Bill's Notes

I've found myself provoked to anger on a blog or two this week. I used to go to all sorts of blogs and say all sorts of things, but I've slowed down a lot for the past three years. Still, I'm reminded of the following:

1. People will argue with you about anything. Seriously.

2. No matter what you say, some people will agree, some people will disagree, and some people will nitpick. You could say the sky is yellow at night and we all should wear Barney underwear outside our clothes, and someone will agree, someone will disagree, and someone will nitpick.

3. If you have a philosophical realist point of view, especially one rooted in an authentic, tested experience of God, people who don't have that experience will argue with you — without doing the hard work of actually opening themselves up to that experience.

4. Remember the wise counsel of Christ when he said this to bloggers: "Take care that you do not cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn and attack you." How many believers have testified about God, only to have someone walk right over what you say and attack you personally? I've had it happen when discussing natural law, on abortion, when mentioning Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (one dude actually quoted Sandy Day O'Connor after I mentioned Godel), and the few other topics I feel really strongly about.

5. I need to remember to watch my spiritual pride, which usually happens when I'm not feeling close to God, and when I'm angry or tired or frustrated. Spiritual pride manifests itself when I forget my gratitude at knowing God, and expect others to simply listen to me, instead of my remembering to lovingly point them toward God and let God take it from there. But I'm a bit of a control freak at heart.

6. And a lot of people don't seem to act like they understand the limits of learning in a blog comment thread. They want to score points and win arguments, but many do not, in fact, want to learn anything. And many of them succeed.

7. Worse, a lot of people get riled up by blogs and media and think about you only symbolically — it's almost a sociopathic element of this media. You know, it's really easy to forget there are people on the other side of names.

8. I need to remember to walk away when there's a pearls before swine thing happening. Especially if it costs nothing to walk away.

*****

One experience to illustrate my frustration. I won't mention names, but some of you will figure it out. About four years ago, a blogger noted publicly that he had a problem. Now, this was the very same problem that I myself overcame many years ago, and knew a lot about how to do it.

However, no matter what I said, this person just kept arguing back at me. No matter what. He pointed to clinical studies this, and this expert that. I pointed out that I'd actually been through the journey myself and knew the way quite well, thank you.

Well, four years later, he continued to have the problem and it actually got much worse. Exactly as predicted. His wife left him and took the kids. And he finally got what I and so many others were trying to tell him, and he finally did what I told him to do four years ago, before he lost his wife and kids. Now he's actually getting better.

Do you know how frustrating that was to me? How much heartache I could have saved him if he'd just listened? But he was too busy trying to prove me and a bunch of folks like me wrong than actually listening to what I was trying to tell him. I would tell him the truth (yes, mo-fo, the effing TRUTH), things I learned from hard experience, and he would just keep speaking back, kept saying things, kept talking pure shit back at me as if I were not the voice of experience speaking.

*****

This doesn't mean I think I'm always right. Far from it. But sometimes, I know what I'm talking about and don't like it when people just keep talking smack back at me. Aarggh!

Does this make sense?