I am here yet, I am gone yet, I am now here.

Snowy Aftermath wrote:

Arkayik wrote: How did this become about you?

By 3 of you responding after my last comment :whistle:

Snowy, I get what you were saying in your initial comment but your response to Arkayik makes no sense, those 3 responses to your last comment were after the point in time in which Arkayik suggested the conversation had become about you and so are irrelevant to his question. They simply served to further make the conversation about you (and yes, I'm aware of the irony that this very post is in fact contributing to the further derailment of this thread towards you).

The fact that Sven disagreed with you wasn't a reason to 'withdraw (your) end of the discussion' (I would point out that no-one else had directly addressed your comment up to that point) or for you to accuse people of being 'detached' from reality or suggest that they play with unicorns.

Instead it was an opportunity to either clarify that you didn’t mean for him to feel attacked by your comments, or that you did mean for that, and then to come back with a further point, equally as valid as the first (because your first point was perfectly valid), and in doing so further the debate.

But you decided instead to silence yourself and let everyone else carry on with a discussion which you believed was wholly wrong.

I've said before that I don't always agree with your opinions but I love the fact that you give them. It provides another perspective to a discussion and that's crucial to any good debate. If we all agreed with each other the world would be a seriously boring place.

Brick, in order to have a conversation with any kind of value, we have to agree on certain mutual roots (for example, speaking the same language). This is a person who doesn't believe there is 1) currently a culture of hate against Muslims and who is 2) perfectly fine with his actions of potentially humiliating a customer and cannot see it having ended any other way.

I'm done trying to pull the hat off of TotJO's hatters. My time is too valuable.

Snowy Aftermath wrote: Brick, in order to have a conversation with any kind of value, we have to agree on certain mutual roots (for example, speaking the same language). This is a person who doesn't believe there is 1) currently a culture of hate against Muslims and who is 2) perfectly fine with his actions of potentially humiliating a customer and cannot see it having ended any other way.

I'm done trying to pull the hat off of TotJO's hatters. My time is too valuable.

Just to add discussion to the two points:

1. Yes there is a culture of hate against muslims, however it is NOT everywhere. There are muslims in my community to which I service in EMS, and I've yet to see or hear of any hate issues or problems, trust me there's much more uproar about confederacy flags then there is about race or religious beliefs here. Not ALL communities have these issues, the news makes it sound and look and feel a lot worse then it actually is.

2. Yes, there was potential there for a possible problem where maybe that person didn't want their beliefs brought up out loud in a public place, but at the same time if I ran into another Jedi and someone yelled may the force be with you out loud I would probably respond back in kind as well and be excited so It could have gone either way, and consideration to the possibility of a negative reaction could have gone better, but neither is the point of the OP. As I noted in #1, there are communities still in the US and probably other countries where even doing what he did is seen as perfectly fine, and in some cases even respectful by acknowledging and respecting others' beliefs in the work place. That's a very big thing in EMS, I wish it was done in more public places then that.

Brick, in order to have a conversation with any kind of value, we have to agree on certain mutual roots (for example, speaking the same language).

Ok, so have the debate with me? We speak the same language and you're response has restored my confidence in you as a sparring partner in this debate.

This is a person who doesn't believe there is

1) currently a culture of hate against Muslims

There is that culture in certain places, but not everywhere, not on a global scale. A culture that may exist local to you, doesn't necessarily exist local to Sven.

2) perfectly fine with his actions of potentially humiliating a customer and cannot see it having ended any other way.

I think, and admittedly I could be wrong, that Sven is only OK with his actions because everything went well. If things had gone tits up I think he would be mortified and probably wouldn't have shared the story with us :laugh: . Though, granted had I been in his shoes I certainly would not have yelled, loud and proud "Allah, Akbar!!" or "Here O' Israel Isa Al Salam is One!". I can, like you, see that ending very badly.

BUT, neither of us were actually there and it's possible that Sven didn't do a great job of setting the scene/context of the situation. The woman was clearly fine with it, and may have even made a new friend.

I'm done trying to pull the hat off of TotJO's hatters. My time is too valuable.

Fair comment I think, there are certain individuals amongst the Temple that I tire of dealing with due to their reluctance to see, what I perceive to be, reason. But then I see one of them that makes a case I hadn't thought about and, more often than not, my faith is restored

Brick wrote: There is that culture in certain places, but not everywhere, not on a global scale. A culture that may exist local to you, doesn't necessarily exist local to Sven.

1) To assume that you know the inner workings of all of individuals around you is foolish and naive. Singling someone out in the current climate, regardless of what you perceive it to be, regardless of your individual experience of it, isn't going to change her experience of going outside and being assaulted by the one person in 10,000 miles that hates Muslims because someone drew unwanted attention to her. You don't see the environment as hostile. He didn't see his environment as hostile. Does that automatically mean she doesn't or that it's not?

2) How do we know the attention was unwanted? Because she'd erected a clear boundary by "refusing to interact or even tell me her name". Had he ACTUALLY respected her as he claims, he'd have respected the boundary as well, but instead he did the male-dominated-society thing and stomped right over that boundary and did what he wanted. It happens to women, especially women from nonwhite communities because they are seen as "exotic", ALL of the time. Women are not things put here to entertain you or interact with you when you demand it. If they put up clear visual signals that say "leave me alone", do so.

The woman was clearly fine with it

Can you not see that this entire thing started as a violation of her space and she had to respond?

Look, what shocked me more than anything else, the reason I said anything at all in this thread, is that people cared more about his goofy psychotic episode than the terrible overstepping of his rights that started the whole thing.

Unless something else comes up that is worth responding to, that's all I have to say on this.

THAT is why I love you Snowy!

I still stand by my point about Svens local culture, and would argue that we can't base our actions on the off chance of there being one bad apple in a 10,000mile radius, but your point about her setting up a clear boundary?

I hadn't even considered that! And now that you've pointed that out, it's so obvious! Yes, I see your point. And I think I have to agree with you on that point. If someone clearly does not want to be bothered, then we should respect that. In this instance things seemed to have worked out, but yes, we all need to remember that just because we want to be super friendly with everyone, not everyone wants to be super friendly with us