Opinions

Opinions are opinions, people are people.  We ought not to confuse the two.

Reasons why attacking a person for their beliefs is pointless and only perpetuates crazymaking.

1.  Opinions are fluid and their greatest strength is that they are malleable and changeable.  If we all believed and thought the same things, the world would lose all its magic and be incredibly boring to me. 

2.  I love a good scholarly debate, but I do feel that opinions are opinions, I am entitled to mine, and you are entitled to yours, and that there is a world of difference between debate and attack.

3.  When one attacks a person for their beliefs, it creates a schema that we are at odds with that person, and due to cognitive dissonance, even if we do find that we agree with other opinions that person holds, we will not be able to to assimilate that into our schema; we will either deny/ignore it, or we will consider it to be an exception to the norm.

4.  I have a very good friend that I have shared many years of debate and entertaining stories with.  However, we do disagree extremely heavily on a few key matters, both of which we hold rather dear.  Fortunately, we are both mature adults that accept that it isn't worth hating each other over these differences, and that we both value each other's company much more than we value having the last word on the matter.  Yes, the easiest thing to do is simply to ignore those topics, but they do come up from time to time.  We are, however, able to agree to disagree without becoming angry or attacking each other's opinions or person.  And that's why Tony rocks.

5.  Anyone can say "you're wrong".  It takes a much bigger person to say "I feel differently and here are the reasons why I believe what I do".  Never throw out an opinion you can't support, you'll only show that you react emotionally instead of logically.  By the time you've thought things through, you've had a chance to simmer down.

6.  What's the point of rant-rage?  Yes, I believe I just coined that term.  The internet leave so much anonymity that all we have to go off of to create the image of the author is our own emotional reflection.  Debating on what you feel based off of the few words of mine you've been kindly enough to read, you might think my brain is so damn hot you just want to give me a brain massage and hope that some of it seeps through my pores so you can carry it with you always.  Or, you could think I'm the dumbest bitch ever to ride a keyboard and you'd like to punch me through your monitor right now and the only reason you're still reading is because iTunes is updating and your browser is running too slowly to take you the hell away from here.  Either way, I'm glad that I've siphoned some kind of an emotional response from you.

7.  What's the point?  The point is, nobody wins when someone comments "ur gay" or "this sux".  Big deal.  Don't care.  You've not invoked any kind of emotional response from me, although I do imagine the poster is probably gay or sucks themselves.

812.  I have nothing to gain from petty arguments.   I doubt you do either.  And if you do, I am sorry that you have such a pitiful, miserable life that you have to resort to arguing with strangers from the internet in order to gain a sense of accomplishment for winning an argument.