Re: Good Dog Bad Dog classic album

[johnd at antioch-college_edu]

Gina,


If there is no difference between being judgemental and having a criticism,
then, ummm, I call pot-kettle-black on this statement: 

> 
> I think this kind of judgmentalism is worse than the consumerism, etc. being
> bashed.  Does love leave room for this kind of arrogance?

Oh, also and on this one: 

> 
> Are we promoting "community" when we rob someone of the dignity of their
> experience?

Taking someone seriously when they say stuff robs them of their dignity? It's
not like this was "Sharing Time" in some prayer group - this was a piece of
writing piblished in a public forum - the place where, last time I checked,
debate happens. 

Oh, and while we're at it, this whole paragraph:
 
> I don't mean to sound harsh, but I feel strongly about this, and felt
> compelled to respond.  "We all know in part..." and only in part.  We need
> to cooperate, not criticize, toward a fuller knowledge of Truth, don't you
> think?
> 

No, I don't. Why should I cooperate with someone whose goals and methods I think
are wrong (or at least ill-concieved) ? 
There is a difference between being judgemental and being critical. IMHO, when I
 express a criticism of written content in a publicly offered review, that's not
judgementalism. I'm paticipating in "the marketplace of ideas" - challenging
wehat I see as bad ideas, in this case. I never said the author was a *bad
person* - I called into question the overall message of the site in general and
the specific issues I had with the *content of the review*. Good people can have
 bad/wrong opinions. 

However, for you to turn that into name calling and blaming *is* judgemental, I
think.

It would help, too, I think, if you would read carefully before firing off a
response. My beef was not with the author's personal experience, but with her
reviewing methods. I never said one word about the narrative bits of her review
- my two critcisms were with her facile method of evaluation (it has a lot of
references to the Bible so it must be okay) and the shallowness of her analysis
(NOT her experience - there's a difference.) Your whole opening paragraph was
responding to stuff I never said.
When you write a review, you make claims about the art in question. If she was
writing a personal essay about her epiphanous experience listening to GDBD,
that'd be fine- but she wasn't writing that kind of article- she was making
claims about the album and also, implicitly, about what it means to be Christian
and how Christians ought to relate to art. My issue was (and is) with those
claims, and with the goals of the site as a whole. 
For you to reduce her statements to mere experssion of some emotive experience
is to firstly misread what she wrote and secondly (more importantly) to
partonize her - to rob her of her dignity. There's nothing more patronizing than
to have someone accept my opinion without any critique because I have a "right"
to have an opinion. I just become another mouth saying stuff.
I'd much rather be disagreed with by someone who bothered to read and think
about what I wrote/said than to be agreed with because I'm the recipient of some
 free speech feelgood everybody-has-a-right-to-speak philosophy. The first
person at least takes me seriously. The second robs me of my
dignity.

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