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9:21 p.m. - 2001-10-24 I have known him long enough and logged enough hours talking politics, social issues and other bullshit when I should have been working to figure that one out. It turns out in his few short weeks on diaryland he has already raked up some muck and has several radical feminist extremely pissed. That's him alright. He and I have very different views on politics, and we are both very outspoken about those views. Our viewpoints often conflict due to fundamental differences in our outlook, but somehow we manage to respect each other and I think learn a lot from the others point of view. Part of this stems from the theory that since we are both rather overbearing, we are able to cancel out a lot of the inflammatory nature that we both possess. It is sort of the same as scorpions being immune to each others poison. For this reason, I love talking to him as it seldom gets into a position where one of us gets defensive or we end up resorting to personal attacks. We both are skilled at arguing and have all the bullshit diversion tactics down cold, but we can also see right through them and they fall flat. This means we can usually get to the meat of a subject and often end up backing one another into a place where our viewpoints are being challenged and we have to actually think about why and how we formed them. Thus we learn. I have realized that not everyone wants to be challenged this way. It is only recently that I have began to respect that, or even realize that that is something that warrants respect.(I just realized that I just used the word "that" four times in one sentence. That's wierd. I don't know that that's good or even that that is normal that I noticed that.) I am trying to learn to leave people be with their process instead of thrusting mine upon them. Sometimes it is frustrating, but I have to accept that if what I claim to want is a conversation where ideas are exchanged, the other party must feel comfortable or nobody learns nothing. This means that I choose who I talk to and how. Sometimes it does feel like I'm being manipulative if I am forced to be careful not to offend someone so that they will stay focussed, but I can always make the choice to talk to someone else. I try to find people who seem like they are willing and able to accept another viewpoint. This has less to do with the fact that I want them to accept my ideas than my wanting them to think about and expand upon them, or just straight up disagree and be able to teach me why I'm wrong. LL is one of those people. We can talk for hours and not agree on a damn thing, but we never have a conversation that doesn't spark some serious thinking. We both come off as very strong headed in our views, but we admit when we are wrong and change our minds about things constantly because we both actually listen to one another. You may not see it from his writing, but LL will readily admit that someone else has a point and that he was wrong. I'm sure it happens a hell of a lot more when he's talking to me, because of my being so right alla time and whatnot, but that's to be expected. Anyway, it looks like I've unleashed a monster on diaryland. To anybody that he offends, I hope you don't waste your time being angry. And to anybody that he makes sense to, I am probably the one where he got all his good stuff from.
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