I don't demand that others be kind. But I make an effort to be so, myself. I see it as a virtue.

I still speak my mind.
But I do try to be polite. It's just a sign of respect.

Not to take it too far, being surely off-topic and all, but just to have it said...

Y'know, CS, one of the best ways to self-police your intellectual growth - to make sure you're homing in on the Truth, not veering off into the ether - is to be cognizant of bizarre conclusions.

When you embrace the idea that cognition precedes perception - (The universe is only as it is because we "believe" it this way and it would be very different if only we all "believed" it so.) - it leads to a logical conundrum: How can one perceive the unimaginable?

In "What the Bleep Do We Know" they addressed this with the example of the first time Indians saw the great sailing ships. They posited that the first ships were actually UNSEEN by the Indians on the shore until a particularly intelligent comrade wrapped his head around the concept of a "super-canoe". Then, when he shared this insight with his brothers they gradually began to make out the shapes of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.

What a crock of sh!t! (Wow, that was kinda rude, Z!)

What did the "stupid" Indians see? A hull-shaped hole in the water? If the ship beached itself before the smart guy showed up, would a dummy Indian, walking in the surf, smack into an invisible wall? Would he have just walked through it? (Vision is only one form of perception.)

The idea that a real thing, standing right in front of you, would remain invisible because you've never seen it before is rediculous on its face.

How could a newborn ever learn anything of the world?

---
Here in the Gulch, many (most?) of us are Objectivists. The name of our philosophy was chosen specifically to refute this worldview. We believe in an Objective Reality that exists independent of our observation, and that we are equipped to perceive that objective reality - whether we can make sense of it or not. (The slug is still squished - whether it understands truck-ness or not.)

---
Never-the-less, well met CS, and welcome.