Re: META: What did I do wrong?

Jocelyn Brown (jocelynb@mindspring.com)
Thu, 20 May 1999 07:23:55 -0500

>Debate is also impossible if someone merely tells you to read one of their
favourite books evry time you raise a point >they disagree with.

I was not attempting to enter into a debate with David; I was answering his question. If you read any of my other posts in the archives, you will see that when I wish to debate, I do. If you or David or anyone else wishes an intelligent debate on the merits of the philosophies of individual liberty and private property, I will happily do that. That was not the purpose of the post you are responding to.

>Ultimately evil ?
>This is a discussion forum for transhuman ideas. I was of the belief that
it was intended for debate between open >minded intelligent people, willing to contemplate someone elses point of view without dismissing it out of hand because >it doesnt happen to agree with their particular world view.

And I was doing just that: continuing a discussion by answering a question as best I could. David asked what had he done to offend people, and I offered my opinion. Like I said, I wasn't trying to debate his ideas -- he wanted to know what he had done to offend people, not what I think the flaws in his logic are. As for dismissing his ideas out of hand, I have heard them many times before and have rejected them. Being open-minded doesn't mean that you can't form a value system and reject ideas that oppose it. As for this forum and its purpose, I don't believe anything I posted went against that purpose. I simply pointed out that some of us have a world view which is in direct opposition to some of the ideas he has offered, some of us believe in absolute right and absolute wrong, and some of us will do whatever we can to fight what we see as wrong. I would expect no less of you or David or anyone else.

Jocelyn Brown
jocelynb@mindspring.com



"I am a part of all that I have met." -- Lord Alfred Tennyson "A man is only as good as what he loves."-- Saul Bellow