[milkisobel]

i shoud point the fact that's i'm in the worst country in the world concerning tolerance, a friend of mine was last week in north germany and she was extremely schock to see how people are so kind, tolerant and not aggressive, even in club, when every body is drunk there is a few fight, and men are not stalker etc...i really turn into a french hate...

[queenofnerds]

You are gorgeous anyways, don't get why people would be nasty

Screw the haters

[polliwog]

No!!! Don't screw them!!! We don't want them to multiply!!!

But seriously, there are people like that here, too. I know several "big" people who tell the same kind of stories, about complete strangers mocking them in public about their weight. It's not just the French...unless these are Americans of French descent.

[Jordan~]

It's kind of a Southern European/Northern European divide. The culture in Northern Europe is much more polite and reserved - people might think these things, but it's never appropriate to say them; in the South people are more impassioned and speak their minds openly. I guess it's a Germanic/Romance divide, too. Honestly, I can't stand how dispassionate, insincere and timorous people are in this country. The number of times you say "excuse me", "please" and "thank you" in the course of a two setence conversation with a stranger is a little ridiculous. It's like we're all terrified to discernibly exist. "Oh, I'm so sorry I've alerted you to my existence! I give my most grovelling, humble apologies for making you notice me! Please forgive me! Do you have a light for my cigarette? I am wretched, I am without a light! O, forgive me, I am wretched! Thank you, thank you kind sir, I am eternally in your debt! Never again will I trouble you with my wretchedness! I retreat from your sight a humbled and grateful man, O great one! Praise you, sir, praise you!" We have serious cultural self-esteem issues. But I guess the upshot of it is that people are polite to eachother. Not nice, necessarily, just polite. It'd be kind of liberating to be able to shout, "Hey, big nose, give me your lighter! Good, now piss off." "Fuck you." "Fuck you too."

[milkisobel]

what i know about america it's less rude than here. About the polite thing i discuss about this with my sis one week ago, we both work into this italian icecreamer and one person on two speak like that "vanilla, chocolate, strawberry" whithout hello, please, thank you etc...the lighter thing! how many times it's "hey have light?" euh, please? french are extremely rude, in every social state you go, artists or trader or college teacher aren't better than the poor ones...i'm really tired of this country, you can't go out dressed differently than the loafers/slim/navy tees/bangs/gerard darel bag whithout being bad watching...even in england you can be mocked but in the same time you can get out like a punk with no problem...and i'm leaving in Alsace, a quite preserved germanic area in France, that's why i hate to go in Paris...it's the worst place in world.

[Becca]

*edited in case of the one in 3490583094863098630 chance that anyone I know finds this place...

[Jordan~]

Training at home? Union, union, union!
No idea what job I could possibly tolerate. I think I'll either end up homeless, dead or a professor of anthropology, all by accident.
I could actually quite happily do something industrial, so long as it didn't involve me getting my arm sawn off if my concentration drifted. Or something where I just get to sit in a room in the middle of the night and mostly get left to my own devices, like a night porter or a night shift security guard at a municipal swimming pool or something. Maybe there'll be a nice revolution somewhere and I can go and do that. The Spanish Civil War's not still on, is it?

[milkisobel]

back to the shrink cabinet?
we're such a bunch of freaky psycho rigid guys!

[Riv]

[queenofnerds]

All teary tonight

[Riv]

[Becca]

*edited in case of the one in 3496094850694820968 chance that the person I'm bitching about finds this...

[Jordan~]

You're right, treating her any differently because you know she belongs to a certain organisation would make you just as bad as them. If you want to change people, there's only one good way to go about it: presenting them with concrete evidence that challenges their belief. Embody the reason and tolerance and open-mindedness in which you consider them to be lacking. If she says something absurd and hateful, challenge it, but not aggressively - put forward the alternative, argue for it civilly and calmly but with passion, somewhat as if you were attempting to create a lasting influence on a misguided child.
After all, she probably couldn't help that she ended up a member and she didn't choose to believe what she did. We're all just victims of circumstance, caught up in the ebb and flow of coincidence, our malleable minds bombarded by billions of external stimuli over which we have no control every day, their responses dictated by our genes. No one really believes they're evil, and people can't help being wrong.

[Weirdelves]

[Becca]

See, the problem is, I am continually seeing examples of people being presented with concrete evidence that challenges their belief and they find some excuse to fight it. Someone just told me about this human tendency, and I'm not sure if there's an actual name for it...but it's when someone believes something so firmly they will find any so-called "evidence" to support their belief. Even something completely irrelevant. They will find a way to spin it and mold it so that it argues their point. I'm sure we have all witnessed this happening.
But I don't really know how to argue the religion stuff. I am nonreligious and I don't know the bible well enough to point out all the contradictions specifically, I just know they are there. But yeah. I am not a good arguer. I get too emotional and angered and I can't present my points well.

[Jordan~]

From her point of view, though, she has incontrovertible proof in the form of a book written by God, who, by definition, knows everything, and although it's the best possible proof anyone could ever had, you just blindly, stubbornly refuse to believe a word of it, probably because your brain is full of demons or you weren't baptised or something.
There isn't all that much to argument, really. A good grasp of logic - just look up formal and informal fallacies on Wikipedia (at the level of discussion I imagine she's capable of, informal fallacies are probably going to be more useful, since I don't think you'll get into the nuances of the logical structure of eachother's arguments) - and something like the Socratic method are all you really need. Ask questions. When she says something that you disagree with ("Katy Perry's going to hell for turning children into lesbians") ask "Why?" or "How do you know that?", and before long you'll have gotten to the founding principle on which all her beliefs are based. It's that that you need to make her question. "The Bible tells me so." "And?" "The Bible was written by God." "How do you know that?" "It says in the Bible." "What if the Bible wasn't written by God, and the person who wrote it just said that it was?" "I have faith that it was." "What's your faith based on?" etc. etc.; you'll know you're doing a good job if she has to ask her pastor about it, because it means you're sewing seeds of doubt to the extent that she has to obtain verification of her beliefs from what she considers to be a higher authority.
Don't argue from a hostile position, either, by which I mean you won't get anywhere if from the outset you're obviously The Enemy. Don't begin an argument with, "Well, I'm an atheist and I think religion is stupid!" or anything like that, since it'll just provoke her into putting up her defenses. Give away as little as possible. Again, asking questions is probably the best tactic - the kinds of questions she'd benefit from asking herself.

[Becca]

What's that they call it where you think of what you should have said like 10 hrs later?
I just don't think I am good at these kinds of debates and not getting personally invested. I wish I could be like Jon Stewart or Colbert. They'll have debates with people who totally disagree with them and they'll stay so calm and rational. Like I said, just hearing her say that one thing almost literally made my blood boil. I can't imagine how heated I would get if I even attempted a debate. I really wish I was able to not become so automatically defensive, but it's just how I've always been and why I avoid confrontation. I can barely handle an argument on the internet, let alone real life. And I hate it because there's so many things I need to say.

[Ann]

I attempt to do that sort of arguing/questioning but I just find more and more that it does nothing. People either don't answer the questions, but believe they have, or get super pissed off and start yelling at me about something I never said (e.g., in my philosophy class, a girl kept talking about how she does good just because it's good and not for any benefit, and so when I asked her how she defines "good" she got really angry at me and told me I need to just accept that not everyone agrees with me. I hadn't even stated an opinion, just asked the question.). And then go back to believing what they first believed. It's frustrating.

[doublewuzzy]

I have a lot to catch up on in this thread, but BECCA! I know what you mean about music merchandising seeming as though it would be related to your field - I discovered the same thing about music education. You were a performance major too, right? I never understood why some people were so adamantly against majoring in music ed as well (I did both), but after teaching for a year I realized that loving playing and wanting to teach are totally NOT the same sides of music. You have to be a very... specific sort of person to be okay with teaching music in a public school, and it makes sense how that type of person is certainly not of the same mindset as someone who wants to perform for a living. MUSIC IS WEIRD.

What do you think you'll go back to school for?

As far as that other girl is concerned, perhaps just be lukewarm towards her - civil, but not necessarily friendly. You can tolerate her without liking her and keep the relationship purely professional.

[Becca]

Yeah, I majored in performance, but I don't have a lot of interest in playing oboe anymore. Unless it adds something to my own songs.
I guess a lot of people think working in a music store with all these guitars around would be awesome, but it's not like I get to sit around and play them. Sometimes I demonstrate, which would be fun if I didn't feel so awkward. Plus I have to play stupid shit that people want to hear like "Sweet Home Alabama," when really I'd rather bust out some JNew.
I'm thinking about going back to school in either graphic design or web design. I thought about programming or some other computer-y thing, but I think that might be too technical/boring for me. I want something I can do from anywhere, anytime so it'd more easily fit around a musical "career." Also, hopefully, minimal interaction with humans.