Final Boss of the Liberal Disease
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Previously on "Sisyphus wept"
I wish it didn't matter to you enough that you'd stop pinging me every day trying to get me to validate your latest argument so we can go in circles for one more lap. I was tired of it.
But fine, sure, I'll believe you that you took meaningful steps to be responsible for building the social and moral order you think should exist in your community and somehow find value in believing the fairytale version of events without it eroding the motivation to keep taking responsibility. Personally I find willfully believing in fairytales as an adult is poor mental discipline that tends to lead to people making excuses for not doing what needs to be done. Doing the right thing but also needing to believe it wasn't necessary seems entirely incongruous to me, but you do you
If nothing else your dogged insistence on me believing your account of doing both things, and having witnessed your near infinite patience in talking to a dreary lost cause like TCDforever, suggests you're not going to change tack nearly so easily as the average Joe. Your beliefs only matter to me insomuch as they influence your, or others', willingness to take civically responsible actions instead of burying their heads in the sand, so as long as it doesn't lead to that for yourself, knock yourself out I guess.
Fair, asshole is on the strong end of potential responses, for those minor intrusions on people's peace you did, "slightly annoying" is probably a more appropriate description, but being annoying is still a drain on your social capital, albeit a smaller one relative to being the asshole. It became apparent around the third ping that we have wildly different ideas of what is appropriate and what is annoying behavior though. I would never consider acting like Navi from the legend of zelda: the ocarina of time with strangers to be pro-social behavior, and yes I am aware that is probably a reference you will probably have to look up, but here we are after the third "hey, listen", so if you feel no dissuasion from being annoying but for the right reasons, good for you I guess
I get that you're worried about people making poor choices, but it's like your taking that fear into aggression on me. It's like you want to believe you've found someone who truly validates these fears and you want to express your ire about it.
I'm happy to say that my willingness to take responsible actions and encourage others to do the same is quite high. If you want to doubt that, fine, but of course I'm going to respond if you're going to just immediately come out guns drawn without even bothering to assess my character before making a judgement.
I also get and apologize for this feeling like it's going in circles, but you've got to understand that for much of this you do speak quite generally of what you were worried about and you did not give very clear answers.
Yeah we def have different alignments on what constitutes annoying.
I don't find it slightly annoying to help people, so I don't see this perspective. Like I find it "slightly annoying" in the sense I find it "slightly annoying" that my food doesn't arrive the very second I order it, but that's just part of life. If my neighbor came to me and said his bike got stolen, I wouldn't be all that annoyed at him for any reason.
(By the way, I'm 36. Well familiar with the Zelda series)
I'm not bumping you to be annoying, I'm bumping because there are valid points to discuss that I want to hear your perspective on. You came in hot to challenge, so I want to keep that energy alive.
Man you are so hard to read, hah. Having no idea about Anthony Burch and "my wife's boyfriend" but also instantly being aware of tutorial Navi jokes must be such a specific, narrow range on the spectrum of nerd culture knowledge.
Unfortunately that energy only lasts as long as I think there's room that positive, productive change that might come from it. Just nagging me to fight again isn't gonna keep me engaged. I'm not in for the joy of "debate me bro" with internet strangers just for it's own sake. Like I said, I saw your patience with TCDforever and was in one respect impressed, but another part of me thought that was a tremendous amount of wasted energy that could probably have been spent better elsewhere.
I now accept your word and figure you're probably just an unusual mix of character traits, where believing in some little white lies after the fact is still pleasant but somehow doesn't also drive you towards complacency. And complacency based disengagement was my presumed target, now I accept it's not a problem for your specific situation, and I've explained my basic premises in great detail just to be sure, hammering out a few more minutia of how our worldviews differ doesn't greatly appeal to me. As I said, I think sometimes you have to be the asshole to get the best results, and now I don't suspect I need to be the fiery asshole to shock someone out of complacency anymore I just want to go back to chilling out and making jokes.
One last part, on this.
I find discussions like this a really good exercise on patience and reason, for me. I've learned from these sorts of conversations how to deal with conflict in real life. Plus, most of my replies to him only take a few minutes, and I'll do those while on the toilet or as little mini-breaks in between emails for my actual job.
Yeah I get that in real life too lol. I get a lot of misreads from people who first meet me. It doesn't bother me and I understand when people want to put me in a box. It's when they start treating me like the box they want me in that I've always found funny.
My nerd culture knowledge really just doesn't dip that far into internet lore. I grew up on video games and know a lot about card games and tabletops etc, but I don't follow meme lore too deeply or take it too seriously.
I'm not nagging you to fight "again" I'm nagging you to respond. I think good points were brought up and they deserved proper attention. Each message you learn something new about me that, maybe, you'd have come into a previous message with a different POV had you known XYZ earlier.
"Unusual mix of character traits" is a good one. A friend of mine once said that I am "like a magic eye, where you can't tell what I am until you look at me just right."
You never needed "great detail" to explain yourself. I was just looking for some detail because I found your reaction to my thought really amusing, and had assumed that you built up an idea of who I was and what I had done.
Great news! You never need to be. Chilling out and making jokes is my general MO, and I still know how to turn on the heat and get shit done if need be. Happy to let you know you can have it both ways.
Oh the great detail part is more because I am very much aware of and intending for a heated public discussion like this to be a form of evangelism for a view I believe will improve things to anyone else who stumbles across it. So I'm often motivated to continue a discussion even when someone seems intractable if I haven't sufficiently fleshed out my rational for the disagreement for any potential third party consumption. That was just me thinking outloud that I feel I've already fulfilled that goal and the only consideration left is if our own interpersonal discussion is going anywhere.
And yeah, I know I can have it both ways. I disagree that I never have to be the fiery asshole, it gets results sometimes, although context clues wise I think you just meant specifically with you, and yeah I'm past thinking that might be needed. We're all good brother.