>Charles, I guess great people can be expected to have great faults. Perhaps society has forgotten the ability to forgive personal eccentricities that are as nothing compared to other contributions. But then, if a smart person deliberately turns their intellect to causing conflict, there are few effective responses apart from sending them to their room.
Or just watching in bemused silence. I find that kind of stuff really unpleasant but I also notice I'm seldom involved in it. I guess I just discovered long ago I can't really have my happiness depend on controlling other people's behavior. I just have control over how I choose to react to it.
But of course, i do understand why someone might choose to react to it by tuning it out entirely. I just don't think banning people is particularly necessary when engaging them - or choosing how you want to engage them - is pretty much voluntary.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
