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Tuesday 24 September 2019

Thing Not To Do Today: demonise someone.

People are spending a lot of time arguing, aren't they? It's probably a good thing, in principle, except for the bitterness and the tumultuous lack of balance and reason.

It would take several thousand words to work out exactly what is going wrong - and then it wouldn't make any difference - so here are just three small points which the Big People might, perhaps, bear in mind before giving us the benefit of their wisdom (if any).

First of all, even the worst people (that is, people who don't agree with a particular point of view) will still have some opinions which are correct.

Second, there's only one person who understands the reasons that a person holds a belief or has made a decision (and, quite often, not even one.)

Third: if a person doesn't have a forked tail or eagle feet then he or she isn't a demon:

File:Demon of Calicut.jpg
From Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster



Got it? People are complicated.

And most of them are quite as well-meaning and clever as you.

Thing Not To Do Today: demonise someone. The Latin word daemōn means evil spirit. The Greek word daimōn means spirit, deity or fate.




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