This is also a good life tactic – if you accept that other people aren’t idiots, you’ll learn plenty from them. You don’t have to agree with everything they say – but that doesn’t mean they don’t have valid reasons for saying it.

I agree with you though – I think “moron” is in the eye of the beholder.

What do you think?

It is. Two people could probably be thinking that the other is such a moron and they’re not. Or it could be their definition of it. “To each his own” like most people say, I guess.

What should never be tolerated is abuse from customers/visitors/whomever. That is really the only thing I consider “moronic”.

On the other hand, deflecting an angry customer’s negative energy instead of reflecting it back to them typically leads to level-headed conversations.

And I have to agree with your last sentiment – for both of us.

Phil,
But aren’t spammers basically morons?

Olivier,
So true. It takes effort to expand your mind to meet a different perspective on things. Sometimes those perspectives can be enlightening, no?

Home Recording,
I haven’t heard of Edward Bono. Definitely going to check him out.

I love the way you broke down communicate – commune – i – cate. Lovely way to think about it.

Tolerance, or even better, caring gets us so much farther, don’t you think?

It is being non judgmental that enables a dialogue, a word that I prefer to conversation.

I am a great fan of Edward D Bono and he is six hats of thinking. Let me give a summary here which I think will get us to where you would like this topic to lead to:

Under the white hat, everyone is looking for facts, information, what we have, what we need, what questions have we asked, how do we get the information.
Red hat: permission to put forward your emotions, your intuition, without having to justify or explain it.
Black hat is critical: what is wrong, the risks, the downside, why it may not work.
The yellow hat: values, benefits.
The green hat: creative, new ideas, possibilities, alternatives and so on.
The blue hat is the organizing hat: summary, outcome.

Whether it is on a one to one or in a group discussion, ideally speaking this route will enable us to be productive. Unfortunately, if even one of the participants is say, highly opinionated, and refuses to follow the method, we can end up with egg on our collective face. The rest of the group then will indeed be very justified in calling that individual a moron, though in his or her opinion the rest will be!

If we can train ourselves, or, more to the point, train the opinionated person/s whether to blog or to just converse with one another, in this structured manner, we can communicate. That word, is a beautiful one – commune-i-cate. No one ends up being a moron.

Perhaps this also answers David, Mi and Olivier to some extent.

Olivier.

I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t had any for a while. And the ones I did have were more like hit-and-run trolls or Asperger types who just didn’t get it.

So if they count, then yes, I’ve had morons read my blog (albeit not particularly carefully).

Of course, the greatest concentration of morons out there are all the people *not* reading my blog. I mean, what’s up with that?