From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 22:43:36 MDT
spike66 wrote,
> That was me. I was amazed and certainly pleased those
> guys survived. Shows the Iraqis generally didn't have
> anything against Americans. That whole business about
> the whole world being against America was all evidently
> media-speak.
Maybe because some people are pro-America and some people are anti-America?
Seriously, it is silly to argue about what "the whole world" believes.
Seeing things in black-or-white, all one way or the other is unrealistic and
dogmatic. I don't know why humans have a tendency to reduce everything down
to absurd extremes, but we all do it. Rationally, we must see the world as
it really is, and realize that there are combinations and subtleties.
Does the world hate America? Some people do for good reason. Some people
do for no reason. Some people love America for good reason. Some people
love America with no reason. Some people don't care. Some people care too
much. It is a complex combination of politics, histories, rationales and
dogmatic politics.
This is why political discussions become useless extremist propaganda. The
real world is almost never the way people with an agenda claim it is. They
exaggerate their position because that is all they see. They minimize any
opposing positions because they fear someone might choose differently. They
refuse to even allow other positions, because they see this as a sign of
weakness. In the end, the whole dispute becomes a fictional battleground
where most of it is virtual and almost none of it is real. The real world
is ugly, crude, indefensible, and despicable compared to the glorified
rationalizations on all sides. Everybody wants to choose one of these modes
to champion, and almost nobody wants to be left in the middle with a
complicated, ever-changing, barely comprehensible chaos that we call
reality.
But there we are....
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> <www.Newstaff.com>
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