What you say I imply is not at all what I imply. Whether this is intentional misdirection, or due to the way you've chosen to interpret my words, I cannot say. What I can say, is that it's a ridiculous cause to attempt to defend the maturity of the attackers in this thread, least of all Bandito. If you click back to page 1, there, you'll notice he's initiating a charade toward Seifer with the mock goal to engage him in physical combat, not to mention all of the aggressive undertones sprinkled in the posts preceding and inside of this thread. I have not insulted his Bandito's maturity in any way, however - I have pointed out that there is a distinct lack of maturity in his behavior, at least as seen in this thread.
Should you find the nature of such a thread mature, you have a great deal of growth to accomplish. For that, I do not fault you, but others should not have to suffer because you, or anyone else, has not yet realized the true nature of social courtesy. Such a simple, fundamental axiom applies here: "Two wrongs don't make a right".
Disagreements will always be made, and conflicts will happen, but this thread, or anything like it, should never be the end result.
What you say I imply is not at all what I imply. Whether this is intentional misdirection, or due to the way you've chosen to interpret my words, I cannot say.
(Incidentally, I apparently misinterpreted yours; perhaps I read too much subtext into your responses).
I have never said Bandito, or indeed anything in this thread, was perfectly mature. The "perfectly mature" thing would be to keep reminding Seifer that his temper is simply digging him into further holes, or simply to abstain from commenting at all. However, the "perfectly mature" action does not always bring the kind of self-reflection necessary for a true personality change. We can tell Seifer to get a hold of his temper as much as we want, but no matter how often we tell him to do so, this will not make him realise his faults if he is unwilling to admit they exist. As I said, I went through a very similar sequence of actions on another message board long ago; what ultimately drove me to the realisation was that I was suffering the same kind of abuses at the hands of others as a direct result of
my own actions. It was only after a period of particularly severe abuses that I finally came to this realisation; had I not received those abuses, I would never have undergone the period of self-reflection necessary for me to learn this lesson. As a result, I am actually
grateful to the people whose "childish" actions eventually forced me to this realisation.
No, the term of yours with which I brooked disagreement was "childish," because of its absurd severity; it implies the behaviour of a six-year-old, which is naturally overcome with age. Clearly this is not the case, as anyone will be able to determine by simply observing the world in which we live, rife as it is with all kinds of absurd intrigue that make the behaviours in this thread look downright civilised. It is "childish" to sleep with a teddy bear; it is not "childish" to engage in behaviours which are carried out by humans of all ages. Grossly destructive? Often. Lacking in warmth? Probably. Bullying? Maybe. Childish? No.
My disagreement with your posts has nothing to do with the fact that I "have not yet realised the true nature of social courtesy," and I find your implication that I have not to be particularly insulting coming from someone who presumes such an advanced degree of compassion for others. I simply feel that a society in which everyone feels the necessity to tiptoe around offending one another to be completely anathematical to my principles; it reeks of the absurd kind of political correctness that gets people censured for using "man" rather than "person" as a job description.
Your assertion that "others should not have to suffer" is naïve at best. Suffering is, more often than not, what brings personal growth. I am not saying that suffering should be deliberately inflicted in all cases, but I am saying that its infliction is not in all cases socially destructive. Sometimes it's actually
necessary.
That said, of course there's no guarantee that Bandito will respond to his treatment here by learning the lesson he so urgently needs to learn. But there's no social responsibility on anyone here to treat him with kid gloves just because he apparently has a lot of growth to do.
