Posted By:
E, DanielYou're quite right Wonka.
Jim should shut up about card alteration.
I should shut up about a greener world while I continue to use plastic at the supermarkets, don't re-cycle effectively, don't drive a hybrid, run the lights outside my house 7:00pm - 11:00pm because It makes my wife feel safer, fail to get involved in any sort of activism, all sorts of stuff that doesn't gist with my sense of what the right thing to do is.
But I won't.
Just because I feel it's so much harder for me as an individual to fight every societal choice that makes it so difficult to do the right thing. If the Local government supplied me with the various bins for recycling I would make the effort to very carefully sort my refuse. If long life non-incandescent lightbulbs that didn't deposit large amounts of mercury in the soil were available at 5 times the price of existing, but were 10x as energy efficient I would buy them.
If I could buy a car that I could plug into my house electical socket to recharge overnight, and still manage to get to and from work 45 miles away on the one charge, I would buy one. No matter how ugly it looked 
So, while I participate vigorously (but hopefully always charmingly) in debates on how to be kinder to the world we live in, I am not in personification a leading edge to all I believe in. Perhaps if I were still single I could manage it, but with a family to mesh with I feel the need to not burden their lives with the things I feel strongly about.
I get what you say about Jim. I realize his inconsistencies and complete lack of charm in his writings. That perhaps the only way he could balance much of the dislike he generates would be with an act of real unselfishness and thus prove his honesty to the ideal. I still believe this argument used in discussion has not been to facilitate that occuring, but is a tool to make him feel like he should shut up about what he cares for because he cannot argue fairly against the idea of having his own collection re-evaluated and perhaps take a real life changing blow financially. After all, money should never be stacked up against a true moral ideal.....
Much like you might aim against my idealism but weakness of action. I still feel I can admire my own beliefs even tempered against the lack of real will to be the agent for change.
I think a just cause is just, regardless of the qualifications of the speaker.
Daniel