if i may step out so far from the crowd as to point this out...

it was very nice to find a community such as urban75. there are many open minded, like minded people here. i am sure the majority reading this feel something like this.

so there has been much delight in talking about cool politics, drugs, and other mutual interests.
all participants recognise that this was a great thing the community have. and it has been said so on here, many times. this is fine, as it is true.

the problem comes in indentifying ourselves as permanently open minded people. this is not so.

being open minded needs to be an ongoing task, and commitment.

i have been posting on here a couple of years. i have had a number of offline conversations with other long time posters here who all independently are noticing how closed minded the posting and conversation has become on the whole. closed minded in a very "we're so open minded, we're great, our opinions are right" way

please don't turn into the kind of people that you all have all disliked so much, and made slapping pages out of.

much love

porshiebo

can i be in your secret offline cool cats club too?

j/k

i know where you're coming from - love it myself. no threads or names mentioned.... the hypocrisy si rife in places

You're wrong.

Most notciable are the chav threads, where people blindey defend them as being working class heroes and others slag them off.

then turn into:

I AM MORE WORKING CLASS THAN YOU ARE
NO YOU'RE NOT, I HAD FREE SCHOOL DINNERS
MIDDLE CLASS BASTARD

and on and on and on and ariston

How many of the messages you're thinking of are responses to posters who've come here either to propagandise their own very fixed opinions, or merely to disrupt that open-minded debate you hanker after?

I think that's a good point you're making porshiebo. I don't want to use the word 'liberal' as it means you have to follow a fairly specific definition, but there has definitely been some question, particularly recently with the war and Michael Moore, over the ideals of a liberal. I read an interesting article just after the elections in America by a conservative. It's called 'Why You Lost' It's not all gravy, but it makes some very valid points, especially that liberals have 'betrayed their own message'. Liberals, by definition, are accepting and loving of all peoples, but the demonisation of George Bush has been pretty bad. I dunno, perhaps its more justified with a slimy piece o' shit like Dubya, but true liberal ideals might suggest otherwise.

Open mindedness is fine, as long as its applied faithfully and not used as a badge of honour.

as billy corgan said..... freedom aint what it used to be, it used to be so free.

kerouac used to walk these roads

Is it too early to post the standard catty response "be careful you're not so open-minded your brains fall out"?

Which is a serious point. While I would readily concede that I can't prove Marilyn Monroe wasn't kidnapped by aliens who left the corpse of a conveniently dead lookalike in her place... my mind is only a teensy-weensy bit open on this question

Bah. I bet I can believe far more ridiculous stuff than any other U75er. Before breakfast, too. That means I'm open-minded you see.

Go on, challenge me.

i'm so open minded i had a revolving door installed in my skull


but it got stuck and now i'm a reactionary conservative

please won't somebody think of the children

Now you've said that, we're going to hold you to the Red Queen standard: six impossible things. But in this day and age we're going to want worked proofs and citations

1. 1 + 1 = 3
2. G W Bush is a stunt by the Yes Men that got out of hand
3. editor is teetotal
4. you can't get pregnant if you do it standing up
5. building a gated yuppery* on the site of Cool Tan II would be a Good Thing
6. Michael Howard is kewl

I think that's most of the major fora covered....

* c.f. piggery

I often do six impossible things in the morning, then round it off with breakfast at Milliways.

10/10

Oh, come on, that's too easy.

1. 1=0 (as has been regularly proved) therefore 2=1, therefore 1+1 = 1+2 = 3
2. Surely this one is obvious, he can't really exist.
3. All bar staff in Brixton have been instructed to serve him non-alcoholic Stella under all circumstances, I know this for a fact.
4. I've never got pregnant doing it standing up therefore neither can anyone else.
5. Oh yes. Fucking hippies. Get rid of them.
6. um... er... I can manage this one... hold on... urgh...

You jest surely! How than this chirpy fellow not be cool!

I think the word open-minded is crap, as it implies thet you're an ignorant stick-in-the-mud if you don't give equal treatment to unequal arguments. It's like scientific reporting in the media - in the interests of "fairness and balance" they'll give the one nutball that chooses to contradict the rest of science just as much airtime as the consensus view. For example, the debate about global warming in the media tends to be "is it happening or not?" whereas with the exclusion of a few oddballs and the oil industry, the scientific debate is really "how bad is it?".

I tend to give soviet style communism pretty short shrift, as in my eyes there are major, major flaws that were demonstrated in practice by the soviet states and are yet to be addressed in any sensible way. I'll happily discuss more progressive schools of communism and socialism, but don't think there's any point in discussing with stalwart old guard communists (naming no names) - they're not going to accept any of my views, and I've heard all of theirs a million times before. They refuse to address the problems I see in their theory, yet I am the one dubbed "closed-minded" for refusing to constantly re-evaluate and give consideration the same ideas whenever they are presented in a debate, irrespective of the fact that I have already considered and rejected those ideas based on a logical or factual fallacy.

I prefer to use the term "of a flexible view point" or something to state that while one is willing to update their beliefs given solid evidence and a logical enough hypothesis and engage in debate where debate serves a purpose, one is unwilling to waste time and energy on crackpot theories and illogical conclusions or be expected to subscribe to the nonsense that "everyone's opinions are equally valid" when any sane person unrestrained by liberal slogans would agree that your opinion is only as valid as the logic that brought you to that opinion. I'm sick of this myth that an opinion is some mystical unit of thought that, unlike all other bits of knowledge, cannot be proven to be incorrect (or at the very least extraordinarily improbable).

i just spent five hours argueing/debating with my mate.

i come from australia and when i got to england/britain/united kingdom (different thread?) i was amazed that such a strong class system exists. He insists that there is no class system in ... england... What says the board?

Perhaps I am misinterpreting the point of this thread, but I don't equate open-mindedness with not having a point of view.

For example, I think many in the world were open-minded to the possibility of Iraq possessing WMDs until it was proven otherwise. However, it doesn't follow that the many who eventually recognised that Iraq did not possess WMD made them close-minded. It simply made them informed.

A more personal example: I am open-minded to all religions. Perhaps this has to do with not being Christened. Perhaps it has to do with my natural curiosity about pretty much everything. I'm not certain and it doesn't really matter. As a child, a family next door were Jehovah's Witnesses. Unbeknownst to my parents, I attended weekly religious instruction to find out a little bit about it. I recall vividly the teaching (and this was the early 70s) that within a few years, the world would come to an end. It didn't. During the 80s I remember another Jehovah's Witness saying the exact same thing. I'm still waiting. However, this revelation (no pun intended) has not closed my mind to other religions. To be honest, it hasn't closed my mind to the religion of the Jehovah's Witness either.

I guess it's all about perception. I perceive open-mindedness as respecting and listening to other points of view. It might come as a surprise (or not) but I respect politically conservative points of view. As just one example, I respect the pro-life position. This doesn't mean I agree with it.

But as I said, I may very well have misinterpreted the thread.

I'm right.
You are therefore all wrong.
End of.

There is no real thing as 'absolute' open mindness, everyone has an opinion of sorts. My view on Iraq was 1. I don't know if they had/have weapons of mass destruction at the time Bush/Blair decided to go on their little adventure. I disagreed with the decision to go to war for various reasons the first one being that it would grind into an absolute mess, the moral aspect is debatable becasue their are some who could argue that by not going to war and removing someone evil like Saddam Hussein is immoral. The war in Iraq for me is a pratical issue. It is a mess as I suggested at the time.

I agree with Julie in this respect on her view on open mindness , should be about the ability to listen to others POV, on some of these threads it degenerates into ignoramus abuse as opposed to healthy debate.

The pro-life on abortion I covered on the Feminists for life thread. this is the perfect example of what Julie and the original posting on this thread is highlighting. Some of those arguing pro-choice will have no other argument
even to some of my suggestions on 'readjusting' the abortion laws to suit advances made in medical treatment for very premature babies and to curtail the huge leap in multiple abortions. I got jumped upon in some instances (What right do i have on saying what a woman does with her body etc etc) and personally abused over how I treat my wife and in one instance on this forum called an 'unfit parent' which i took great exception at. Ignorant.

I have been on here only two weeks. My 'general' impression of U75 is as follows

1. It is predominantly left wing no other views centre/right are tolerated by some.
2. There are levels of personal abuse that are not acceptable. If you were in a pub and spoke as some do, you would get a glass in the face. The ability to eventually 'beg to differ' is lost by some due to the 'safety' of their VDU Screen.
3. It would appear even the moderators share some of this mantra and instead of fairly umpiring, they let their own political viewpoint interfere in how they handle forum posting. That's a big let down. This more than anything will turn me off this site and may leave me to float on somewhere else.

Other than that U75 would be a great site for genuine lively debate and great entertainment with some hilarious and comic postings that make even an old grump like me smile....

Just some thoughts...(And don't turn this into an abortion debate!)

Class system?....we are an argumentive bunch of aspirationalists....even the lefties....But you lot are too, you just don' have a monarchy...oh shit forgot you do ...ours!'

Batboy - in all seriousness you may be happier somewhere like Femail. The 'abuse' is something that is heavily moderated. However, having been a member of both communities I have to say that the one one with heavy moderation is by far the most aggressive. The 'abuse' may be open here but people move on from it almost instantly and you can see users fighting vociferously on one thread whilst being supportive/jokey to each other on another.

Now I know why there's 'something of the night' about Howard. A vampire bat is chewing at his neck!!!

Really? How many of these 'long time posters' are in your private chat club and where do you meet?

And when were you elected their spokesperson?