From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 01:11:28 MDT
Wei Dai:
> >I would like to challenge everyone here to avoid phrases like
>>"it churns my stomach to consider ...", "I'm nauseated by the
>>thought of ...", or "I can't bear think that ...". I believe a simple
>>"I strongly disagree with you because ..." works much better
> >to bring your ideas across.
>
I am unsubscribed, but I read this one.
I wonder why you think that people's strong expressions are not useful
information from which you can learn. The people on this mailing list
are not very representative of humanity as a whole and this is a
text-base medium which can be very limiting. Don't you think that it
would be useful to know that some ideas are repugnant.. and why? Or why
other pages of hate-filled text made some women (me, certainly) go numb?
If folks here wish to press some ideas into the mainstream, don't you
think that some information-gathering about the response to your ideas
is necessary?
Even when I am not thinking to press ideas into the mainstream, I learn
from people all of the time, from every way that that they express
themselves. Their words are one subset for who they are. Actions and
expressions are informative too, and usually more so and more honest.
Honest communication is one of the most difficult and also rewarding
skills that humans can learn. My suggestion to anyone is not to cut off
themselves from expressing their opinion, in the means that's true to them
(playing music and painting would work too!). And yes, the corollary is to
be open to hearing that their communication expression wasn't informative
and effective, sometimes and to some people.
--
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Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com
Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/
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"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
--Anais Nin
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