Add new comment

"why do people make such a big deal out of people being defensive? Sometimes you have to, especially when someone is spewing accusations at you."

a good question indeed. defensiveness can take on many flavors, from purely physical to purely mental. if one needs to defend themselves, then they are (should be?) defensive, in some way. i guess my question comes when someone is defensive about ideas that they hold. it says something about how attached they are to - and the extent to which they define themselves through - those ideas. which to me, makes them a textbook dogmatist. not very interesting to me.

when someone attacks my anti-civ perspective, i don't feel personally attacked, and i surely don't feel defensive. i feel compelled to make sure we are both clear on where our differences are, and once that is clarified, if we disagree, we disagree. nothing about that requires defensiveness, imo. unless one feels like their "identity" is being challenged or attacked. and that leads to the question of identity, which is for another time.