Guilt, by Reason of Humanity

They say you should judge a (wo)man by the company (s)he keeps. In other words, the quality of his or her friends(hips) says something about the person.

I think the same principle applies to the kinds of enemies a person has.

In my case, I'm not proud to say that I have enemies (in fact, they probably don't qualify as TRUE enemies) however I occasionally take pride in the fact that certain people or certain kinds of people tend to disagree with me on social, religious, political, and a host of other issues.

"Say anything" ought to be on a t-shirt or bumper sticker. It seems to be the unspoken, but highly accurate, catch-phrase these days. Having a STRONG opinion that's not hampered by silly things like facts, common experiences, compassion or practicality must be convenient as hell. "Unfortunately," I value these things quite a bit.

I've been accused of the dreaded crime of trying to see both sides of an argument. *shock* Apparently, my tendency to try to help or encourage others to see where their opponents are coming from qualifies as a "theme." While I'm convinced this was "said" in a mocking tone, I can think of far worse labels. In fact, I'm going to work on looking at this kind of thing the way I look back on some of my early elementary school criticisms.

"West talk so propah!" I didn't even know what the hell "propah" meant (or "proper," for that matter). When I found out, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why this was something worth mocking. The truth is probably that it wasn't always meant that way - and, to be fair, some of the things that are said about me now may not be. Often enough, though, these things appear to be meant as criticisms - something that sets me apart from and frustrates others.

Enh.

If that's a crime, it'd be a compliment to be found guilty, by reason of humanity.


Your questions and comments are welcome, as always.

I may even post, again, later. It occurs to me that this topic and the one about other people doing the best they can are related to one I posted about on a message board, recently: the fact that seeing isn't believing as much as Believing is Seeing.