Beautifully put, GfS. You are voicing a number of the same concerns I have tried to articulate over and over again on this forum...usually to the incomprehension of people who, as you say, are wrapped up in "merely promote(ing) an ego gratification(game), of winning an argument, for some sort of validation, (and it) is nothing but useless self absorption..."

They are, like good little parrots, repeating endlessly the things that they think they "should" believe in order to be the kind of people they think they "should be" in order to earn a certain set of credentials: the credentials that prove they are not "racist", "sexist", "gay-bashers", "bigots", etc...

But they're not actually thinking and they're not actually communicating in any thoughtful way. They're mouthing accustomed slogans and accustomed positions of acceptable doctrine and searching for scapegoats...the presumed violators of their acceptable doctrine. When they find what they think is one, the pack mentality takes over.

It's a subtle thing you are pointing out, and it demands patience to understand it. It's way too subtle to reach most people, because they are just parroting a familiar party line (of their accustomed variety..."liberal" or "conservative"). They're enjoying watching the verbal parade of their own imagined righteousness imprint itself on the page.

It's an unaware form of behaviour. I do not expect that those engaging in it will understand what I'm saying at all...(shrug)...well, that's life! Don Firth thinks, for instance, that I am engaging in a kind of Buddha-like detachment...and that's not it!

As you said, GfS "I wouldn't have to (make provocative statements), if somewhere along the line some of you were showing signs of knowing HOW to think, instead of your glowing retention, of parroting off crap you were taught (about) WHAT to think!!"

Bingo! That is it, in a nutshell. Some original and creatively independent thought is what is needed around here.