I don't think it's as simple as that. What I tried to say is that the dialogue-addicts are not, in the majority, disguising their fear of Hizzoner Bullying-Bastard. They fear war in the abstract, but what they fear more is to have their mental constructs disproved. I have seen people whom I would never suspect of cowardice or conscious collaboration be dragged inch after inch over the line because they were so obsessed by dialogue as such that anyone who went through a pretence of dialogue satisfied them, and anyone who told them to their faces that dialogue on certain terms was just not possible was perceived as pointlessly oppositional, irrational, obstinate. It is at this point that the terms of morality become reversed.
And I will add another thing. What the dialogue addict is disguising is his own underlying bullying nature, not his fear of bullies. It is not that he fears them, but that he has already in his heart of hearts adhered to their nature. Why, after all, should dialogue be so important? Why can't we live with our own differences and go on as we are? When you realize that the dialogue fanatic simply will not allow the other person to be left alone to live as they will, that the obsession with dialogue has as its immediate, and intended, result, to place everything into doubt or into play - even the things that the other party would not want to place into play - you will realize that there is a profound affinity between most dialogue addicts and most bullies. George Orwell had seen it clearly, in that attack on pacifist writers in 1942 which I published a few weeks back.
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Date: 2010-07-11 11:41 am (UTC)And I will add another thing. What the dialogue addict is disguising is his own underlying bullying nature, not his fear of bullies. It is not that he fears them, but that he has already in his heart of hearts adhered to their nature. Why, after all, should dialogue be so important? Why can't we live with our own differences and go on as we are? When you realize that the dialogue fanatic simply will not allow the other person to be left alone to live as they will, that the obsession with dialogue has as its immediate, and intended, result, to place everything into doubt or into play - even the things that the other party would not want to place into play - you will realize that there is a profound affinity between most dialogue addicts and most bullies. George Orwell had seen it clearly, in that attack on pacifist writers in 1942 which I published a few weeks back.