Re: Post re: my last controversial post and relationships

I can kinda see where you are going with this, but I think it's a bit more complicated and multi-layered.

I believe what you are talking about is "passion" as opposed to "mean". I suppose some people could appear to be mean, when they are just defending their view, from a sense of purpose and passion.

For the vast majority of people that come to these Support Forums , I think this is true.

How do we tell if someone is just being mean, or if they are passionate?

Let's look at a typically abused person. What defines the abuser? Demoralization of the individual, that is the strictest interpetation of the intent. So, intent is the key....does the post serve to define, support and argue their passion? Does the post serve to simply make the other individual feel bad about who they are, what they think, etc.?

It's interesting when people start to argue an idea, and then attack the individual. You can see the change from one post to the next. Sometimes it's very rapid, so it makes the entire thread useless, when it could have been constructive. I myself have fallen into this pit. We humans are fragile and extremely complicated!! In other words, it's almost always gray, rarely black and white.

And then there are just mean people. Mean people suck.

Molly Tweet