vary substantially in how severely they are regarded, and whether they're considered misogynistic or merely rude, including by many women. I would consider it a matter of courtesy to try and be aware of such things, and to accept with good grace if one makes a mistake and is corrected, but demanding that everyone keep track of evolving attitudes to language without error is asking a bit much.
A simple "It is what we say in South Africa" should be sufficient to clear that up.
At what point does a person get to say such a simple thing? After the outrage button has been hit?
I've just begun to engage with Kergymania, and I very much appreciate all different sorts of perspectives. I did a degree in theology at an institution that was so liberal that it was a co-operative between reformed churches, bells and smells Anglicans, and liberal Catholic orders of priests and nuns. It went down a path of trying to incorporate the newly emerging Orthodox traditions and I was a student during this period, but it never took off. Now, sadly, the institution has dissolved into its constituent parts. I'm not sure why.
In short, I LOVE looking at all sorts of perspectives. Please put them. I'm with LC too. When people don't respond directly to me, I often have to suppress the feeling that I am being ignored.
@BabyWombat I loved your post a few pages back about how this discussion makes you feel. I'm with you. I posted on page 2 or 3 a vomit emoji, which is how I feel about the free speech business.
I don't care whether it is about free speech or not. I care about relationship. I care about love. I want people in purgatory to be able to argue their point of view and e-hug each other at the close of the discussion. The point of argument from a Christian perspective is to know the other person more deeply, to get a fuller understanding of their motivations and perhaps their experiences, to understand why they might think differently to you. This is the road to agape in the way that making assumptions, insulting, refusing to engage is not. The point of everything in the Christian life is to love. To love is not to know something, not to convince someone to think the right way, but to understand them. Purgatory, at its best, is an aide to being in relationship with each other.
I've just begun to engage with Kergymania, and I very much appreciate all different sorts of perspectives. I did a degree in theology at an institution that was so liberal that it was a co-operative between reformed churches, bells and smells Anglicans, and liberal Catholic orders of priests and nuns. It went down a path of trying to incorporate the newly emerging Orthodox traditions and I was a student during this period, but it never took off. Now, sadly, the institution has dissolved into its constituent parts. I'm not sure why.
In short, I LOVE looking at all sorts of perspectives. Please put them. I'm with LC too. When people don't respond directly to me, I often have to suppress the feeling that I am being ignored.
@BabyWombat I loved your post a few pages back about how this discussion makes you feel. I'm with you. I posted on page 2 or 3 a vomit emoji, which is how I feel about the free speech business.
I don't care whether it is about free speech or not. I care about relationship. I care about love. I want people in purgatory to be able to argue their point of view and e-hug each other at the close of the discussion. The point of argument from a Christian perspective is to know the other person more deeply, to get a fuller understanding of their motivations and perhaps their experiences, to understand why they might think differently to you. This is the road to agape in the way that making assumptions, insulting, refusing to engage is not. The point of everything in the Christian life is to love. To love is not to know something, not to convince someone to think the right way, but to understand them. Purgatory, at its best, is an aide to being in relationship with each other.
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
quetzalcoatl: I thought the free speech argument today is mainly a right wing complaint.
You are probably right, but it gives me little comfort to find the field deserted by others. It is as if the writings of George Orwell, and in that I include a number of his essays, had never existed.
Or it's the case that free speech isn't under any serious threat in the west
Yours certainly isn't.
Whose do you think is?
Anyone who disagrees with the zeitgeist on issues such as gender or sexuality for a start.
Except they're not are they? They may not be given a platform where the gatekeeper for that platform chooses not to, but there are thousands of homophobes and transphobes out there not being prosecuted for their views.
There are thousands of people out there who have not been told what transgender people find offensive and do not move in places where they will encounter them. Being ignorant of what is offensive is not the same as being deliberately offensive, something the liberal-minded need to be reminded of.
At some point, ignorance is not a good defence. It is not excusable in this day and age to not be aware of what women and black people might find offensive, why is it of trans?
For starters such things vary between cultures. Calling someone "coloured" in the UK makes you look ancient and clueless at best and racist at worst. In South Africa (if I've understood correctly) it remains the accepted term for certain mixed heritage populations. The use of certain vulgar terms for female anatomy vary substantially in how severely they are regarded, and whether they're considered misogynistic or merely rude, including by many women. I would consider it a matter of courtesy to try and be aware of such things, and to accept with good grace if one makes a mistake and is corrected, but demanding that everyone keep track of evolving attitudes to language without error is asking a bit much.
A simple "It is what we say in South Africa" should be sufficient to clear that up.
At what point does a person get to say such a simple thing? After the outrage button has been hit?
Nice assumption.
What's the assumption? That people only get to 'clear things up' after a highly negative misunderstanding of what they meant has arisen? Seems like a pretty good assumption to me. The need to 'clear things up' doesn't arise otherwise.
Wheelchair users have a right to go to the theatre. It does not in any way follow that any theatre is under obligation to provide them with step-free access.
I think these rights are relative to certain grounds of refusal. The right to go to the theatre does not extend to seats in sold-out productions for example, and one cannot refuse to print someone on grounds of race or sexual orientation where that definitely isn't relevant to the viewpoint.
But an enterprise can refuse a transaction where that is in line with the enterprise's purpose.
The Guardian or the Telegraph can refuse to print material on grounds that they don't think the material would be of interest to their readers or that it would be not consistent with their editorial stance.
Of course those newspapers and most reputable publishers have a business model where they pay the contributors. A business model where the contributors pay for the platform should probably be able to impose fewer restrictions.
A right without access is not a right at all. It is essentially denying people the right you pretend to give them.
Yes, that is exactly the point I am making.
Except in the case of those particular viewpoints you highlighted earlier, there are a large number of outlets which publish material along those lines, and any number of supporting institutions which offer an outlet to those views; just considering the first - offhand - I can think of the Telegraph, Spectator, Unherd, Quilette - and that's just in the UK, and also ignores the times people like Eric Kaufmann, Douglas Murray etc. are on other outlets.
So it is somewhat hard to argue that people are being denied the right to express those views. You would be on firmer grounds if you were making the same argument about Prevent legislation, but you automatically went to the former rather than the latter.
The ignored issue is very hard to gauge. My feeling is that the majority of my posts sink without trace, and that stings a bit when I've said something I think is deeply insightful and no one reacts. @mousethief and @Lamb Chopped, you are two posters I always take seriously, because you come at issues thoughtfully but from a different angle to me. I would have thought you were the last people to be ignored, but I believe you when you say you feel that way.
I thought this was normal on the internet. I've visited quite a few forums, and as you would expect, posts that I take time over and treat as my favourite children, are ignored about 98% of the time, while some dumb quip I make without thinking, is welcome. This happens on Christian, atheist, pagan, left wing, right wing, whatever you like, forums.
Simon Toad said : ' the point of argument from a Christian perspective is to know the other person more deeply ,to get a fuller understanding of their motives and to understand why they might think differently to you'
I really appreciated these words. From early days I have understood the Church as something like a bottle of wine. The Church is like a bottle which protects the spirit. Without the bottle the spirit is dissipated. It will eventually soak into the ground and disappear.
Through SOF I have met and understood the motivations of so many who are inspired in some way or another with Christian ideas and ideals. I may not post very much, apart from subjects where I feel I have something useful to say, but I do read and appreciate so many differing points of view whether I agree with them or not.
Not everyone who posts here claims to be a Christian and some who claim to be Christian are very independent thinkers. ,whose points of view are sometimes foreign to me, as for me Christianity is very much contained within the bottle which is the Church. I particularly appreciate the contributions from those who share a tradition of the importance of the Church community. Irrespective of which church community this is,Catholic,Orthodox,
Anglican,Presbyterian,Lutheran I can empathise more easily with these posters but I find it fascinating also to read of the points of view of others including independents.
I find that all these make me revalue and re-evaluate always my own faith. So keep at it SOF
I thought this was normal on the internet. I've visited quite a few forums, and as you would expect, posts that I take time over and treat as my favourite children, are ignored about 98% of the time, while some dumb quip I make without thinking, is welcome. This happens on Christian, atheist, pagan, left wing, right wing, whatever you like, forums.
does this cause you more than the merest flicker of a shrug, I wonder, or a bit more than just that? I don't think I've ever considered whether any of my posts have been actually ignored! Naturally, I will notice if there is a response, but, as you say, on forums there might not be. It is always the contents of a discussion that is the key thing for me, not whether there is a win or lose when it drops down the topic list.
A right without access is not a right at all. It is essentially denying people the right you pretend to give them.
Yes, that is exactly the point I am making.
Not really.
The problem is that you think complete freedom is actually possible. You take the concept to a place where it doesn't work.
If one person has completely freedom, aka unrestricted rights, then it inherently limits the freedom of others. In order for a society to be as free as possible, there must be limits to what individuals can do.
The ignored issue is very hard to gauge. My feeling is that the majority of my posts sink without trace, and that stings a bit when I've said something I think is deeply insightful and no one reacts. @mousethief and @Lamb Chopped, you are two posters I always take seriously, because you come at issues thoughtfully but from a different angle to me. I would have thought you were the last people to be ignored, but I believe you when you say you feel that way.
To be clear (as I obviously was not in my previous post, ), I had and got over this issue a long time ago--not because I'm so emotionally advanced, but because over a very long time I received sufficient evidence that I wasn't just screaming into the void, but there were actually people reading what I wrote and thinking about it, even if they didn't respond. Sometimes the evidence showed up as much as years later, when someone made a reference to a particular topic and name-checked me on it, though I don't recall them saying a word at the time. Sometimes the evidence came in the form of one of my fairly-original-images, turns of phrase, whatever, being reposted by somebody else without attribution (which is fine, we all recycle each other). Once the evidence came in the form of a Hell call! Many times in the form of a challenge months or years later ("You always say X, so what about Y?" and I'm thinking, "I didn't know you ever read my posts about X, you certainly never said a word at the time"). And sometimes it's a kind mention on the prayer thread, when I'm in trouble, by somebody I didn't think I had a relationship with, but apparently I do.
IMHO this is normal for the medium we communicate by. We just don't get the little affirmative (or otherwise) nods, head shakes, pointed coughs, or just attentive gaze that we normally use to tell people are paying attention. It's more like posting things on a (inspiration strikes:) bulletin board! Hey, I had an original thought :sarcastic and self-deprecating irony:
Anyway, so once I started noticing these occasional indicators, I had to revise my hypothesis (Yes, I know I sound like a geek, and I don't care). I decided I was not in fact being ignored, but something else was going on. That left me with two options (well, a whole range of options, but these are the extreme points): either I was unspeakably awful in my posts, and people were looking away out of embarrassment; or I was so blindingly awesome (heh) that they simply couldn't find words to reply. (Yes, yes, I know it could be anything in the middle or both, I'm trying to be funny and failing miserably, now hush up)
I chose to go with the "blindingly awesome" because anything else would annihilate my fragile ego, and I'm just as much of a human being as anybody else. (slight pause) You ARE human beings, right? Not dogs? or bots?
Must go think this over...
No, seriously, it boils down to faith. Choosing to believe that people are in fact reading in the absence of clear proof to the contrary. That sort of faith is a virtue on an internet bulletin board.
(It's also worth considering: Do I WANT to be the person everybody responds to, all the time? Because those people are usually assholes...)
quetzalcoatl: I thought the free speech argument today is mainly a right wing complaint.
You are probably right, but it gives me little comfort to find the field deserted by others. It is as if the writings of George Orwell, and in that I include a number of his essays, had never existed.
Or it's the case that free speech isn't under any serious threat in the west
Yours certainly isn't.
Whose do you think is?
Anyone who disagrees with the zeitgeist on issues such as gender or sexuality for a start.
Except they're not are they? They may not be given a platform where the gatekeeper for that platform chooses not to, but there are thousands of homophobes and transphobes out there not being prosecuted for their views.
There are thousands of people out there who have not been told what transgender people find offensive and do not move in places where they will encounter them. Being ignorant of what is offensive is not the same as being deliberately offensive, something the liberal-minded need to be reminded of.
At some point, ignorance is not a good defence. It is not excusable in this day and age to not be aware of what women and black people might find offensive, why is it of trans?
For starters such things vary between cultures. Calling someone "coloured" in the UK makes you look ancient and clueless at best and racist at worst. In South Africa (if I've understood correctly) it remains the accepted term for certain mixed heritage populations. The use of certain vulgar terms for female anatomy vary substantially in how severely they are regarded, and whether they're considered misogynistic or merely rude, including by many women. I would consider it a matter of courtesy to try and be aware of such things, and to accept with good grace if one makes a mistake and is corrected, but demanding that everyone keep track of evolving attitudes to language without error is asking a bit much.
A simple "It is what we say in South Africa" should be sufficient to clear that up.
At what point does a person get to say such a simple thing? After the outrage button has been hit?
Nice assumption.
What's the assumption? That people only get to 'clear things up' after a highly negative misunderstanding of what they meant has arisen? Seems like a pretty good assumption to me. The need to 'clear things up' doesn't arise otherwise.
A right without access is not a right at all. It is essentially denying people the rightw you pretend to give them.
Yeah, that's Marvin's point. If you have a theoretical right to free speech, but the local printers won't publish your stuff, you don't have access.
(I don't find the question of whether the ship should be legally obligated to accept someone's offensive speech interesting - the answer is well-established in law, and it's "no". The interesting question for this thread is whether this ship is a better place if it's a left-wing echo chamber. I don't think it is. If we don't want the ship to become a left-wing echo chamber, we should take care not to accidentally create one.)
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
Having a sense of belonging making it difficult to break an association doesn't change the logic of what I'm saying. A lot of life involves making such choices, that they are difficult doesn't change that.
ISTM part of the problem is a confusion as to what we understand rights to be, and I include myself in that observation.
Personally, as I've stated before, I'm sceptical as to the existence of fundamental rights in the first place, and the dangers of listing them. The problem with listing rights is that I have to point to a right before I can exercise it. I much prefer the traditional British approach which presumes I can do anything I like unless it is forbidden or abridged in some way by law. Of course there are practical limitations regarding the opportunities to express one's opinions, but what concerns me is the no-platforming mentality that seeks to deny a platform to someone who has been offered one.
You may not get replies but you aren't ignored. I am too lightweight to post in Kerygmania but I do read there and find much food for thought. To see @Lamb Chopped@mousethief or @WHyatt 's name on a post makes it a Must Read.
The ignored issue is very hard to gauge. My feeling is that the majority of my posts sink without trace, and that stings a bit when I've said something I think is deeply insightful and no one reacts. @mousethief and @Lamb Chopped, you are two posters I always take seriously, because you come at issues thoughtfully but from a different angle to me. I would have thought you were the last people to be ignored, but I believe you when you say you feel that way.
Thank you @Robert Armin. I find your posts are well thought out and often I learn from them. I'd say that other than @Lamb Chopped, you and @Nick Tamen are the posters whose avatars I am most pleased to see in a thread.
You may not get replies but you aren't ignored. I am too lightweight to post in Kerygmania but I do read there and find much food for thought. To see @Lamb Chopped@mousethief or @WHyatt 's name on a post makes it a Must Read.
But how can I know that if no one responds? As I said above, the phenomenological aspects of being silently admired and being ignored are identical.
About free speech: even if no paper will publish your letter to the editor or opinion piece, even if you get kicked off of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, even if you have no platform provided by someone else, you still have free speech. You are still free to speak to people, to write letters, to walk down the street holding a sign.
I don't understand the facile equation between "I am free to say what I please" and "I can demand that the Times print my article, and they must obey." Has anybody in the history of the world of ideas used the term "freedom of speech" in this bizarre way?
You are still free to speak to people, to write letters, to walk down the street holding a sign.
Not if there are numerous people who make it their business to shout over your conversations, scribble over your letters and block your signs from view. Which is roughly analogous to how some views are increasingly being treated here on the Ship.
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
Having a sense of belonging making it difficult to break an association doesn't change the logic of what I'm saying. A lot of life involves making such choices, that they are difficult doesn't change that.
Agreed. What it does change is the appropriateness of glibly telling other people they ought to cut their ties in order to satisfy you. In order to prevent you telling them that they will be seen to endorse viewpoints by guilt of association.
AFAIK, Forthview is the last Catholic poster left. I always find his posts well worth reading, no quick and facile responses, and a modern Catholic outlook particularly towards the position of other churches. And a great deal of generosity as well. These were points missing from Ingo B, but he ceased posting well before the new Ship. I often had the feeling that he was fed a lot of material, points of theology and so forth, from someone who did not want to join the Ship. Then there was an Irish Catholic, whose name escapes me at the moment, but another from what I'd call the conservative Irish Catholic school, one who had missed Vatican II.
Mousethief seems the only regular of the Orthodox still here. Josephine's posts are too few and too far between for my liking. I thought I saw Andrew Squiggle once on the new Ship but under another name. I don't recall any at all from the Oriental Orthodox at any time, although WW (someone else missed) mentioned those in Kerala from time to time.
AFAIK, Forthview is the last Catholic poster left.
There are other Catholic shipmates (including, I think, @Simon Toad, though maybe I’m wrong about that), but it seems to me that many of them don’t post much in Purgatory.
As for the Orthodox, there’s also @cgichard and @Cyprian, and I think maybe a few others. But again, I’m not sure how often they post in Purgatory.
You are still free to speak to people, to write letters, to walk down the street holding a sign.
Not if there are numerous people who make it their business to shout over your conversations, scribble over your letters and block your signs from view. Which is roughly analogous to how some views are increasingly being treated here on the Ship.
That seems more disanalogous to me. It isn’t actually possible for other posters to block your post on the Ship - they can post their contrary views, but your post remains perfectly legible and visible, doesn’t it?
That seems more disanalogous to me. It isn’t actually possible for other posters to block your post on the Ship - they can post their contrary views, but your post remains perfectly legible and visible, doesn’t it?
Visible in the trivial sense, perhaps, but if your post is followed by two or more pages of mutual back-slapping from the usual suspects, it's easy for it to get lost.
AFAIK, Forthview is the last Catholic poster left.
There are other Catholic shipmates (including, I think, @Simon Toad, though maybe I’m wrong about that), but it seems to me that many of them don’t post much in Purgatory.
As for the Orthodox, there’s also @cgichard and @Cyprian, and I think maybe a few others. But again, I’m not sure how often they post in Purgatory.
Yep, I'm a Mick who attends mass roughly once a month. Like all good Irish Catholics I have a love/hate relationship with the Church, its patriarchy and institutional defensiveness being two of my biggest beefs.
AFAIK, Forthview is the last Catholic poster left.
There are other Catholic shipmates (including, I think, @Simon Toad, though maybe I’m wrong about that), but it seems to me that many of them don’t post much in Purgatory.
As for the Orthodox, there’s also @cgichard and @Cyprian, and I think maybe a few others. But again, I’m not sure how often they post in Purgatory.
Thanks for those reminders. My apologies to all. I'd come back to the Ship especially to note my omission of Simon Toad.
That seems more disanalogous to me. It isn’t actually possible for other posters to block your post on the Ship - they can post their contrary views, but your post remains perfectly legible and visible, doesn’t it?
Visible in the trivial sense, perhaps, but if your post is followed by two or more pages of mutual back-slapping from the usual suspects, it's easy for it to get lost.
You are still free to speak. No one is compelled to listen.
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
Having a sense of belonging making it difficult to break an association doesn't change the logic of what I'm saying. A lot of life involves making such choices, that they are difficult doesn't change that.
Agreed. What it does change is the appropriateness of glibly telling other people they ought to cut their ties in order to satisfy you. In order to prevent you telling them that they will be seen to endorse viewpoints by guilt of association.
I am not glib when I talk about responsibility. I think the worst possibly accurate application would be harsh. And we have a lot more guilt by association than we'd like to admit.
It mightn't be fair, it mightn't be easy, but it is life.
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
Having a sense of belonging making it difficult to break an association doesn't change the logic of what I'm saying. A lot of life involves making such choices, that they are difficult doesn't change that.
Agreed. What it does change is the appropriateness of glibly telling other people they ought to cut their ties in order to satisfy you. In order to prevent you telling them that they will be seen to endorse viewpoints by guilt of association.
I am not glib when I talk about responsibility. I think the worst possibly accurate application would be harsh. And we have a lot more guilt by association than we'd like to admit.
It mightn't be fair, it mightn't be easy, but it is life.
At some point, no matter the internal variance, one owns the direction of one's chosen group. By remaining in the group, one puts one's own stamp on the behaviour. One can be against the policies of one's group, but if those policies show no signs of changing or the harm caused will precede change, then one shares the responsibility for those policies. It is why political groups exist, to wield collective power. With collective power comes collective responsibility.
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
You mistake understanding with accepting that as an excuse.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
Having a sense of belonging making it difficult to break an association doesn't change the logic of what I'm saying. A lot of life involves making such choices, that they are difficult doesn't change that.
Agreed. What it does change is the appropriateness of glibly telling other people they ought to cut their ties in order to satisfy you. In order to prevent you telling them that they will be seen to endorse viewpoints by guilt of association.
I am not glib when I talk about responsibility. I think the worst possibly accurate application would be harsh. And we have a lot more guilt by association than we'd like to admit.
It mightn't be fair, it mightn't be easy, but it is life.
...did you just openly describe your own personal unfairness to people as "that's life"?
Funny. I hadn't realised that your argument about how people had to take responsibility for groups they were a part of could be flipped so that you personally didn't have to take responsibility for your own personal behaviour.
That seems more disanalogous to me. It isn’t actually possible for other posters to block your post on the Ship - they can post their contrary views, but your post remains perfectly legible and visible, doesn’t it?
Visible in the trivial sense, perhaps, but if your post is followed by two or more pages of mutual back-slapping from the usual suspects, it's easy for it to get lost.
Conversely, it's a post that stands out as being different from the subsequent pages of more-or-less the same view. That does, of course, mean that the outstanding different view gets more replies than the same view posts. I can see how some people might be intimidated if their contributions get dozens of responses and a long series of posts all offering a very similar set of arguments against ... but, that's certainly not the same as your view being unheard or somehow censored.
I agree. But it can make one feel that one is a very lone voice amidst a sea of contrary opinion, especially if the contrasting arguments are - shall we say? - expressed in certain strong ways?
Aye, as I said I can see how that's going to be an intimidating experience. But, it does demonstrate that we're not stopping people from saying something, and indeed for those who do speak up they possibly get a larger audience than those posting views which the majority agree with.
The ignored issue is very hard to gauge. My feeling is that the majority of my posts sink without trace, and that stings a bit when I've said something I think is deeply insightful and no one reacts. @mousethief and @Lamb Chopped, you are two posters I always take seriously, because you come at issues thoughtfully but from a different angle to me. I would have thought you were the last people to be ignored, but I believe you when you say you feel that way.
Thank you @Robert Armin. I find your posts are well thought out and often I learn from them. I'd say that other than @Lamb Chopped, you and @Nick Tamen are the posters whose avatars I am most pleased to see in a thread.
I'm flattered. Genuinely. What a great start to the day. (Where is the old blushing emoji?)
I agree. But it can make one feel that one is a very lone voice amidst a sea of contrary opinion, especially if the contrasting arguments are - shall we say? - expressed in certain strong ways?
This
And it also requires considerable amounts of energy and focus to remain actively engaged in this situation.
ISTM that robust debate and kindness make strange companions and need lots of practice in order to work well together. And many of us are drawn one way or the other as it is easier to function from the more dominant part of our personalities, thereby losing other people to the growth possibilities of challenge and the healing possibilities of kindness
The ignored issue is very hard to gauge. My feeling is that the majority of my posts sink without trace, and that stings a bit when I've said something I think is deeply insightful and no one reacts. @mousethief and @Lamb Chopped, you are two posters I always take seriously, because you come at issues thoughtfully but from a different angle to me. I would have thought you were the last people to be ignored, but I believe you when you say you feel that way.
Thank you @Robert Armin. I find your posts are well thought out and often I learn from them. I'd say that other than @Lamb Chopped, you and @Nick Tamen are the posters whose avatars I am most pleased to see in a thread.
I'm flattered. Genuinely. What a great start to the day. (Where is the old blushing emoji?)
Comments
Two states of affairs that are observationally indistinguishable might as well be the same state of affairs, to an observer. "Not responded to" and "ignored" are functionally indistinguishable. It leads quickly to "Why do I even bother?" and then withdrawal. Which makes the place all the more Anglican.
At what point does a person get to say such a simple thing? After the outrage button has been hit?
You keep saying things like this. And every time you do, I keep feeling there's a lack of insight into human psychology and sense of belonging.
Seriously, have you ever done this yourself? Have you ever deliberately left a group because you decided you couldn't be associated with them any more? What exactly did it take? How simple did you find it?
And yes, I’d agree that, in Kerygmania and Ecclesiantics, there often seems to be an assumption that Anglican is the default.
This is really the correct position. Before going to the ballot box, a voter may well have thought "I don't agree with everything either party says, and in the case of the government party I don't agree with all the things they did. But on balance, I think that what they are proposing to do about A,B, and C is right and for me those are really important matters. I'll vote for them."
In short, I LOVE looking at all sorts of perspectives. Please put them. I'm with LC too. When people don't respond directly to me, I often have to suppress the feeling that I am being ignored.
@BabyWombat I loved your post a few pages back about how this discussion makes you feel. I'm with you. I posted on page 2 or 3 a vomit emoji, which is how I feel about the free speech business.
I don't care whether it is about free speech or not. I care about relationship. I care about love. I want people in purgatory to be able to argue their point of view and e-hug each other at the close of the discussion. The point of argument from a Christian perspective is to know the other person more deeply, to get a fuller understanding of their motivations and perhaps their experiences, to understand why they might think differently to you. This is the road to agape in the way that making assumptions, insulting, refusing to engage is not. The point of everything in the Christian life is to love. To love is not to know something, not to convince someone to think the right way, but to understand them. Purgatory, at its best, is an aide to being in relationship with each other.
A really good post, thanks for it.
How about you engage with the other half of the post where I asked you a question? Have you ever left a group because you could no longer associate with it? How hard was it for you?
Because I'd really like to know whether you have any practical experience on this to back up your pronouncements on how everyone else has some kind of obligation to leave a group in order to not be seen as approving everything that the group is doing.
What's the assumption? That people only get to 'clear things up' after a highly negative misunderstanding of what they meant has arisen? Seems like a pretty good assumption to me. The need to 'clear things up' doesn't arise otherwise.
Yes, that is exactly the point I am making.
Do you think it's a good thing if the internet becomes a partitioned set of echo-chambers in which nobody encounters a contrary view ?
A democracy in which every election gives the same result as the last one, because everyone has consumed only media that reinforce their convictions ?
Seems like under your doctrine of "collective power" you are responsible for bringing this about...
I think these rights are relative to certain grounds of refusal. The right to go to the theatre does not extend to seats in sold-out productions for example, and one cannot refuse to print someone on grounds of race or sexual orientation where that definitely isn't relevant to the viewpoint.
But an enterprise can refuse a transaction where that is in line with the enterprise's purpose.
The Guardian or the Telegraph can refuse to print material on grounds that they don't think the material would be of interest to their readers or that it would be not consistent with their editorial stance.
Of course those newspapers and most reputable publishers have a business model where they pay the contributors. A business model where the contributors pay for the platform should probably be able to impose fewer restrictions.
Except in the case of those particular viewpoints you highlighted earlier, there are a large number of outlets which publish material along those lines, and any number of supporting institutions which offer an outlet to those views; just considering the first - offhand - I can think of the Telegraph, Spectator, Unherd, Quilette - and that's just in the UK, and also ignores the times people like Eric Kaufmann, Douglas Murray etc. are on other outlets.
So it is somewhat hard to argue that people are being denied the right to express those views. You would be on firmer grounds if you were making the same argument about Prevent legislation, but you automatically went to the former rather than the latter.
Believing one understands does not correlate reliably with understanding.
I really appreciated these words. From early days I have understood the Church as something like a bottle of wine. The Church is like a bottle which protects the spirit. Without the bottle the spirit is dissipated. It will eventually soak into the ground and disappear.
Through SOF I have met and understood the motivations of so many who are inspired in some way or another with Christian ideas and ideals. I may not post very much, apart from subjects where I feel I have something useful to say, but I do read and appreciate so many differing points of view whether I agree with them or not.
Not everyone who posts here claims to be a Christian and some who claim to be Christian are very independent thinkers. ,whose points of view are sometimes foreign to me, as for me Christianity is very much contained within the bottle which is the Church. I particularly appreciate the contributions from those who share a tradition of the importance of the Church community. Irrespective of which church community this is,Catholic,Orthodox,
Anglican,Presbyterian,Lutheran I can empathise more easily with these posters but I find it fascinating also to read of the points of view of others including independents.
I find that all these make me revalue and re-evaluate always my own faith. So keep at it SOF
The problem is that you think complete freedom is actually possible. You take the concept to a place where it doesn't work.
If one person has completely freedom, aka unrestricted rights, then it inherently limits the freedom of others. In order for a society to be as free as possible, there must be limits to what individuals can do.
To be clear (as I obviously was not in my previous post,
IMHO this is normal for the medium we communicate by. We just don't get the little affirmative (or otherwise) nods, head shakes, pointed coughs, or just attentive gaze that we normally use to tell people are paying attention. It's more like posting things on a (inspiration strikes:) bulletin board! Hey, I had an original thought :sarcastic and self-deprecating irony:
Anyway, so once I started noticing these occasional indicators, I had to revise my hypothesis (Yes, I know I sound like a geek, and I don't care). I decided I was not in fact being ignored, but something else was going on. That left me with two options (well, a whole range of options, but these are the extreme points): either I was unspeakably awful in my posts, and people were looking away out of embarrassment; or I was so blindingly awesome (heh) that they simply couldn't find words to reply. (Yes, yes, I know it could be anything in the middle or both, I'm trying to be funny and failing miserably, now hush up)
I chose to go with the "blindingly awesome" because anything else would annihilate my fragile ego, and I'm just as much of a human being as anybody else. (slight pause) You ARE human beings, right? Not dogs? or bots?
Must go think this over...
No, seriously, it boils down to faith. Choosing to believe that people are in fact reading in the absence of clear proof to the contrary. That sort of faith is a virtue on an internet bulletin board.
(It's also worth considering: Do I WANT to be the person everybody responds to, all the time? Because those people are usually assholes...)
Yeah, that's Marvin's point. If you have a theoretical right to free speech, but the local printers won't publish your stuff, you don't have access.
(I don't find the question of whether the ship should be legally obligated to accept someone's offensive speech interesting - the answer is well-established in law, and it's "no". The interesting question for this thread is whether this ship is a better place if it's a left-wing echo chamber. I don't think it is. If we don't want the ship to become a left-wing echo chamber, we should take care not to accidentally create one.)
Personally, as I've stated before, I'm sceptical as to the existence of fundamental rights in the first place, and the dangers of listing them. The problem with listing rights is that I have to point to a right before I can exercise it. I much prefer the traditional British approach which presumes I can do anything I like unless it is forbidden or abridged in some way by law. Of course there are practical limitations regarding the opportunities to express one's opinions, but what concerns me is the no-platforming mentality that seeks to deny a platform to someone who has been offered one.
Thank you @Robert Armin. I find your posts are well thought out and often I learn from them. I'd say that other than @Lamb Chopped, you and @Nick Tamen are the posters whose avatars I am most pleased to see in a thread.
But how can I know that if no one responds? As I said above, the phenomenological aspects of being silently admired and being ignored are identical.
Not if there are numerous people who make it their business to shout over your conversations, scribble over your letters and block your signs from view. Which is roughly analogous to how some views are increasingly being treated here on the Ship.
Agreed. What it does change is the appropriateness of glibly telling other people they ought to cut their ties in order to satisfy you. In order to prevent you telling them that they will be seen to endorse viewpoints by guilt of association.
Mousethief seems the only regular of the Orthodox still here. Josephine's posts are too few and too far between for my liking. I thought I saw Andrew Squiggle once on the new Ship but under another name. I don't recall any at all from the Oriental Orthodox at any time, although WW (someone else missed) mentioned those in Kerala from time to time.
As for the Orthodox, there’s also @cgichard and @Cyprian, and I think maybe a few others. But again, I’m not sure how often they post in Purgatory.
Visible in the trivial sense, perhaps, but if your post is followed by two or more pages of mutual back-slapping from the usual suspects, it's easy for it to get lost.
Yep, I'm a Mick who attends mass roughly once a month. Like all good Irish Catholics I have a love/hate relationship with the Church, its patriarchy and institutional defensiveness being two of my biggest beefs.
Thanks for those reminders. My apologies to all. I'd come back to the Ship especially to note my omission of Simon Toad.
You are still free to speak. No one is compelled to listen.
It mightn't be fair, it mightn't be easy, but it is life.
Shades of Big Mal Fraser there.
...did you just openly describe your own personal unfairness to people as "that's life"?
Funny. I hadn't realised that your argument about how people had to take responsibility for groups they were a part of could be flipped so that you personally didn't have to take responsibility for your own personal behaviour.
I'm flattered. Genuinely. What a great start to the day. (Where is the old blushing emoji?)
This
And it also requires considerable amounts of energy and focus to remain actively engaged in this situation.
ISTM that robust debate and kindness make strange companions and need lots of practice in order to work well together. And many of us are drawn one way or the other as it is easier to function from the more dominant part of our personalities, thereby losing other people to the growth possibilities of challenge and the healing possibilities of kindness
There's flushed