> I ask you this Lynn, what is more offennsive, speaking an > uncomfortable opinion, or defending politness over and above > the right to publically expose one's ideas? There are by > definition lots of polite people in every oppressive > culture... (the rest are in prison, dead, marginalized, or > admonished into servitude). Be careful which you serve, > polite ain't freedom. Polite ain't grace. Your story is > about control. Why weren't you offended by the social tyrany > of the people "knocking the highest nail down"? We are > getting so used to this we are forgetting the difference that > matters. I for one am very very thankful for those who > heeded a higher goal, people like ghandi and martin luther > king and lincoln and the guy who stood in front of the tank > in china. These people acted under a larger definition of > the word polite.
Randall, I had a fairly viceral reaction at first to situations that wouldn't sit right in the US - but in time I learned that exposing ones ideas was possible, it just had to take a different route to be gain meaningful acceptance in the group. Knowing significantly more about Japanese culture has made me a lot more critical about specific institutions as well, and also more knowledgable about getting what I wanted (and no culture is perfect with that). What is polite or not is governed by the norms of the venue - written laws and unwritten and rarely spoken norms of the groupshare. Im not saying that you wont find polite tyrrants in the world, only that politeness can exist *without* tyrrany - and it sure helps in getting what you want out of life. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks President Paradigma Software http://www.paradigmasoft.com Valentina SQL Server: The Ultra-fast, Royalty Free Database Server _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
