Off-World:
I am saying those things in a totally calm voice...can' t you tell?
A flame is dropping bombs on people. Roughing a guy up verbally for
acting like a dumbass is the enlightened thing to do. An
unenlightened person would be all nice about it at all times. Though
I am not enlightened and never claimed to be, you MAY be falling in
to the trap that believes and promotes the idea all enlightened
people must appear to be nicey nicey all the time. That is a fallacy.
The Gita says as much, and it makes sense.
Bronte:
I understand the phoniness of nicey-nice. I'm not that way either. But
flaming is attacking the person not the argument -- getting personal in a
negative sort of way. When you call someone a "pathetic little man" it doesn't
matter how calm your voice sounds but that you deeply insulted someone. That's
what people agreed to stop doing here.
Even if you think someone deserves that (and I have felt similarly about
someone who was snotty to me), it spoils the safety of expressing in this forum
if the option exists for us to get personally put down. A lot of names I
haven't seen before are showing up in FFL since its self-clean-up. People feel
encouraged to express divergent ideas here, but they won't continue to if the
personal attacks start being the norm again.
Even little cool-tempered ones like the one you made. That starts the
machinery in motion again, and the snottiness will escalate to "bomb-dropping,"
as you put it in no time. Please don't do it, Off. I want to keep talking with
cool people like you, but I can't if this place becomes a bar room brawl again.
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