What You Did

2001-6-20 01:24:00

First I want to thank Claire for her regular commentary on the essence of all of our postings. This must take a lot of your time and you do much to make each individual to feel that their contribution counts.

Moni doesn't see the difference between saying: "You are rude" and "that which you did is rude."

I submit that there is a great difference.

If you tell a person he is rude then you are identifying him as a rude person, period. He is rude 24 hours a day, even in his sleep. This is now his label forever.

BUT, if you tell him something specific he can deal with then his rudeness is isolated to a small point in time and space.

For instance I may say to a friend:

"You were rude when you pinched that waitress on the butt."

Now maybe this person was offered $1000 as a prank to do this and this was his only rude act in his entire life. It would be entirely incorrect to tell him:

"You are rude."

The truth is that IS NOT being rude after this event, and IS not rude in 99.9% of his past, so to label him as rude (past present and future) is bad (and incorrect) judgment.

At least if you are commenting on a person's bad breath you are commenting on a point in time and space. A true correlation to "You are rude" in relation to bad breath would be:

"You are a bad breath person."

"Or you have bad breath and will always have it. You are bad breath."

If you politely tell a person he has bad breath or was rude at a point in time and space then it dies not seem so bad because the individual can take steps to correct the problem tomorrow.

If the individual is "just rude" then he can forget about change tomorrow.