Saturday 15 January 2011

Slow arguement - the antithesis of blogs

I have recently joined a disussion here:

http://tinyurl.com/6c97xm8


Interesting, not just for the way arguements tend to fractionalise and split away from what the original author thought they were talking about. A comparison of muslims and sharks ends up discussing stuff like scientific Linnaean taxonomy,  via contested stuff about the Israel / Palestine conflict and, frankly, whether there can be a genuine and neutral 'history of the world'.

I find it quite interesting, in the sense that you may wish to stay away from both sharks and muslims, which was the original precept, on the grounds of nearly certain death.

Or not.

And then you think.

Maybe not a lot. Maybe you say to yourself that someone, whose monicker is Iron Mike - how sad is that - is completely right? Do you think that sharks and muslims are a synonym?


Or perhaps Iron Mike is right? Perhaps his happy comparison between some sharks and some people is just the way of the world?


I am not convinced that alienating muslims from christians from jews is ever done in the best of faiths. And I say that as an atheist.

But that is not all of it, is it?


There is a huge cultural capital being spent on being right, or offended about stuff, isn't there?

It is enough to make people fight. It is this demonisation of 'the other' that seems to be something that activates some of us to violent solutions, and depending where we are in a society, we throw rocks, we sniper, we cavalry charge, we drop agent orange, or we nuke folk.

It seems to me that 'being offended' is a convenient way for jews and christians and muslims to see street violence and repressive states and all the rest of it as normal.

I think this idea that fighting each other, seen as usual, is actually pretty stupid. It is up to the Abrahamic Religions - the whole lot of you - to tell the rest of us why you are relevant to the 21st C.

For, it seems to me that none of you are relevant or useful.

2 comments:

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I've come to the conclusion that little can be gained from debating on the Interwebs.

douglas clark said...

Daniel,

I really, really, need to take the pace down. Err, yes I don't really have a lot to say here but I have, perhaps, too much to say elsewhere.

I think you too have worthwhile things to say, and our problem is that whenever we do say anything it gets hit under some sort of world wide instant rebuttal franchise. Which just gets you and I mad and we 'say things' too. And so the spiral goes.

It has made me think of you and I as chums sharing the same bunker as the damned Luftwaffe dropped their bombs.

My choice now is to write here occasionally on the basis of what is behind the way we see the world.

It will be a slow process, and I am not at all sure that it will work, because there may be nothing much to be said from time to time.

But what it is not going to be about is instant responses of the 'he said', 'she said' reactions to the issues of the day.

I am going to put a post up that explains what I mean for an audience other than you.

But you deserve a personal reply, because, whether you want to hang around and see whether you are more comfortable with the 'slow meal' idea or not, I have enjoyed our battles with the forces of darkness.

Best wishes to you and yours Daniel.

dougie