I'm not sure why my posts consistently inflame you so much. Often it seems to me that you look for posts from me to piss you off, lol, without reading them carefully. Maybe you do. Probably you don't. Perhaps you are still pissed off about something I wrote to you. If so, whatever I wrote is probably worth a second look. Often it is the posts that cause the strongest feelings that bear the closest scrutiny in terms of their usefulness in self-exploration. Maybe there is simply something in my style that puts you off or makes it hard for you to see my intended meaning. But, whatever is going on, it is really OK. We are two strangers on an internet discussion board. We don't have to agree. It is fine with me if you think everything I write is boneheaded, lol. What seems clear is that we probably aren't two strangers who can really engage in productive dialog at this point in time. Thus I generally choose to bow out of conversations with you. Please don't take my general lack of reply to your posts to me as an insult or feel ignored. I have no poor opinion of you. If you are on these boards, you are probably a very strong, very loving, very loyal person with intelligence and initiative. We simply mismatch in an online forum.
OT,
You're right -- we're simply not going to agree on a lot of things. But that's okay. I'm not the sort of person who takes such things that personally (as one might think), although I apologize to you and everyone else if I come off that way. (If one of my best friends in college, a devout Marxist-Leninist atheist, and I, a Capitalist and follower of Christ, can constantly argue with and still get along very well with each other, then you should have nothing to worry about.)
And yes, you have at times said things that have flustered me, admittedly. I tend to react to a lot of what you say because I perceive that you don't realize the full implications for what you often advocate. I do read them carefully, and put them in context with the prior conversations of the thread. I also pay attention to the fact there are other people who are reading these threads who are also looking for guidance -- and some things I see advocated by some folks (I'm not trying to single you out) are not necessarily good as a general prescription.
I do give everyone the benefit of a doubt and try to see their arguments from their perspective, but I will challenge those assertions that I think require being challenged. If being challenged is not something you wish to engage in, then I am sorry. It is not my intent to chase anyone off, quite the contrary. I believe everyone should lend their voices to the free market of ideas, but be prepared to haggle nonetheless. And yet in the delicate matter of a forum to help people through tough straits, I think we should consider our words a little more carefully when we're giving advice.
It might seem hard to believe, but I have agreed with you on a couple of occasions (hey, miracle of miracles, right?) I'll go even further -- it is on your recommendation to others that I am now reading PM.
Having said that, I can see where someone standing their ground on moral principles, setting boundaries, can be percieved as being "on a moral high horse". Especially if one wants those boundaries to be fuzzy and malleable. If I challenge such notions then perhaps it offers you an opportunity for your own "close scrutiny" and "self-exploration".
In any event, for what it's worth, I wanted to say thank you for suggesting PM -- so far I am finding it interesting.
