Step Five:
Stomp On Others
Look, it's you or them.
Human beings are animals, animals of great tenacity, cleverness, and savage viciousness. It's part of your genetic makeup.
You can send your emotions to the cleaners, but you can't make anything but hot red blood flow in your veins. Kill or be killed. Take no prisoners.
EXAMPLE: "Professor Ratbag, I would like to ask you a question, but I don't know whether I can find a way to put it that doesn't seem condescending in the light of your childishly naive view of epistemological certainty. Any child of five can tell you that certainty does not entail prescience or metaphysical commitment, and it seems extremely strange to me that you would want to develop a position on the basis of a puerile view that is counterfactual to the simplest and clearest consciousness. Do you wish to modify your position, or shall we all just suck our thumbs and make wee-wee?"
Jeez, I think I was at that session. I thought Ratbag was going to pop an artery, or something.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, though, I've started going to a better class of conferences, ones with much less stomping.