Condescending rheumy-eyed old fart
Just got a condescending response to a serious post I wrote to an email list. I hate that! I wrote a fairly logical argument to the effect that previous posters’ interpretation of the information must be faulty, as it didn’t fit all the known facts. In response to my comment that said interpretation "doesn’t make sense", the respondent brayed that I had (oh dear) written without thinking, and that the subject matter at hand cannot really be understood, it must be "grokked" or just "gotten used to".
What a load of garbage. It’s a response I’ve only heard before from religious authorities, and it always seems to mean the same thing. The person doesn’t understand the official explanation themselves, but rather than consider the notion that it might be nonsense or simply misinterpreted, they’d rather call it some kind of "divine mystery" and not question it.
Of course, what really irks me about such condescension is that the person doing it doesn’t understand the material themselves, and assumes that I must understand it less than they do. While the truth is that I have a significantly better grasp of the concepts and logic involved than they do.
Hmm… reminds me of another notoriously condescending person I know. My cousins’ grandfather. The email post writer is about eighty, and the grandfather is about ninety. I wonder if condescension is a vice common in old age.
It appears I am not in a polite or generous mood today. So be it.