An Editorial Announcement

[percival]

sff_corgi, you're the best.

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To all those who replied to my last post: I don't have the time at the moment to reply to all of you. I will get there eventually, but it may take a week, because I am very busy at the moment. A quick thank you to those who took the time to argue with me, both in favour of and against the position I presented.

Just to clarify: I follow a certain spiritual path, and as a consequence, I try to follow certain ethical guidelines. If I share the guidelines that I have adopted for myself in this LiveJournal, then this does not mean that all dissenters are wrong, evil, nuts, or on the way to hell, that I'm trying to convert you to my way of thinking or that I would like to silence all dissenters. Far from it!

If you disagree with my ethics, please say so, and tell me why, and what leads you to come to a different conclusion than me. I want to understand why people disagree. I'm not interested in labelling anybody, or judging anybody, because that never does a person justice.

I also don't want to convert anybody to the path I follow - in fact, I strongly believe that every person needs to find their own spiritual / ethical path. (Here, I disagree with most of the evangelical Christians on my Friends list, who see Jesus as The One True Way. But the point is, folks, that even though we disagree, I respect their opinion and their religion, and they respect mine.) I do reserve a right to my own opinion, though ;)

If I seem condescending at times - sorry, don't mean to! If I appear not to have researched what I say - well, I don't like to provide my LJ entries with extensive footnotes, but be assured that I do think before forming an opinion and that, having a Ph.D., I know how to do my research, both in the humanities and in the sciences.

Finally, venturing to post something about my personal ethics does not mean that I am perfect, or that I follow those ethics to the letter. On the contrary, I'm far from perfect, but I find it's good to have an idea of the person I would like to be.

Comments

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

Note: I'm thoroughly sex-positive, porn-positive, and a strong advocate for free speech.

Yet I think that your comment here was misplaced and unfair. You SEEM to be suggesting that some pieces of work should be immune to criticism- or that any questioning of some modes of consumption must intrinsically be "conservative"- or that to criticise a work is to call for its suppression.

Such suggestion reeks of misunderstanding.


I look forward to discourse where both sides do their best to understand and then politely respond to the perspective of the other, instead of offering yet another knee-jerk response that seems more rooted in historical offenses rather than in the words of the current conversation.

I know that people have called for censorship of certain works in the past. Move on. That's not what is happening here, and you pollute the conversation and dicredit yourself by imputing such ideas to the original poster.