180 degrees in opposition....
"I just had to withdraw from a thread on one of the other boards that was starting to get really interesting because one of the responses I got contained a deftly inserted little dig at "the other side". It was like finding a turd in the soup. It forced me to respond in a way that was not germane to the problem under discussion, except perhaps to those who only see the world in those terms. It was totally unnecessary, a deal breaker. I'm tired of being forced to choose between silence and violence. But now, silence will no longer be interpreted as cowardice or defeat, but defiance."
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,"
Kipling had it right. Running away from an intellectual challenge is just that. You're smart enough to hold your own on most topics and shouldn't be put off because a participant gets in a partisan jab.
That's like giving a speech and leaving halfway through because of a heckler. They win - you lose.
"Love thy enemy"
If you feel someone is taking a personal dig at you, turn it around, turn the other cheek and try and embrace that "enemy" as a friend. Educate them. Share your wisdom with them. Hating them or disliking does nothing. It's a passive response to negativity.
Truly good guys always confront their detractors and try to be friendly with them. They turn them around if they can. It's a sign of mastery; mastery over your own emotional countenance and mastery over those who are still a notch lower on the evolutionary spectra.
I've posted this several times to the zone boards, but it seems like a good time to post it again each line has a distinct meaning and is very important. Kipling might as well have composed this from outside the material spectra for how good it is - few human poems get this good:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
--Rudyard Kipling
If everyone truly lived this way...Earth would almost be a paradise.
SDAI-Tech1