Greetings,
cjmacie wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:23 am
Perhaps a more "silent majority" around here?
Well they certainly don't keep
silent when they're doing the
majority of the complaining!
I find that whilst those on either side will be largely unimpressed by arguments made by the other side, there's only one side who seems adamant that this forum could and indeed should, prevent the other from being given the same liberties of speech that they themselves receive. That partiality doesn't sit very well with me. After all, whatever happened to "
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."? It seems a long lost liberal virtue, and I find the concomitant loss of tolerance and dwindling commitment to free speech to be a shame.
Frankly, I think the reason some people find this forum's deliberately even-handed treatment so confronting, is that they've become accustomed to surrounding themselves (either through their choice of media, or social circles) with views that align so closely to their own, that when they are exposed to a broader range of views outside of that echo chamber, they find it "problematic". Chances are they've also bought into their side's decades long propaganda, which insists that those who disagree with them could only do so because they're uncaring, greedy, mean, self-centred, corrupt, morally inferior, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, evil, ignorant, uneducated and so on. Unsurprisingly then, to those who have bought into the uncharitably negative stereotypes propagated by their own side (stereotypes which are not at all aligned with what the Buddha taught) encountering Buddhists who are from the other side of politics, could well be rather triggering and frightening. (Projection and doom mongering goes a long way, it seems... and I'm still waiting to hear what views expressed by non-leftist members are really as terrifying as we're led to believe they are, by our local serial complainants.)
Maybe it's good that those self-styled echo chambers are falling apart, even if the cognitive dissonance involved in that dissolution is harder for some to deal with than others. Maybe a true exhange of ideas might become possible once resistance for resistance's sake falls back out of vogue.
Metta,
Paul.
