ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Well, it may be that some of us take so many contrarian views and express them strongly, that some of those who were here before are just not used to everybody "going along to get along." Whenever I, or anybody else, makes a statement I ask, "could the opposite be true?" If I find good reason for it being true, I might just suggest it, along with a few words of reasoning and evidence. My expectation is that if you make a public statement about something you are inviting a discussion of your point of view and have some reasoning and evidence to back it up. Sadly, many times all I get is a sense of great passion for the belief and not much else. And while passion may equal persuasion to the one feeling as they do, it's a very weak form of persuasion since if you rely on it you have to get the person to feel as you do. How do you do that without presenting the reason and evidence that persuaded you? Now, having said that, it may be that you weren't persuaded at all but are pretty much repeating the beliefs of your social group because you've always assumed your social group is right. That too, is a not the best form of persuasion. "Believe me because I'm passionate or believe me because my social group is passionate about it," is not going to take you very far no matter how strongly you and your group feel.I used to be quite active on other forums but it got tiring to be attacked every time I had a different opinion to the established majority of the forum. All I want is to share what works for me that others might find useful and support this great generous game. It isn't intended to persuade anyone to change their opinion or attack anyone, it's up to them to decide what makes the most sense and what works the best for them. After all, we are all different and have different opinions that doesn't mean that we're saying that other people's opinion is stupid just because we have a different one.
So I thought I'd try US forum. I loved it, I was able to say what I thought without judgement. When other people didn't like it, they just ignored it. When we agreed then we liked each other posts. It was great!
Now, I'd love to know what happened to that forum. Where is the diversity and tolerance?
The diversity and tolerance fail when people become sheep following whatever their group norm is without actually doing their homework, and then expecting because they feel strongly everybody ought to "go along to get along."
At least that's my take on it. I could be wrong.
AJ