What drives each of us to do what we do in the way we do it?
We are so different in our approaches. So much so, we might even find the images of another strange, peculiar, even repulsive, offensive or outright tasteless.
That’s a normal range of reaction. On the London Underground one may get to be seated between a guy who spreads out his legs so wide one feels that just breathing would disturb his majesty and the other side a fellow loves garlic!
One tries to manage or hopes ones driver doesn’t get another sick day!
I would drive myself to understand the position of each person but there are times when I want to say something that would possibly offend.
Well in the London Underground, the Subway in New York or the Metro in Paris, before you make that offensive remark, assess how well armed you are and how many blokes you can take on at once!
No harm comes from criticism, irony or sarcasm. No one has suffered badly from insult or disagreement.
That’s a sad and potentially tragic mistake! When some offended idiot, minority, undercover cop or city vigilante takes out his favorite World War II Luger pistol, you may not be the one who ends up with the bullet!
In other cases, an insult that you feel is objectively deserved can result in the girls brother meeting you on the steps of the library with a 12” blade slicing across your neck.
We have had Professors who criticized the Ph.D. Students work unwisely and that led to being shot dead!
In other cases students have committed suicide.
Of course you may rightly point out that you had no gun or knife in these attacks, but words are powerful.
Think of two extremes. Since Donald Trump has been in office disparaging non-whites and allowing venom against other than Christians, white extremist “Nationalists” have admitted being inspired by his words.
Look at the other extreme with the power of words. A preacher tells his students to blow up themselves and others in a cafe, restaurant, mosque, train-station or synagogue and the bloody do it!
So don’t give me the easy logic that insulting words are not lethal weapons. Experience proves otherwise!
I anxiously await such responses. I thrive on ridicule and disagreement.
It is in us all to be different.
I delight in the differences.
Tom,
We can delight in differences, but humiliating other folk with a smart quip, exposing their weaknesses is cruel, arrogant, risky and destructive. Trump is simply brilliant at it. Pointing to the face of the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Packard, Carly Fiorina, he demanded, [you can look up the exact text but it approximates],
“Look at that face! Look at it! Who in their right mind would vote for that?”
The subtext of course was the sexual misogynistic innuendo of “Who in their right mind would screw her even if it was for free?”
But in that 20 second quip, he effectively destroyed her Republican Party Electability for candidacy for President of The United States!
Yes, Tom, you are indeed a very close second to the Donald is ascerbic destruction and that’s why I am the moderator to keep that brilliance at bay here! So please do me a favor, don’t bait with this flippant talk on harsh criticism and rhetoric does no harm! We’ve discussed it, now, back to your picture!
(Sure I am sufficiently erudite, admittedly, but as a fast-witted destroyer of opponents, I would come in well below the top 10 percentile!)
Now as to your picture, the odds are that both the hound and the two humans are friendly enough. Two out of the three could share a beer if they were Aussies.
If they are Kiwis, don’t insult them. They lack the humor!
Asher
