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--- friend [2024/01/04 21:33] – created ultracomfy
+++ friend [2025/04/09 20:12] (current) – ultracomfy
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+~~Title:Friend~~
 <fs xx-large>Friend</fs> is the word used to describe a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.
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 Now, the debate the two users were having was very political and would usually be very emotionally charged. It kind of was, but it //worked// and served as a nice brain exercise in debating, actually a nice experience. So, the question already took me by surprise because I would have said "yeah, why not", but I immediately had to remind myself that there //are// limits to how far I don't care. Specifically, what I eventually landed on was //openness//. It is normal for people to be wrong and even, accidentally or through being misguided, have hateful positions towards others. I had and continue to have some positions on things that are probably motivated by hate/underlying insecurity/being fragile, just generally a flawed human being - an experience, I will assume, will be familiar to most. I don't blame or don't respect people //for// being wrong. Odds are that they are being wrong in good faith, and at that point you it even gets really hard to blame them for hurting anyone because of their wrongness. However, what's important is //openness//, the willingness to reflect and reconsider one's standpoint, to accept valid arguments and to change one's position as new information disproves your old ones. It's essentially what we do in science.
-Now, this doesn't mean something like "you better let me change your mind or we won't be friends". Some people are more or less resistant to having their minds changed and some people are beyond hope. Also, I might be really bad at changing people's minds. It gets really difficult here and the metric of "I can be your friend despite your toxic attitudes as long as you are open" gets very hard to sufficiently apply, especially when they //do// hurt people because of it. This is why I will always consider whether a person would actually act on their attitudes - one might hate jews, but it's something else to hate jews quietly or to go out of one's way to hurt jews. One should be aware of how one's behavior affects other people, and when you know that your behavior is hurting others and it's motivated purely ideologically then you should probably stop. That's how I handle it, and if my potential "friend" can do that as well then that's got a lot going for them.
+Now, this doesn't mean something like "you better let me change your mind or we won't be friends". Some people are more or less resistant to having their minds changed and some people are beyond hope. Also, I might be really bad at changing people's minds. It gets really difficult here and the metric of "I can be your friend despite your toxic attitudes as long as you are open" gets very hard to sufficiently apply, especially when they //do// hurt people because of it. This is why I will always consider whether a person would actually act on their attitudes - one might hate jews, but it's something else to hate jews quietly but refuse to openly hurt them because you know you're being hateful, or to go out of one's way to hurt jews. One should be aware of how one's behavior affects other people, and when you know that your behavior is hurting others and it's motivated purely ideologically then you should probably stop. That's how I handle it, and if my potential "friend" can do that as well then that's got a lot going for them.