There are things I like to read and things I do not but am I personally offended by what someone has to write? Only once in a blue moon so most of the time, Certainly not. But I am rather protective over places that I personally like to frequent and I do find it terribly distracting to find someone walking through with muddy feet just because they feel that they can. Then, when they cannot even apologize for the mess and expect someone to clean up after them, I have this proclivity for teaching and do try to teach with some vigor but diplomatically how that is done.
Not at all, Bobby. We simply have different personalities and feelings about different things. She has her right to her open-minded feelings, just like wife and I have our right not to be.
Cody, you’re right, you are close minded. Having an open mind does not mean that a person accepts everything that is written or said. It simply means that a person is willing to listen and examine what is said before passing judgement on an issue. To show just how close minded you are, Yvonne was having some fun with Ken but you took the post as completely serious and offensive in nature. You did not think first before you reacted hence you lost a moment of humor and gained anxiety. In other words, “lighten up dude” !! Or as @Joe Riley pointed out, quit stirring a pot that is quite empty!
Sorry, Bobby. I wasn't raised around open-minded folks. The locals in Norco, Calif. aren't open-minded either and that's why they had such a difficult time accepting any kind of change the folks from Orange County wanted to do. Actually, I've never known any horse people that were open-minded and definitely not anyone I knew in professional rodeo. You and Yvonne can say all you want about how people should be open-minded, but there are plenty of folks in America who are not. Funny, but many folks that go to church aren't open-minded either. There are definitely things that don't believe in and stick with those feelings. It is has become very open-minded here in Jacksonville and that's just part of the reason we don't fit in here anymore. My wife listens to a Pastor, John Hagee, on her laptop on Sundays and he is definitely not open-minded and brags about his beliefs and non-beliefs. Bobby, why do you and Yvonne think that everyone should be like you???? Then again, why do we think everyone should be like us? Two very interesting questions. Now, what I don't want to do, and neither should you and Yvonne, is to keep going over and over this difference between you/her and us. There are folks that are open-minded and those that aren't and BOTH are fine.
Taking the OP more seriously, I think the key to being able to carry on a forum conversation is in treating one another as people who are worth talking to. I think I've made this analogy before, comparing relationships between neighbors in a large city to those living in a very small town. For the sake of clarity, I define a small town of one whose population is in the hundreds rather than thousands. Whatever the environment, we will come across people who we don't particularly like, or people who will do things that rub us the wrong way. In a big city, or even a medium-sized town, like the one I live in now, with just over a couple of thousand, it's possible and sometimes even easy to ignore a few people. But in a small town, that doesn't work so well because you are sure to come across them over and over, and they're probably related or friends with people who you aren't ignoring. So you have to find ways to get along. It's not necessary to be friends with everyone in a small town, but enemies can make your life difficult. In the course of being civil and tolerant toward one another, often you find things that you have in common, or maybe you come to understand the things that had initially rubbed you wrong. If that can't occur, at least you're talking to one another and that can add interest to your life. Healthy forums are like that. Often, administrators or moderators will (in my opinion) be far too quick to resolve problems on the basis of force, warning or banning anyone who offends someone else in the forum, in an attempt to keep the peace. But I think we lose some interesting people when we do that. We also lose some interesting conversations. These decisions are also prone to bias. When someone who I agree with says something offensive, that I happen to agree with, to someone whom I disagree with, it might not look offensive to me. I am guilty of this from time to time, given that it's a human thing, but I try to see beyond that. But if I were to act more quickly on complaints, I'd be more likely to act on my own biases, without intending to. Plus, when it's up to the administrators or moderators to keep the peace, that's the equivalent of calling the police every time a neighbor says or does something to offend you. The enmity worsens, and you lose the opportunity to work things out for yourselves. Clearly, there are limits, of course, and a 30-day timeout is sometimes helpful, but I would much rather these problems be worked out without having to mediate. To me, when a couple of forum members get into a spat and are able to work it out, that's better than if the spat hadn't occurred to begin with. Getting angry from time to time shouldn't carry a death penalty, as long as you can bring it under control. Within limits, it can add interest to the forum, which shouldn't be interpreted to suggest that I encourage it. Other than the occasional troll who comes here for the sole purpose of trying to ruin the forum, people tend not to be either all good or all bad (except for me, of course - I am all good), and even some of the bad can at least be interesting, so as long as we keep posting, we have a healthy forum.
I’m not trying to be catty with you man, but all good preachers, including John Hagee, love people to examine what they say, study and then accept it which means they like people to be open minded to what they are preaching! Closed minded people cannot be taught!! Preachers love to teach. Teachers love to teach and if the human being doesn’t have a brain which analyzes input and allows truth to be part of their mental arsenal of information, then their job is useless. John Hagee would have been dead broke long ago. I’m not saying that anyone should accept everything they hear, read, or see, but merely take some time to examine the available information and go from there. Good stuff in, bad stuff out. Now, before you have a hissy fit, do please look up the phrase and examine it and then let it sink in. Can you learn? Can you listen? Can you admit when you are wrong? This all lends to who will be and who will not be offended by simply reading and partaking in a forum. Oh yeah, contrary to what you have said, I do not want anyone at all to be like me. I like my individualism and like the idea of being one of a kind. No one is like me and trust me, I do not even want copycats.
I could be wrong, but I think the difficulty here is over the definition of an open mind. To many people, having an open mind means that you are open to anything. Nothing is necessarily wrong, and no one should ever be ostracized for the decisions that they make. Generally, when someone makes an appeal for someone to have an open mind, they are asking them to accept something that they might consider to be unacceptable. To others, an open mind might mean that one is open to hearing someone out, and to trying to understand them, even if, in the end, they may disagree.
That is exactly what I was trying to express in my first comment on this thread, @Ken Anderson . No two people are going to agree on every single thing, and there is no reason why we should . What I was trying to say was simply that I really enjoy conversations where each person can say what they think or believe and the other person listens to what they are saying and considers it, when there are logical reasons for the differing beliefs. As an example, I could say that I really like living here in Alabama, and don’t want to live in snow, and you might say that you really like living in Maine and enjoy having 4 distinct seasons. That doesn’t make either one of us right or wrong, or have to change what we think, or move somewhere else, it just means that we listen with an open mind to the other person’s reasons about something. This is a great way to learn new things and expand our thinking, by sharing ideas and thoughts about different topics.
Open-minded doesn't mean being open to anything/everything. It's knowing that you don't know all about something, being able to entertain a thought without accepting it (Aristotle). The opposite of rigid. Our own experiences have so much influence over how we view things, how we see others, how we treat others. Some people use being offended as a way of controlling others.
Well, I've done some very controversial threads on smoking, race, tattoos, gays/lesbians and I suppose a few other things that really got some people riled about me. It's like I shouldn't have an opinion on any of these things, and if I do, it had better be a positive one. On the smoking thread, I remember one lady replied to me saying, "do you have any idea how many friends you and your wife lose, because they are smokers?" Anyway, the next reply defended me by saying, "I think it should be up to him and his wife who they want to make friends with. As for me, I'd choose not to make friends with smokers as well." Of course, the lady didn't care that I said that my wife can't breathe around smokers and neither of us like the smell. Heck, I use to be a smoker, but quit when I met my wife ........cold turkey. I smoked very little, so it was easy for me to quit.