C.It is exceedingly difficult to make a man understand a subject that he has no interest in understanding.
fear is not a Weltanschauung@cazabon and what of those making up the rest of the gender ternary?
@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing
Going out and searching for things to be offended by is an unattractive quality.
@cazabon I'm comfortable being presumed unattractive. I suppose the perspective of those you presume to have offended is a thing one has no interest in understanding.
@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing
For $DEITY's sake, one of the meanings of the word man is "mankind" or "all humans". Go be offended somewhere else.
@cazabon I'm familiar with the proto-ermanic origins of the word "man". I believe "He", however, was a masculine formation in Proto-germanic also. My semantic stalking-horse aside, I have satisfied myself as to my suspicion that your initial post was indeed autobiographical. Please feel free to carry on projecting your aggrievance onto those around you, it makes you very entertaining sport.
@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing
You appear to be the only one who was aggrieved here, with your complaint about a perfectly normal English language idiom.
@cazabon 1/ Consider your use of the word "appear". I responded to your original post—which, by your posting it, you implied to be wary of wilful ignorance—with a neutrally worded query invoking an oft-litigated topic. Your response displayed not a desire to seek understanding but an assumption that the question was in fact, not a question but an attack.
@cazabon 2/ I observe often that those of us who profess a degree of rationality are conversely possessed of a weltanschauung most calcified. This phenomenon provides me great amusement, and I occasionally indulge in some prodding to test whether my hypothesis stands, which it inevitably does. I cleave to the flattering conceit that in doing so I might spark a moment of self-awareness in my interlocutor, but must confess such would be a pleasing by-product of my chief goal, which is diversion...
@cazabon 3/ ...diversion, stimulation and enjoyment of the opportunity to splatter words about in an artful fashion.
If you're interested in exploring with me why one might consider it more accurate to pair the universal "man" with the indefinite pronoun "one" in recognition of a semantic shift which has been extant for at least two centuries, I would gladly attempt to contribute to any understanding you might want of the concept, but I am acutely cognisant of the tone of our interaction...
@cazabon 4/fin and graciously accept if you wish to have absolutely no further interaction with me.