Roger, on reflection I've realized that the foregoing was Part One of the answer I owe you. There will be more.

Part Two will address the way human idiocy on the personal level so often lets us feel that we actually know what we think about Big Questions-- when we have not yet been personally touched by them. *G*

Part Three will address how human idiocy gets moved up from the personal to the institutional level.

And I will be speaking mostly to you and the questions you posed, although I imagine someone will manage to get pissed off at me and answer me in ire.

In the meantime, though, I'm going to go fish up a thread we had about whether Mudcatters ever really change their minds about what they've read or discussed in Mudcat threads. I'm one of the ones who has had changes of mind or heart but, as I recall, people saying that were in the minority. I love how people have acknowledged in some other recent threads that mostly they post to share what they think, not to exchange it with someone else in mutual listening and discussion. What I find intreresting about it is that it seems to me that when we entrench ourselves further in our own positions, we are less likely to find ways of working together to change what we don't like. But, whatever!

~S~