b0unce wrote:I don't trust people who say 'I'm liberal & tolerant'
They're usually not.... actions speaking louder than words, and all that jazz
You seem to willingly misinterprete self-awareness with self-deception. Your propagated image of how people tick make you seem as being stuck in your own conservative views of what is to be progressive and what is conservative. You also seem to be stuck in a general
anti attitude that's conservative in its own remark. ...
See, we both can play that way of pushing our "contrahent" into defense. It's a good rethorical trick to gain the upper hand in an argument.
Images of people on forums can be deceptive. For example, you call me elitist while my two best buddies are working at a steel mill and on construction sites. We go out to rock-concerts, swearing around, drinking lots (they do) and starring at womens' boobs all the time, but there is a fine line between attitude and authenticity and between knowing how to behave according to the situation. There are no boobs around here, so why the hell should I pretend to be looking at some just to demonstrate how cool and manly I am to the kids around here?
Unfortunately you and Machinesworking fail to acknowledge two important things in my arguments.
1. I did
not (mean to) so much argue against the style off certain posts, but against the implicit expression of discrespect and immaturity. It is you who always keep reducing my arguments to simple criticism on style and choice of words. Really, I don't care much about kids learning swear-words, let 'em, they'll have fun shouting them out loud at their parents' tea-parties.
But I do care about kids learning bad attitude just for the attitude, and really don't want them to be learning that behaving like an asshole
as an adult is especially "cool" when its mostly just idiotic. Also I do care about kids learning to tread women with general disrespect and treating them like pure objects (eventhough I'm well aware of that we're all hormone driven and far too many of the computer-geeks lack experience with social situations that concern talking to real women), I don't want them kids to be learning that behaving like a walking dick with the social intelligence of a Neanderthal man is the norm.
Last but not least I am well aware of that language and style affects out thinking, so yes, I'd really like our kids not only being exposted to trash-talk all day long (from their parents, from mass-media, from the internet), but am sure that a little delving into more sophisticated choice of words and building whole sentences will have a benevolent effect on how they learn to communicate their interests and problems.
2. Laissez-faire is not necessarily liberal, but often just irresponsibility and lazyness. You can very well keep an eye on what your kids are exposed to and try to "work" with it without having to restrict their access on all and everything you don't like. But that needs time and mindfulness plus the will to actively take part in their life. That includes letting them have their own private business from time to time, but that also sometimes includes just cutting them off from stuff when you lack the time and energy to deal with it at that time. In this case though, you ought to be prepared to deal later with it, given that the kid didn't already lose interest in it anyway (can happen fast).
Regarding my posts in general, you fail to understand that I am only expressing my oppinion, albeit I also stand up fighting for them. Neither do I have the will or means to force them upon you, although I keep hoping for some understanding, nor do I tell anyone to just shut up when I don't like what they're writing. It's not my fault that certain people always feel the urge to "fight for the world-freedom and against oppression of all sorts" when all I ask them for is to be aware of their own language and attitude.
Also being liberal and tollerant doesn't necessarily mean you have to bear with everything, oftentimes it just means to be leaving others alone with what makes them happy as long as it doesn't affect you or other negatively. But there are situations where room for leaving someone alone is restricted and those situations call for responsibility and interpretation of what freedom is. We wont be able to solve questions of how human interaction and societies work, philosphers have argued over that for millenia. My personal stance is that freedom in a society is not a totalitarian right of the fittest, but a compromise between weighting your own freedom against the freedom of others around you. Consequently that worldview includes such oppinions as: "Yes, you can raise your kids the way you see fit as long as I don't have to deal with them. But if you raise them in a way that will result them in treating my own kids disrespectful then don't wonder if I'm gonna argue with you over it, or if I teach my own kids to solidarize with others against them."
From a pure intellectual point of view it's quite interesting to be discussing these things, but it's also quite exhausting to be doing it in written form in a foreign language on a forum that does not exactly qualify for arguments like these.
<playing with stereotypes>
Also complex topics shouldn't always be broken down to simple arguments. We're not applying for becoming president here.