Is your first instinct to belittle and claim you are being censored?

Today I tried to engage in conversation with someone I respected in the steemit community. It was a post they made speaking about how they were no longer going to waste their time reasoning with people on the left. I responded from a stance of agreement yet also pointing out that it was a generalization to try to LABEL and lump all LEFTISTS together.

I was told to "GTFO it" and told I sounded like I was very young. Like I said, I respected this person from previous works of his. The first platitude in the initial response was "Exceptions prove the rule" I did quote that and ask HOW as it may sound like a nice platitude from a fortune cookie, but how does it prove the rule?

I was noticing that the inability to REASON with these LEFTISTs was the cornerstone of his post. I was actually trying to talk to him about this. I was not disagreeing with him and telling him he was wrong. I was basically trying to indicate the brush he is using to paint his intended targets (brush being a metaphor for label) is too large.

So he resorted to platitudes, telling me to get over it, implying I am young (thanks... will be 46 the weekend after Thanksgiving), and eventually indicating I am trying to soft censor him.

Soft censor? Is this is a way of saying that no one that disagrees with me should try to talk to me?

Am I wrong in my thoughts that this is likely some of the very same tactics that those he cannot reason with will use?

ACTION: Someone disagrees with me.
REACTION: Belittle and attempt to imply they are beneath me.

ACTION: Someone persists in trying to talk to me.
REACTION: Indicate they are trying to censor me.

If I was trying to censor anyone I'd be going to town with the DOWN VOTE. I have enough of a reputation it could impact some people. Yet I will only down vote plagiarism, spam, and abusive posts. I never got around to posting this.

Eventually he down voted my initial comment which grayed it out and hid it and essentially censored it unless people wish to show it.

So not only did I not censor the person. I was then censored by the person.

One thing I am seeing out there from the group he was aiming at is a lot of HYPOCRISY.

"If Donald Trump is elected his followers will riot" He is elected. What happens? The people making those claims riot instead.

I am hearing this term referred to as projection and the person I responded to I believe even used the term in his post about not being able to reason with leftists.

Then as far as I can see in my discussion with him he used the same tactics they do.

The final was implying I was soft censoring, and then down voting my initial response to essentially censor me. Projection.

I tried to tell him I only bothered talking to him because I cared about engaging with him. I don't bother responding to people I wish to censor. I do not agree with censorship.

I also don't believe in SOFT CENSORSHIP if it means someone replying to a post has the ability to censor your post. I had no such ability. I simply was not saying the words he wanted to hear. I guess he wanted an echo chamber. I'm not a good echo chamber.

I do not name names as that is not my goal. I posted this to show my frustration.

If any of you are angry with the way people are acting and you think you cannot reason with them. Did you try? Were you attacked, or were you approached with an open mind and civility? If you were attacked then yes perhaps you cannot reason with them. If you were approached with civility then you can have a discussion. You may find your own perspective changes, and you may find that theirs changes. It may not happen immediately or even in that conversation. The truth of the matter is we don't learn much from echo chambers. We learn the most by having civil discussions with people who disagree with us, for that is the way to be exposed to new ideas and point of views. That doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You are likely to find that you both could have been right about some things, wrong about others, and perhaps in some cases one person was right and the other was wrong. In my experience it is a little of both sides being right/wrong and seeking that compromise state. In some cases neither person was wrong, it just took civil discussion to understand the perspectives each side was viewing it from. It can appear people disagree when in fact they may not. They may simply be looking at something from a different angle/perspective/point of view.

Yet if your first instinct is to belittle and attack, then that is shaky ground. That is not a path to anywhere productive.

I managed to get my first comment down vote I believe in over 4 months of being on steemit.

He did respond that he was flagging me for "Logically self detonating word salad" and the quantity of my posts. I did respond quite a number of times. I told him that is a matter of perception. He can view it as a compliment that he said something engaging enough that it took multiple responses for me to get things out, or he can view it as a negative. Yet the quantity of responses someone gives you are something you get to decide if they are good or bad. I did say different things in each post. In fact, I felt the need to reply multiple times as he did have me thinking. So if your goal is ACTUALLY to reason with people then the fact they respond multiple times might be a good indicator you got them thinking. If instead your goal is not to REASON but imply that anyone that disagrees with you is irrational then yeah you might not welcome the multiple responses.

Steem On!