What then is the difference between disrespect and being accused of lying and "belonging to a certain ideology"?
Disrespect is aimed at the person, their character, like lies, while the last is regarding concepts and theories. The theory and ideas might be sound or impotent, they may be debated without any implications of who debates them and why, to know they are sound or not. Accusing of lying those who lie isn't the same as lying and smearing people as liars, I wasn't implicating that at all, but that they are lying, not merely accused of such, the difference being that the lie is confronted, challenged and evident.
Where I use this crutch for disagreeing with someone else's statement, I am virtually provoking the counter-question that I am not the one who has to justify a statement, but the one who calls me a liar is supposed to refute it. This very attack of calling me a liar is grist to my mill, because I easily can find something where the other one lied himself.
Its specific to the instance, not to the persons habits. Disagreement and lying are two different things. If someone calls you a liar, they burden themselves with the claim to show how and why you're lying, in my hypothetical the liar is the one "accusing of lying with nothing to show for it".
"You are lying" is not an argument. Then everyone will come and claim such and side with the truthful, while the others are of course put in the camp of the untruthful. An excellent vicious circle, brimming with ideology, I would say. I see it as the very foundation for censorship.
Its simply a matter of making false claims. The claims aren't an argument.
If I perceive someone as a liar and I feel obliged to tell him so, and I then find this is sufficient and the person so called shall admit it (turns his left cheek), then I must think that I am dealing with saints.
People can be mistaken, they can misconstrue, and not remember correctly.
If I don't completely ignore my knowledge, I can rather expect the other person to react emotionally to it (angry, vindictive, insulted, offended, sad etc. etc.). Maybe my intent is to defeat them in this way that I non stop call them "liar!", in the hope that one day, they will be defeated (surrendering under shame and blame, for example). If you overpower them, they might surrender but inwardly they may still think they are right (and die with it).
If you do it because they indeed are lying who cares if you convinced them or not, the point is to confront the lie and stop the lying, mission accomplished. Dispelling denial and delusion alike can't be expected without the other persons willingness, depending how much you care about them it's something you have to decide how much badgering, avoidance or acceptance you extend to them. Delusion and denial is what we all suffer from in various degrees.
Accusing someone of lying is not an opener for dialogue but a closer. As a result it opens up a fight not allowing any further arguments. To be willing to be defeated by argument, needs the will that this is allowed to happen in the first place.
Not if they don't intend to lie, it could simply be a mistake.
How do you relate to "The moment I think that I am possessing the truth, I'll lose it, the moment I let doubt happen, I'll win it."?
If you think its true, you'll dismiss everything else in regards to that, as false or incorrect, so the moment you realize that truth is a certainty you'll stop peering into it.
It turned out that they had won a Pyrrhic victory.
Maybe they gained inner peace, they became teachers and helped others find it and do the same, while everyone else was fraught with titillating between desire and suffering.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." No one can do that.
Even nuns and monks? The biggest charity is extended by the church.
While I can agree with your definition of censorship, I would say in the very next breath that the stoic insistence on definitions and rules in and of themselves create problems where none need be. For the most part, conflicts are not about the correct statement, but about the relationships between the parties involved. Conflict is usually characterised by the fact that one does not so much uses questions as want to give a lesson or rock-solid answer.
Rather, I can choose to converse and get along with you instead of you having to agree with my stance or opinion.
Language is the domain of definition, without which ideas and concepts are meaningless. Opinion is the domain of preference, of tendency, of our inner desires and aversion, with which we battle not only against one another but ourselves. In effect, language in the domain of definition is the pointer to certainty, like math, and our opinions are the pointer to what's uncertain and resides in our preference, what can't be ascertained as definite and certain. Censorship is but a pointer, an idea, we are defining what it is and inversely dispelling what it isn't.
What is obvious and wrong for one is not necessarily so for the other. Those who believe themselves to be on the safe side (certainty in the definition of language) want to believe themselves equally certain in the preference of their ideas as well as dislike of the ideas of others and mix definition with the same ideas, wishes and hopes. If it were not so, one would not want to refer to a sovereignty of definition.
The individual retains the ultimate sovereignty of definition by either accepting the given definition or rejecting it. A clear boundary between the given or the challenged definition cannot exist permanently in time and space because otherwise all original definitions would never change, they would remain fixed in it. The fact is that they are not. For example, if muting were perceived by a relevant number of people as censorship, even though by definition it is not, the more powerful group appropriates its own definition and negates that of the less powerful group. This can then quite possibly be understood as consensus, and where this consensus remains for a certain period of time, the modified definition enters into sovereignty. The sovereignty of definition marks an ideal, an orientation for certainty.
This is what is meant by the comparison of the Christian Ten Commandments and Buddhist discipline. They are basically a paradox. To put it exaggeratedly, the only certainty is that one cannot be certain of anything. Truthfully, one would then have to answer, "Although I suffer from certain delusions and denials, I am not mistaken." HaHa! A paradox!
To which one might reply, "Only the madman has no doubt". But it would indeed be correct to say that although you might be mistaken, you nevertheless intend to hold fast to the action you are willing to perform and advocate. With a price tag stuck on.
If I were to ask you if you were certain of your own delusions and denials and what exactly they were, and you were able to answer me clearly, they would no longer be delusions and denials at that moment, would they? You would then have a Catch22.
Against this backdrop, it makes perfect sense to keep in mind one's own suppressed ideas of a better world, or to try to get to the bottom of them, otherwise I run the risk of casting the first stone.
I don't see where throwing stones has been crowned with great success in human history. Morally convicted perpetrators in the upper echelons seem to have got away with their deeds as good as ever, apart from peasant victims, since they have not been convicted before the law. They have not, and not only do they see that they used lies or deception, but can assume that anyone who accuses them has some dirt on them themselves. Because "all men are sinners".
But what if I realise that I cannot possibly follow the rules to the letter and that I can never fully rely on definitions? Isn't this paradox one of the most important insights I can have?
Does it mean that I, knowing that I cannot, murder my grandmother and rape little children? That I, aware of my weaknesses, from now on use this as a free ticket?
Ideas aren't an opinion, or preference, they are either sound or not, and that is ascertained by testing them, by debating them. If you cannot find agreement on definition there's absolutely no point in doing so. If you must conform definition to your position, to shape them to your liking why not form your own terms with their own definitions. You want to bastardize language, to make it in your image, fine, may you find agreement then.
It's certain that peace of mind is a benefit. It's certain that the largest charity comes through church and temples.
A paradox isn't significant, or 100 paradoxes even.
There's things that are true, and false at the same time. There's also things which are neither!
No new definitions need apply, just boring affirmative or negatives. How can you root out delusion and denial but by insight born from honest self inquiry?
The rules like definitions are pointers, pointers for your direction.
You'll have a "free ticket" only as long you get away with it. If you see rules as an obstacle, you'll treat them as such, and traversing obstacles comes with its risks.
I agree. But isn't it the case that the one accused of lying doesn't always think he has anything to prove at all? In recent events, my experience has been that people simply ignore questions and pretend that there is no one who has even asked one. Which shouldn't stop one from continuing to ask.
The people who don't want to accept questions build walls, I have found. They make sure that no more questions reach their ears through blockades. They simply "mute" the uncomfortable questioner (either in thought or deed). The one who asks critical and uncomfortable questions is left in complete uncertainty as to whether it has even been received, let alone heard or read. Silence. This can make you so furious that you are tempted to take all kinds of radical or stupid actions.
I suppose it was/is just such a wall of silence that broke the camel's back in the disruptive events of human conflict.