867535i wrote:
Which brings me back to how this whole tangent started. Anyone saying that
Care for the mentally ill, too many guns. . .yada, yada, yada. I'm done. It's all bullshit. Diversion tactics. Nobody wants to discuss the real problem which is the undermining of God and his laws by our government....
is completely missing the boat and IMO, dismissing the lives of those kids all too easily and unwilling to have a discussion about the actual two relevant issues at hand...
I agree with you. It's a mistake for religious types to talk as if religion is the source of all morale guidance. They seem to be a little slow to understand how that idea pisses off everyone who doesn't share their outlook.
But consider this....there's an awful lot of folks out there that believe things you probably perceive as nutty. Wrist magnets, oil rubs, they are fit and good looking, warm water freezes faster than cold, little batteries have more charge than big batteries(*)...the list of nuttiness never ends.
When your perfectly nice mother-in-law insists the children need coats outside so they don't catch a cold does it raise your ire and you tell her she's a uncritical nitwit to believe such tripe, or do you just let it go? You let it go because she's a nice lady and if she want's to believe something you know to be silly, what the hell who cares. It's certainly not worth creating conflict.
She on the other hand is absolutely convinced she is right.
Now change that to religion. Your perfectly nice neighbor is deeply religious. He doesn't really talk about it around you because he figures it would be an uncomfortable conversation for the two of you. At Christmas he has some nativity scene in his yard, it's reasonably small and not garish so if it's objectionable, it's only because of what it represents. But what it represents irritates you. Do you go over and tell him that he's an uncritical nitwit, or do you just let it go? Is it worth creating conflict over?
Entirely nice folks have ideas that each of us feel are loony. Most of them would be offended if we told them so. If a religious type is foolish and states something irritating like all morality comes from a personal relationship with god, just make a joke out of it like "excuse me I must now rape and pillage with my heathen club" or something. They'll probably figure out that it was a dumb thing to say.
We choose to be upset by something. We choose to make an issue of it and create conflict. Or we can choose instead to let it go.
(*) Little batteries have more charge than big ones. This pretty obscure but in both the Marines and later in the Army it used to drive me batshit. The problem is that with few exceptions military training is awful, particularly technical training. It's all dumbed down for tiny-brains and the instructor is usually some burnout that couldn't give a shit. So all people do is memorize marginally useful crap and rarely genuinely "understand" how the basics work. Basic electricity was a poster child for this.
Otherwise entirely competent folks would routinely tell me that a little 9V battery could keep up a common piece of commo gear longer than the 6 D-cell batteries that it was designed to take. I mean WTF, over? In one hand you've got 4oz of crappy lowest bidder battery and in the other hand you've got 3lbs of crappy lowest bidder batteries, does it really make sense that the 4oz battery can sustain the load longer? I mean for god's sakes use your brain. Stories like that were endless.
People believe nutty things. People think you believe nutty things. Sometimes you can carefully try to show them that theiridea is silly, but usually it just leads to conflict.
It took me a long long time to understand that folks didn't want me to correct them. It's very important to me to be right. So if someone else corrects me, I thank them because they helped me be right. But most folks will not thank you for trying to correct them. When you see an opportunity to correct someone, unless someone is going to lose a limb or screw up their engine, just let it go. If you genuinely think that the person will profusely thank you for correcting them, do it.
A last note. I'm not saying that religious types are nuts. We all perceive our belief systems as correct. We all see all the other belief systems as wrong. Therefore everybody sees everyone that disagrees with them as misguided nuts.
The real question is.....can we get along cordially Anyway?
Note to Duke. This is not a general criticism of the military. Our military is largely composed by folks that go thru hell trying to succeed despite the crappy bureaucratic system they are stuck in. The extent of their personal sacrifices, large and small, is something the civilian world will never understand. Also, the best boss you will ever have, and the best subordinate you will ever have, will likely be former military. They grown them right.
So Duke, don't give me a ration of shit pls.
