or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings
I am not on YouTube or social media
CadwellNOT Caldwell
Opinion
Patronising Donkeys
[ 5 minute read ]
'You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.' I first heard that in a Laurel and Hardy skit when 'Stanley' just didn't get the concept of something. That was a long time ago when Oliver Hardy said that; likely to have been the 1930s or so. Yet, it is as true today as it might ever have been.
I find some people who just have to cling to an idea that they are right in their beliefs, or they have such confidence that they are right, that they will become pedants to fend off any negation or adaptation of their ideas through the use of any kind of, or amount of, counter-evidence.
'Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It is a philosophical razor that promotes a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior, purportedly named after the American writer Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted the statement to Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980).'
Most of us, at some time or another, have been in a situation wherein we make a statement but we lack the vocabulary to express it well. Writing our thoughts or what we know is tricky and takes a lot of practice. I think, when it comes down to it, we are all just stupid and not malicious when we cause offense. It is when someone feels maligned that they will pick on the language used as being defective. However, this usually occurs after the contributor is attacked.
'What do you know? You can't even spell properly and the quote you made is on page seventeen and not fifteen!' In other words - this is a pedant saying, 'You are an idiot.'
I have learnt to include 'I think...'; 'I suggest...'; and 'I believe...' in a lot of my written conversations. In spoken conversation I am quite informal and that is troubling for me. I am one of those persons who thinks of a rejoinder after I have left the scene. I think I am saying that I am not checking what I am saying, despite a lot of people saying I am measured in my speech.
There was a philosopher who stated that a smile begets a smile or something like that, and crying begets crying in others. If someone gets irritated by being challenged, I, in turn, feel my emotions become elevated. Mostly, though, I am thinking 'Get a grip! Keep your conversation relevant to the issue at hand and collect your thoughts so you can shunt erroneous information to the right time and place.'
Some people are just hard work. They speak their thoughts aloud which requires the intended recipient to pick up their carelessly flung words, reassemble them in a coherent form and relay them back to the mess of a person who chundered them up. Do your own thinking, please! Don't get me wrong; I write my thoughts down all the time and I even verbally express them, but, I delete those thoughts after I have used them to create a new position from which to later pontificate.
Writing is therapeutic and all-revealing to me. Just lately though I am finding that I am having to state that I am an idiot to people who think they, themselves, are not. I am seriously irked by positively reinforcing blather by retreating from engagement. I am getting really quite lazy though and I feel that I am increasingly using heuristics to categorise people. Just briefly looking at those compartments, I have 'Can't be bothered'; 'You're an idiot'; and 'What time is it?' to where I put people in my mind. The last, 'What time is it?' is the best and most promising place for persons to be. It means that I am considering spending some time trying to help that person to be humble.
Usually, I suggest, we can be sure whether someone is actually correct in what they say. The rest of the time, I believe, we need to help people to realise that now is a good time to back up and read a book on the subject and then try again later.
Yesterday lunch-time, I had a weird start to a conversation in the local shop.
'Hello, Martin. How are you.'
'Fine, except for the news reporting. I just want facts and no emotion.' It was a hang-nail attitude I had from yesterday morning.
'Don't talk to me about the news. They are trying to convict the SAS!' he replied.
Old news, I thought. And, it is the criminal courts with the application of our laws, and the wider nation who are trying to convict our Special Forces with their emotions, 'I wouldn't like those brutes to do that in my house!' It really doesn't matter how we feel at home in the UK, I suggest, with our limited views and experience. We are all likely to have a really quite distorted idea of how the world works. So, that topic is a dead-dog to me.
I could smell alcohol on this chap's breath and fortunately I had created a position from which I could give a measured answer. I certainly wasn't about to get drawn into a conversation that was energised by emotion. 'Facts...blah blah blah...facts!' There are no donkeys with two hind legs near where I live and I could see his eyes were glazing over, and he was drunk so I ended with, 'People's actions should not be judged by other people's emotions!' just to give him an idea that I was in agreement with whatever was going on in his head. After all, he stated that he would be able to kill and still get a good night's sleep. I doubt he was serious though; many people identify with Special Forces mentality to boost their egos. He moved on to pay for his selection at the checkout, without responding to me, but he looked a little appeased.
I have still a lot to learn about getting people to keep their raw thoughts to themselves and showing them where the pram is that they should climb back into, because I am still overwhelmingly selfish and don't devote enough time to trying to understand them.
Now Listen Up
All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551
or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings
I am not on YouTube or social media
Cadwell NOT Caldwell
Patronising Donkeys
[ 5 minute read ]
'You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.' I first heard that in a Laurel and Hardy skit when 'Stanley' just didn't get the concept of something. That was a long time ago when Oliver Hardy said that; likely to have been the 1930s or so. Yet, it is as true today as it might ever have been.
I find some people who just have to cling to an idea that they are right in their beliefs, or they have such confidence that they are right, that they will become pedants to fend off any negation or adaptation of their ideas through the use of any kind of, or amount of, counter-evidence.
'Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It is a philosophical razor that promotes a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior, purportedly named after the American writer Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted the statement to Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980).'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Most of us, at some time or another, have been in a situation wherein we make a statement but we lack the vocabulary to express it well. Writing our thoughts or what we know is tricky and takes a lot of practice. I think, when it comes down to it, we are all just stupid and not malicious when we cause offense. It is when someone feels maligned that they will pick on the language used as being defective. However, this usually occurs after the contributor is attacked.
'What do you know? You can't even spell properly and the quote you made is on page seventeen and not fifteen!' In other words - this is a pedant saying, 'You are an idiot.'
I have learnt to include 'I think...'; 'I suggest...'; and 'I believe...' in a lot of my written conversations. In spoken conversation I am quite informal and that is troubling for me. I am one of those persons who thinks of a rejoinder after I have left the scene. I think I am saying that I am not checking what I am saying, despite a lot of people saying I am measured in my speech.
There was a philosopher who stated that a smile begets a smile or something like that, and crying begets crying in others. If someone gets irritated by being challenged, I, in turn, feel my emotions become elevated. Mostly, though, I am thinking 'Get a grip! Keep your conversation relevant to the issue at hand and collect your thoughts so you can shunt erroneous information to the right time and place.'
Some people are just hard work. They speak their thoughts aloud which requires the intended recipient to pick up their carelessly flung words, reassemble them in a coherent form and relay them back to the mess of a person who chundered them up. Do your own thinking, please! Don't get me wrong; I write my thoughts down all the time and I even verbally express them, but, I delete those thoughts after I have used them to create a new position from which to later pontificate.
Writing is therapeutic and all-revealing to me. Just lately though I am finding that I am having to state that I am an idiot to people who think they, themselves, are not. I am seriously irked by positively reinforcing blather by retreating from engagement. I am getting really quite lazy though and I feel that I am increasingly using heuristics to categorise people. Just briefly looking at those compartments, I have 'Can't be bothered'; 'You're an idiot'; and 'What time is it?' to where I put people in my mind. The last, 'What time is it?' is the best and most promising place for persons to be. It means that I am considering spending some time trying to help that person to be humble.
Usually, I suggest, we can be sure whether someone is actually correct in what they say. The rest of the time, I believe, we need to help people to realise that now is a good time to back up and read a book on the subject and then try again later.
Yesterday lunch-time, I had a weird start to a conversation in the local shop.
'Hello, Martin. How are you.'
'Fine, except for the news reporting. I just want facts and no emotion.' It was a hang-nail attitude I had from yesterday morning.
'Don't talk to me about the news. They are trying to convict the SAS!' he replied.
Old news, I thought. And, it is the criminal courts with the application of our laws, and the wider nation who are trying to convict our Special Forces with their emotions, 'I wouldn't like those brutes to do that in my house!' It really doesn't matter how we feel at home in the UK, I suggest, with our limited views and experience. We are all likely to have a really quite distorted idea of how the world works. So, that topic is a dead-dog to me.
I could smell alcohol on this chap's breath and fortunately I had created a position from which I could give a measured answer. I certainly wasn't about to get drawn into a conversation that was energised by emotion. 'Facts...blah blah blah...facts!' There are no donkeys with two hind legs near where I live and I could see his eyes were glazing over, and he was drunk so I ended with, 'People's actions should not be judged by other people's emotions!' just to give him an idea that I was in agreement with whatever was going on in his head. After all, he stated that he would be able to kill and still get a good night's sleep. I doubt he was serious though; many people identify with Special Forces mentality to boost their egos. He moved on to pay for his selection at the checkout, without responding to me, but he looked a little appeased.
I have still a lot to learn about getting people to keep their raw thoughts to themselves and showing them where the pram is that they should climb back into, because I am still overwhelmingly selfish and don't devote enough time to trying to understand them.