The Troll Fells

I'll talk to people. They show themselves to be trolls. I want to call them trolls. But I can't be sure that they are. I think that's the mark of a not-troll. This person who has legitimate concerns that disagree with mine. I need to engage that one. In honest discourse with honest people who have their own honest opinions that are contrary to mine. Who knows in what stone quarry I might find the stone of knowledge? Maybe, by rejecting them, I am the troll!

Who am I to tell what is right and what is wrong? Who am I to call a troll a troll? Troll is as troll does, after all. If I fight a troll using trollish behavior, what does that make me?

So. When I engage in discussion with a similarly educated opponent I assume that they believe what they do for the same well thought out and well researched reasons as I. And that they understand, in the vast fields of knowledge and experience, that no single person can know it all. So we all can learn from the all. We can all engage in polite discourse. We can respect and come away enlightened. A little bit. For the all is greater than the sum of the parts. Or we can pretend to know it all. And be a troll.

The soul of knowledge is humility.

And trolls. There are always trolls.