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Old 26 Jul 2019, 01:07 AM   #28
communicant
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 879
General comment on "General Comment":

To ignore the posts of someone you find disagreeable is fine -- for one thing it takes considerable will power; for another, it is passive (in a good way), whereas electronically blocking someone or marking them to be ignored so you never even know their posts existed is passive-aggressive (and also a bit cowardly, since instead of testing your will power to ignore and not respond to something distasteful, you are using technology to spare you from even seeing it, so no test of will power is involved).

As for the "mens rea" (state of mind, a legal term -- I used the Latin legal term because foreign phrases are anathema to the member whose behavior sparked this conversation, even though he won't ever see this example), for him to crow before pressing the button about his decision to ignore someone and to revel in it in advance while making sure to inform its target (and all the rest of the forum as well) is not only passive-aggressive but downright nasty, and more than a little neurotic, or worse).

As for the "best just to move on" advice, I respectfully but strongly disagree. Applied broadly, such a philosophy would give a free pass to all misbehavers and misfeasors, in all areas of life, and in physical as well as verbal arenas. For example, if you are the victim of a "road rage" incident or a mugging on the street and the police caught the person responsible, what would be your reaction if they advised you to forget about it and "just to move on"? And so on. Turning the other cheek on principle may be fine for practicing Christians and their founder, but for most mortals it is not a practical way of responding to hostility or worse.

There is a time to speak up, and also a time when NOT speaking up is itself the wrong thing to do. One is under no obligation, legal, moral or otherwise, simply to overlook and absorb nasty behavior from someone who is behaving unpleasantly or irrationally or even dangerously. Do you also espouse pacifism as a philosophy? It is by no means self-evident that such a position is either superior to reasonable self-defense or even feasible most of the time. Alas, even for those with the saintly forebearance to turn the other cheek no matter what, the world does not make it easy or advisable (or always possible) to do so.
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