About to Fly

It's bad form to rag on a post of someone else's and then not link back to them, so they can at least discover that you've done it, if they want to know. I've caught people doing that to me, and I think it's cowardly.

On the other hand, I'm not going to beat up on this guy. And I actually think he's pretty cool, even if he's got a different take than I do on a lot of things. Let's just say he's young, Australian, gay, sexually out there, artistic, and thoughtful. I'm not trying to send bad vibes or bad traffic his way. I came across his blog while back-tracking some of the links to various bits of mine.

And reading down his prose, I came across this entry, which seems to me to pretty well capture the state of mind of someone honest and intelligent who is just beginning to slit out through the mental coccoon. So I "borrowed" it to show you:

So, tonight on the train i was talking to this young guy i know, who's now become a full-blown Nazi Skinhead. I found myself refusing to be drawn into discussing politics, and i realised it was because i couldn't think of anything useful to say to him. I mean, i can go on and on about hypocrisy in Christian fundamentalism or racism in Australian politics, but it occurred to me that i didn't have a clue how to *logically* answer a simple question of "but what's wrong with racism anyway?". It's like it's something that i've always seen as so fundamentally self-evident that i've never even thought about the reasons *why* i believe in it. And that being the case, how can you have a productive discussion on that sort of issue with someone who overtly rejects that as a given truth?

Of course arguing why the reasons for the other point of view make no sense is probably more to the point, but for something i feel this strongly about, i really should think through why i feel that way more carefully. For one thing, i've never been much of a fan of "because it just fucking is" as an argument.