Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, and Me.
So, over the years, I have come to the conclusion that much as I believe in PLUR (or at least PLR – I’m still not convinced that I know what ‘unity’ means in this context, or that it’s a universally good things) as a ideal for human behavior, I am a very long way from living up to it.
Today I’m fighting with the temptation to poke back at someone who I felt like was poking at me – over the weekend, I was listing cognitive distortions that we all fall into to $PERSON, and they said something to the effect of ‘Does your list have anything about blaming other people for your problems?’. Which, I take it to mean, $PERSON thinks that I blame other people for my problems. [Perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions, maybe it was just something that was on eir mind at the time, who knows…]
Anyway, the peaceful thing to do is to let it drop – assume that they didn’t mean any harm by it, and that if they did, it still isn’t a good idea to get into a fight over it, and bringing it up with the person could lead one of two ways – either to a resolution or to a fight – so the safest thing to do is just to leave it alone..
As far as Respect goes, I can’t really think about Christianity without getting angry, which certainly isn’t a very respectful atittude to take towards what is possibly the world’s majority religion. (And yes, I understand that the Christians are no more all one group and all the same than any other large block of people)
It’s sad to not be able to live up to my ideals. I think it’s probably normal, though.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
In reference to “poking”….I heard from a reliable source that the question was in reference to a 10 year old…and not someone who was 10 in the eighties.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:27 am
Did you ever read that book I sent you? 😉
“Treat with utmost resepct your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgements that overthrow the rule of reason. It enables you to learn from experience, to live in harmony with others, and to walk in the way of the gods.”