o sung wu,

That’s a very presumptuous and bigoted attempt at an insult.

<<...protecting your own is quite as expected>>

That’s not an insult nowadays, by the way. Besides, I have a wife and kids and am heterosexual.

<<...you'd be considered a real joke if you exhibited this superiority attitude among a bunch of coppers>>

As is the case with phanto, your perceptions of me are all in your head, and for the reasons I mentioned earlier regarding cognitive dissonance.

But since we’re rating each other, you wouldn’t make it into the service nowadays. Your emotional intelligence suggests that you’d score way too high in neuroticism, and you are unable to cope with stress. Your education levels are also too low, which may somewhat explain why being a cop had the effect on you that it has had. Police with higher education cope with stress better, are more tolerant, have better communication skills, and are less likely to need to use force (http://goo.gl/Hb817K).

<<I've told you before, a framed diploma in criminology, has never caught a crook ?>>

Actually, it has. Anyway, if criminologists had it all so wrong (as you often imply), then why don’t all the former/retired-cop PhD’s correct the rest of them? Police would be, and were, less effective without criminology.

<<For once in your life; listen.>>

I do. If you can point to one instance where I haven’t listened, then I will humbly apologise and seek to correct my ways. But the failed arguments of yourself and others are not indicative one way or the other of my ability listen.

--

DreamOn,

Thanks for the kind words. I find it fascinating to observe the different ways in which people will react to maintain a belief that they cannot rationally justify, and it almost invariably involves attacking the other person in some way. How people can so desperately want to hang on to such negative beliefs is beyond me. It requires so much more energy. You’d think it would be a relief to find that you no longer have to indiscriminately feel contempt for an entire demographic.

The "Marriage Equality" people know that the plebiscite could go against them so they are determined to stop it at all costs. How undemocratic of them. How dare they? Most of us want Marriage to stay as it is and if anyone wants to change something so fundamental the people should have a say.

phanto,

The point in me pretending to mistake you for having defended me was to highlight a gaping blind spot in your vision. You only interpret the motives of those with whom you disagree in the most negative possible light, just as you only want to keep the forum clean of people with supposedly insincere intentions when they disagree with you. Yet all the while, most of what you insinuated could actually have been more accurately applied to someone else here. However, you only interpreted my actions in such a way because…

“When someone exposes our beliefs as baseless and fundamentally flawed, our first reaction is usually to interpret the feelings of discomfort that such a revelation produces as being the result of a problem inherent with the person that exposed the fact. It’s a common method of dealing with cognitive dissonance.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18469#328255)

Not one of your offensive observations were in the slightest bit accurate. I do what I do because I am staunchly against bigotry, whether it be racism or homophobia, and because I care about the truth. What I do only feels like “lecturing” and “belittling” to you because, by interpreting it that way, you don’t have to deal with the stress of holding an irrational prejudice.

It is interesting, though, to watch you attempt to rationalise what’s been happening and explain away the irrationality of your beliefs with disparaging comments and unfounded accusations (as my definitions in our last discussion demonstrated (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18439#327733)) and a pseudo-wisdom that appeals to a New Age style of empty spiritual hokum that attempts to bypass rational thought.

Your homophobia is like a religion to you. Throughout history, gods have retreated to increasingly inaccessible regions as our ability to explore improved. First it was mountain tops, then the sky, then the stars, now it’s beyond space and time. You’re doing the same with a rational explanation against same-sex marriage. At first you tried arguing that homosexuality is not “reasonable”, now you insist that the answer against same-sex marriage lies beyond facts and in some mystical realm of pseudo-wisdom discoverable only through notoriously-unreliable emotions.

A

Your levels of superiority are truly breathtaking A.J. Philips ! You strut about this Forum like an arrogant cock-sparrow lauding over everybody with your peceived immense knowledge about this 'n that without ever considering you may well be wrong. Actually it was my military service (including 12 months, Vietnam), and my thirty two years in the coppers, reminded me of one very important lesson, illustrated by an old Vietnamese proverb:-

'I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand'.

Sure, I've had very little formal education, no diplomas in which to proudly display, and always feel wholly uncomfortable whenever I have a need to attend a job at some University.

But when it comes to embracing stress; a key indicator of my alleged, 'neuroticism', you claim I would score way too high in terms of my neurotic sensitivity and ability to cope with stress ? And for this reason I wouldn't be accepted as a police recruit ? "...I do and I understand..." - I observed and learnt from the best, A J Philips.

Today you're probably right. At the risk of being identified as a whinger, when many of us came home, we copped heaps from many of the population. As a consequence of this, any 'baggage' we did bring home, was augmented exponentially, by a very hostile, unsympathetic and unwelcoming public.

My time in the coppers, regardless of the emotionally 'baggage' and neuroses, you claim I needed to bear, I got through those three decades plus relatively unscathed I would say ! And you A J PHILLIPS, what emotional tests and stress, have you've confronted and had to bear, in your years at University ? I really couldn't imagine, though traversing a darkened campus is stressful ?

My delay was caused by a 'server problem' ?

o sung wu,

I think you'll find that my “levels of superiority” are directly proportionate to your levels of insecurity. If you know what I mean.

<<You strut about this Forum like an arrogant cock-sparrow lauding over everybody with your perceived immense knowledge about this 'n that without ever considering you may well be wrong.>>

Yes, I bet it feels that way to you. I have been shown to be wrong on these forums before and admitted to it when it happened, instead of redirecting attention to the people who pointed it out and making it about them. In fact, I went a step further that that even. I've have made the conscious effort not to repeat those claims, and that's more than I could say for most here on OLO.

Don't feel too bad about your levels of education either. I only point them out because you yourself make a big deal about them, and I (perhaps childishly) give back as good as I get. I would have preferred to keep it polite.

My apparent hubris is a direct response to the attacks and uncalled-for insults that you hurl. For what it's worth, I get no satisfaction from this type back and forth with you like I do with some of OLO’s real imbeciles.