quittin' smoking

[Mike Yacht]

I'll put it in small, simple, non-hyperbolic terms for you so you can't sit
there and mince language instead of addressing the point made (which you're
oh so good at with your years of flamewar experience).

The hypocrisy I see in your statements are as follows:

You feel adults should be able to make up their own minds.  But if their
minds are made up in a way you don't like, you get pissy.

Or how about this:

You don't like it when people tell you what to do, so you're going to tell
them to stop doing it.

Perhaps ironic would have been a better choice.

Oh, and I'm not mad.  I'm actually very amused.  The public smoking argument
always makes me smile as I listen to everyone state the same thing:  I
should be allowed to do what I want to do because I want to do it, and you
shouldn't bitch about me wanting to do it.

Be it the smokers who think they have a right to smoke or the non-smokers
who think they have a right to not have to inhale the smoke.  Either way it
is exactly the same thing.  One extreme you have heavy-handed facism, the
other end anarchy.  Not saying which is which, but in the middle there is a
reasonable middle ground called representation (be it a republic or a
democracy) where the society states what it wants and then you go through
that whole checks and balances thing that can take years to get right (for
example the PA Motorcycle helmet law).  Sometimes there isn't even a right,
but a right-now and the laws change over time to reflect 'public sentiment'.

Don't like having to bend your opinions or actions to a society's whim?
Then get the hell out of society cause they ALL do that and expect that,
some more obviously than others.  It is the very nature of living in a
society.



- Mike 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Rapier [mailto:rapier1 at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 12:50 PM
> To: Mike Yacht
> Cc: pgh-goth-list at listless.org
> Subject: Re: quittin' smoking
> 
> This doesn't actually have anything to do with what you said as much
> as the comon usage of the word hypocrisy is one of those annoyingly
> fascinating things to me. It seems that many people think that a moral
> or ethical inconsistancy is equivilant to hypocrisy. Which is weird
> because no one is perfectly morally consistent. Does that make
> everyone a hypocrit? Its really one of the more poorly applied
> critiques. To be clear hypocrisy is if I preach one thing as virtuous
> and necessary while I consistantly engage the very behaviour I am
> lambasting. I'm not quite sure where you saw that in what I was
> saying. I was calling for moderation and respect for other people
> wishes and a level of responsible polite adult behaviour. I'm not sure
> how that sinks to the level of hypocrisy.
> 
> As for your analogy, it was hyperbolic to the point of being
> inapplicable. Which is why I wrote what I did. I'm, sorry it got you
> mad but if I did address your specific anaology it would have
> necessarily shifted the focus of the conversation into entirely
> different directions.
> 
> On 3/14/06, Mike Yacht <meatnog at meatnog.com> wrote:
> > Oh, Chris, don't pout just because I didn't agree with you.  If your own
> > hypocrisy isn't evident to you then no analogy will make it self-evident
> to
> > you.