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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Should Confirmed Gay Catholic Preists Own Guns? (4/14/2009 10:22:39 PM)
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quote:
The Question is what Fuels the Passion?
Each of us has a vision of how an ideal world ought to be designed, and it is this vision that forms the basis of our sociopolitical ideology. For each of us, our unique vision of this ideal world is shaped by the peculiarities of our own individual personalities - our sense of altruism, our desire for personal financial security, our concern for the safety of our children, our concern for the well-being of the children of total strangers, our desire to see justice visited upon transgressors, our sense of practicality and pragmatism, our own individual willingness to make personal sacrifices for what we perceive to be the common good, and a hundred other things all go into how we define a Perfect World.
But whatever the ingredients that have gone into our recipe, once we have decided that that's the way the world ought to be, we become deeply invested in it emotionally because that codified vision reflects the very core of who we are - our values, our morals and ethics, our hopes for the future and our fears for what might happen if the world goes in a different direction; in fact, I would argue that for almost all of us, there is nothing in the world more important than our personal vision of The Way Things Ought To Be.
The problem is, other people have other visions of The Way Things Ought To Be. Sometimes those visions (while somewhat different than our own vision of TWTOTB), are similar enough to our own that even though we may disagree somewhat, that other particular vision doesn't really represent any sort of threat to our own. So we don't really get up in arms over it, because it's close enough to what we want ourselves.
But other times, someone else's vision of TWTOTB is so very different than ours, we feel personally threatened by it on a very deep, visceral, fundamental level. For example, if my vision of TWTOTB is centered around abundant educational opportunities for my children and a strong national defense to keep my children safe, and someone else argues for a vision that weakens the educational system and cuts the military in half, then that person's vision is not only in conflict with my own, it represents a direct and dire threat to my deepest hopes and most heartfelt values. On some instinctive level, I may perceive that person as not just someone who sees things differently, but is the mortal enemy of everything I believe in. I feel deeply threatened; reason and civility go right out the window, and animal emotions such as fear and anger take over and drive the debate from that point on. These motherfuckers aren't just wrong, they're threatening my way of life, my children's future, and they're the enemy.
That's where the passion comes from. That's where the heat comes from, and that's why it becomes critically important to prove ourselves right. And prove those other motherfuckers wrong, before they get away with whatever evil scheme they're trying to promote. That's where it all comes from, and that's where it all falls apart whenever two or more of us are gathered in the name of Politics.
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