I guess it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless,
I find that really upsetting.
I’m just back from shopping at Lidl. Those yummy German chocolate coated marzipan bars are back for Christmas. Hurray! Should I get one for Robert too? No. He hates marzipan. He even cuts the marzipan out of the stollen and gives it to me.
When I read “I guess it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless,...” I get the parental voice starting up: Why are you eating that crap, its mostly sugar, it will rot your teeth, I don’t care that you like it, you’re just being childish,.… The parental voice has a go at Robert too: What do you think you are doing cutting the marzipan out of the stollen. That is fussy beyond belief. Its just food. Eat it!. Everybody else likes it, what makes you so special?
Huh? What’s that all about? It is slowly dawning on me that I carry a lot of mental scar tissue from playing social games with people who play rough. In my experience minimising the importance of subjective factors is an aggressive move. It is made by a player to whom subjective factors are very important. They say “I guess it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless,...” as a prelude to declaring that your subjective preferences are fairy meaningless. Having belittled subjective preferences, they impose theirs on every-one, and your objections carry little weight because “it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless.”
I’m very attached to, and defense about, the little areas of my life that are subjective. My taste in food, my taste in music, my taste in web-browser user interfaces. Being advised to apologise in advance for my “fairly meaningless” love of Chopin hits my hot button.
There had better be a more general point to this comment than “Alan likes marzipan.” I think it is that I am not unique; other people have issues too. Which means that there will always be problems with bits of harmless filler, inserted out of politeness, unexpectedly rubbing people the wrong way.
Given that both my comments in this thread have turned out more negative in tone than I intended, I should clarify that I think that lionhearted has written an excellence post. I have up-voted it. He deserves a medal for being brave enough to write on a fraught and important topic.
He deserves a medal for being brave enough to write on a fraught and important topic.
Fraught topic? The topic itself is utterly trivial and commonly acknowledged. Pretending that it is the topic itself that is dangerous is rather insulting to the community.
I find that really upsetting.
I’m just back from shopping at Lidl. Those yummy German chocolate coated marzipan bars are back for Christmas. Hurray! Should I get one for Robert too? No. He hates marzipan. He even cuts the marzipan out of the stollen and gives it to me.
When I read “I guess it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless,...” I get the parental voice starting up: Why are you eating that crap, its mostly sugar, it will rot your teeth, I don’t care that you like it, you’re just being childish,.… The parental voice has a go at Robert too: What do you think you are doing cutting the marzipan out of the stollen. That is fussy beyond belief. Its just food. Eat it!. Everybody else likes it, what makes you so special?
Huh? What’s that all about? It is slowly dawning on me that I carry a lot of mental scar tissue from playing social games with people who play rough. In my experience minimising the importance of subjective factors is an aggressive move. It is made by a player to whom subjective factors are very important. They say “I guess it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless,...” as a prelude to declaring that your subjective preferences are fairy meaningless. Having belittled subjective preferences, they impose theirs on every-one, and your objections carry little weight because “it’s totally subjective and therefore fairly meaningless.”
I’m very attached to, and defense about, the little areas of my life that are subjective. My taste in food, my taste in music, my taste in web-browser user interfaces. Being advised to apologise in advance for my “fairly meaningless” love of Chopin hits my hot button.
There had better be a more general point to this comment than “Alan likes marzipan.” I think it is that I am not unique; other people have issues too. Which means that there will always be problems with bits of harmless filler, inserted out of politeness, unexpectedly rubbing people the wrong way.
Given that both my comments in this thread have turned out more negative in tone than I intended, I should clarify that I think that lionhearted has written an excellence post. I have up-voted it. He deserves a medal for being brave enough to write on a fraught and important topic.
Fraught topic? The topic itself is utterly trivial and commonly acknowledged. Pretending that it is the topic itself that is dangerous is rather insulting to the community.