quote:Originally posted by Sweetpea&Tiger:
Have you ever tried bring nice to someone? I have known you from the other forum for years. You use to be Hoss but like the rest of us we have found a better place. NOW Back to the facts. If you would try being nice and polite to people you might find a happier life and less stressful. LET IT GO!!! MrCharles
My life is happy and is probably no more stressed than average. We do live in stressful times. I get great personal satisfaction from assisting others on these forums to see the truth more clearly.
The TD forums are such a small corner of my life that no change in my demeanor here would result in any really significant moderation of the quality of my existence. I get along quite well with just about everyone I know. The people in my “real life” with whom I choose to discuss differences of opinion face to face (as opposed to those I randomly encounter on forums—where the nut-cake index is predictably high) are mature persons who relish the energetic give-and-take of dissent and debate and who do not wear tender feelings exposed upon their sleeves. Unfortunately, that attitude is in short supply on most forums, in large measure because of the all-too-common incompetence of participants to stick to the principles of argumentation, discussion, and debate. For example, when someone on the forums points out miscreant behavior by a public political figure, the almost predictable response by many participants is to ignore that information and to post something notorious about a political figure of the opposite persuasion. That kind of “So’s yer old man” response gets old and tired after a short while. Very often, I try hard to encourage participants to stick with the substance of a posted thread and to thereby contribute to a discussion of the genuine issues being discussed. Obviously, there are those who resist such encouragement, more often than not because they refuse to acknowledge the flaws in their own arguments and therefore decide to blow smoke instead. I shall continue to counsel pointedly with such slackers.
There are many on these forums who are more critical of other posters than I am and who are sometimes just plain insulting and childish in their attacks. I refer to those who routinely address those with whom they disagree as "commies," "leftards," “Demonrats,” and the like and others who address me with such distortions of my forum name as “bitter rot,” beternuttin,” and “beturdU,” list a few. You might consider extending your adjurations to some of those unproductive and puerile types.