Re: Look!!! He's acting a bit 'weird'!

x-no-archive: yes

of mice and monkfish wrote:

If you wish a poster would clear off, as far as i'm concerned, you
are
entitled to your opinion, and you are entitled to express it - but
that doesn't mean i agree with it, or that your opinion is 'right' or
morally acceptable.


Go back and re-read it for yourself. It's right there in black and
white. I don't know how i can state my position any more clearly than
that.


See if I've got this right - you believe in freedom of speech, but if someone expresses a different opinion to yours, you can challenge them and call them names?


The thing about 'pitchfork-waving villagers' is a metaphor.

There are other types of violence besides physically killing someone.
Bullying and intimidation are also forms of violence - and when an
individual is suffering like this chap seems to be, the slightest
'knock' is magnified a thousand times. Which is why i think it is
incumbent upon us to show him respect and consideration of a kind he
won't be able to get elsewhere. We may not be able to help him, but
that doesn't mean we have to hound him out of here, either.

At last you seem to see some of the weaknesses in your analogy.

A better one might be to regard this as a group of dentists. sgates has come in here with a broken leg and is screaming his head off. I want him to go to A&E to get help. You want him to stay so you can hug him, without treating the source of his pain. And all the time, nervous patients who want help with dental problems are turning away because of all the screaming.

Subscribing to the group, coming here every day, reading the posts,
finding oneself interested in the posters, following their stories,
keeping track of the various in-jokes, the awareness we have of the
group's history . . . all these things constitute some form of group
identity. Sure, anyone /can/ post here, but not everyone does. The
ones who do choose to, and choose to keep coming back. That decision
they make brings the group into being.

So you regard sgates as part of the we?

It's not me that is imposing my standards on the group

But you are trying to.

If I were to impose my standards on this group, I wouldn't ban sgates but I would stop most of his posts. The ones I would let through would predominantly be the ones about his problems in getting to see his pdoc and the ones in which he appears to admit that he isn't taking his meds, which I notice none of your 'we' have answered.

Evil Nigel

.

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