Knowing the Adversary.

Something has been made clear to me by my frequent recent contretemps with YouTubers. Sometimes you have to recognise that what you’re fighting against isn’t their reasoning, but their attitude. That’s the point at which you should realise that you have to let go, because attitude isn’t usually based on logical thought processes but on genetic imprinting or environmental conditioning. You can demolish their reasoning as comprehensively as you like, but if their attitude stems from bigotry and/or narrowness of perception, it will contrive to ignore reason and keep them convinced that they’re right. Attitude is a very efficient, if self-serving, filter.

It’s a bit like going into a boxing ring with a zombie. Even if you literally knock his head off, he will keep on getting up and throwing wild punches. And this doesn’t just hold for people of low intelligence. Even those who are intelligent and articulate will either resort to sophistry or continue to argue down a narrow line of vision which permits no breadth of alternative considerations. I had an example of just such a person today and it took some time to convince myself that staying in the ring would be a waste of time and mental effort.

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And something else I learned recently: getting the pressed top off a plastic bottle requires a slightly different technique than is needed for a pressed top on a glass bottle. It’s all to do with the ‘give’ in the bottle’s neck. Now that’s useful.