Lawrence,
If you look at the placement of inverted commas, you'll see that much
of what you're disagreeing with is me, not Duncan, and is not about
Selerie (whom I've never had occasion to read) but about what happens
when my intolerance for New Age stuff bumps into other people's
tolerance for it.
I don't think Duncan's characterising Selerie as an addle-pate himself
- best to look at the article itself, if that notion is bothersome:
http://www.pinko.org/22.html. One of the things Duncan says fairly
early on is that Selerie seems to value a particular kind of
tolerance, as respectful recognition of the importance - to them - of
other people's "personal feelings and perceptions": a reluctance to
refuse testimony, not because one is incapable of critical thought but
because one has other values too, such as not wanting to divest the
other person's point of view of validity. Duncan seems to find that an
appealing trait, a manifestation of kindness. His approval of that
attitude makes me worry that I am a bad person. Perhaps the person who
says that he is "refining arguments" and making "urbane and witty
deflationary gestures" just is what the other person feels him to be:
a truculent and unsympathetic bore.
Dominic
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