Hey there UNRAVEL...

Please settle down, you'll do yourself an injury if you allow such a light hearted venue like 'The Forum', to unnerve you. After all the Forum & OLO are supposed to be positive, and relatively beneficial outlets for us all, providing us with some fun and good humour. To do otherwise is counterproductive to the real intent, of establishing such avenues and means of personal expression.

You tell us '...you don't like to hide behind this pretentious civility. I've got this thing of keeping it real...' or similar language. In other words you're trying to tell us all you're a pragmatists? Well there nothing wrong with that. You further state inter alia, '...nothing better than having you lot parading your bias and hypocrisy for all to see...'? I must be very candid with you young fella I haven't got the foggiest notion of what you're talking about? What bias & what hypocrisy, are you inferring?

Another puzzling statement from you UNRAVEL? You say '...Please feel free to become the self -appointed head warder of the civility commissars...'? OK my friend, you're beginning to lose me now, I have no idea what it is that's germane to you specific complaint(s)? Best we leave it here, thus allowing you the time to perhaps, have a breather, and consolidate your thoughts and arguments; and having done so, relaunch your position a little later when you're feeling more refreshed and alert to what's going on around you, OK. Take care UNRAVEL.

O Sung Wu-

I find that those that go to university tend to be able to separate the "ideas" from the "owner of the idea" because that's what university rightly or wrongly train them to do. Jungian theory would classify this archetype as "Sagely Non-attachment" I guess. Though that doesn't mean that everyone on OLO is a one dimensional Steinbeck caricature.

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea. Carl von Clausewitz

I found the following ...

http://student.unsw.edu.au/discussion-skills

How do we argue at university?

The everyday meaning of the term argument suggests a fight: an aggressive conflict or confrontation between adversaries, where one tries to dominate the other in order to 'win'. At university this kind of arguing is not appropriate. The aim of academic argument is to explore a question, a proposition or an area of knowledge and achieve reasoned mutual understanding. It is not important who 'wins'—what matters most is the quality of the argument itself. When you engage in academic argument in your tutorial discussions, you are developing your ideas, advancing and clarifying your knowledge and learning to think critically.

Jayb on other thread recently mentioned Kierkegaard the father of existentialism. This lead me to read on the nature of reality for those of existentialist (be true to your nature- truth is subjective), rationalist (truth is axiomatic), and empiricist (truth is empirical) persuasions. It's interesting when commenters talk about truth- especially in complex circumstances. But Identity politics have reframed much of the debate in the public sphere and now seem to claim authority over social pedagogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_pedagogy

…..what matters most is the quality of the argument itself. When you engage in academic argument in your tutorial discussions, you are developing your ideas, advancing and clarifying your knowledge and learning to think critically.....

And what quality you displayed Bad Dog – you brought nothing of relevance to the table. You retarded the discussion with your simplistic one-eyed US perspective of what had already been stated to be a complex problem. You completely failed to appreciate the obvious similarities between the drugs moving north and the guns moving south. You dismissed references as biased yet provided zero references to either justify or advance your claims. You dragged in the Golden Triangle, a different drug network in a different region that generated different impacts, for an insipid statement on the power of the drug industry. All this clarified was how little you know and that you have a long way to go to think critically.

Simply repeating the same old mistakes will achieve nothing in this region. If you'd paid attention to the references and thought critically, you would understand that Trump is repeating the same old mistakes. If you had understood that instead of being blinded by your prejudices, then further references would have informed you of different approaches to address the situation.

Still, given the research you are doing on education skills and understanding your psyche, I'm sure you can improve. But then again what would I know, I'm just an uneducated pleb.

Dear Canem Malum,

Thank you for your last two posts. I have learned from them.

G'day there CANEM MALUM...

Actually my friend, I left school in 1955 after attaining my NSW Intermediate Certificate. While it's true I've undertaken several specialised Criminal Law Courses at Uni, especially designed for police, they no more confer a Degree than working at McDonalds. Moreover their breadth of study is very narrow, dealing specifically with the criminal law.

Another specialised course I attended, again structured and designed for police, was a Investigator's Course for detectives; centred around crimes involving cross border fraud. Believe it or not, taught by civilian tutors, rather than coppers - to say they knew and understood their material, would be an understatement, they were totally across their subject altogether.

So you see C M I've not undertaken any academic degree courses at UNI, so I'm not really qualified to pass comment on the virtues or otherwise of higher academic study similar to that undertaken at University. Thank you CANEM MALUM for your interesting contribution. I do appreciate it.