It is something I run across, often, in many of my experiences with human beings.
A psychological phenomenon that cuts to the root of most debates.
It is obvious, to me, that most people hold onto beliefs and opinions that satisfy an inner need immediately or that supports their existing self-interests.
People are reluctant to even consider a possibility that contradicts either, and vehemently, often viciously, attack anyone that dares to speak any perspective that may come into conflict with these beliefs and opinions.
When they cannot defend them using reason they fall back on personal attacks, insinuations and slander.
My recent partial, and now complete, banishment from ILP proves that anyone the disturbs the majority's peace of mind, must be silenced.
As a consequence, these minds seek an advantage behind every opinion.
They assume that all are just like them - them being a part of a majority - and so they may not understand the other person's opinion but they assume that it offers him/her an immediate advantage.
It must.
I say "immediate advantage" because all perspectives attempt to find an advantage in the information they gather and use to construct a world view or when they accept one as it is provided to them.
But reality, being indifferent to our particular needs, is not always advantageous or does not so easily provide us with solutions to our problems.
Information, knowledge is just that, and nothing else.
If we can then use it to gain an advantage is a matter of personal will and talent and should not be assumed as being liberally provided to us by the information and knowledge itself.
If it is too good to be true....it, most likely, is not true.
Why? Because reality does not come ready made to please us. If it did we would not need to be aware at all.
We would be in paradise.
We are a reaction tot eh fact that reality is not a friendly place for life.
For instance I have been attacked as one that hates women, due to my positions on sexual differences and gender roles and I have also been accused of claiming to be the "ideal" man.
To the first I answer that, this attack can be leveled against anyone that proposes any position, and particularly against one that posits an opinion that is contrary to popular beliefs, and so controversial, or that claims something negative about another human being or a group of them - as if nothing negative can ever be said about anyone unless they dare to say something negative first or if they oppose the beliefs of the majority and expose them as false...in that case anything goes.
To the second I answer that, if anyone actually read my positions, and understood them, they would find that I deny the very existence of an "ideal" altogether, as it is another word for the fantasy of an absolute, and so I cannot be claiming such an absurdity.
It is also ironic that when I also claim that beauty is not merely "skin deep" but that it signifies something and that is why we are attracted by it, that nobody accuses me of being handsome, or when I claim that penis size does matter, I am not attacked as possessing a big member.
I'm hurt by this.
Recently I was asked if I would believe the same things that I do if I had had a daughter instead of a son or if my son grows up to be gay.
This question exposes this very thing I talk about.
It is assumed that reality alters when our self-interests and emotions are involved, as if my personal desires and preferences have any bearing upon how the world is.
If I truly changed my opinions every time my personal circumstances changed, and I tried to adapt them accordingly, then I would truly be a hypocrite and no different than the majority whom can only accept what does not hurt them.
They are the ones that are part of the majority and the ones that are the most boring people I know.
Political correctness, regurgitating established beliefs and adhering to communal rules is what makes the mediocre such boring debaters and so easy to expose as hypocrites and emotional thinkers.
Most have not thought their own opinions through, but accept them as self-evident, because the majority holds them as such.
Anyone that contradicts these popular beliefs must be ill or have some evil ulterior motive.
Is this not herd psychology?