Originally Posted by
davflaws
Last night I was speaking with a group of men - pretty diverse. Some tree hugging do gooders like me, some rednecks.
I was sharing my frustration at some of the things that get posted on this and some other forums by people whose deep dislike of the left and whose (IMO) limited understanding of the realities of life at the bottom of the heap make them (again IMO) "part of the problem".
One of the guys aked me to "get specific", and I shared my dillema about whether to respond to Balance's racism and his (probably rhetorical) invitation to "do gooders" to specify what they have actually done to improve the lives of those on the bottom.
"So why not tell him?" - "Cos he gets his jollies from sharing a platform with John Key and Lee Kuan Yew talking about making people accountable and I get mine from sitting in a room with a guy covered in boob tats doing just that in a way that changes his behavior, or sitting in a room with other people who have real ife experience at the "pain face" to develop policy that actually works to change people's lives.
"So why not tell him that?" - "cos he doesn't really want to know - and nor do lotsa the other posters"
"So why do you hang out there?" - "cos I want to (blush) change hearts and minds"
"You still want to change the world don't you?" - "oh **** - that again ! (slightly tearful blush)
"So you hang out on an online forum with a bunch of old white male capitalists and get bent out of shape cos you can't enlighten them? - serves you right"
Then one of the guys really surprised me, cos I disagree with his politics lots. He asked about the attitudes of the young people I know and someone else made acrack that from my age, anyone under 50 is barely old enough to be considered "grown up".
When I thought about it, I realised that most of the people I know under 40 won't have a bar of racism or sexism or homophobia. Their social attitudes are not determined by their underlying political inclinations to nearly the same extent as for older people (me included).
There is hope! Social attitudes (like science) inevitably progress - one funeral at a time!
I came home feeling much better. I may lurk occassionally, but I probably won't post for quite a while.