I don't buy that at all. It's simply a different perspective; there doesn't have to be a motive, nefarious or otherwise. People just see things differently, that's just how the world works.
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with appropriate respect....you may be over-generalizing.
people just don't randomly see things differently. they perceive, they understand, they develop knowledge, they decide. the decision part is the key. unless that is completely irrational....it is based on some set of criteria....some notion of preferred outcomes. a scale. decision criteria. where do these decision criteria come from? can they be good or bad?
the ascription of qualifiers to motives? in the present context, that, obviously, is driven by the value system an individual choses to live by. it would be more worrisome if individuals conducted themselves without these. the problem here isn't the value assignment - it exists and always will. the problem is that there are different value systems that clash. the idea that somehow ideas can be separated from assessments of motive...especially given some of the issues discussed which are inherently contentious....is off IMO. were someone to utter a blatantly racist idea on this board...it's a near certainty they would be banned. it's not just a different perspective. an idea, in other words, can have consequences....and these consequences draw from normative foundations.
so, I get one idea you are seemingly advocating: that we need to be careful not to allow our value assessments of ideas to overly influence our judgment of people (and the behavioral patterns that flow from this). a functioning society requires moderated behavior - that's true. but that does not eliminate the inherent nature of the interaction and it does not change the fact that there are thresholds. at some point the assessment we make of ideas becomes an assessment of the person expressing those ideas - especially these days where everything apparently is about fairness. the real point is where that transition occurs. at the moment...the community owners are telling us the bar has been set too low and they are intervening to reset matters. they are communicating, IMO and my words, that the transition point is going to be set by them and that it will coincide with the banning point. the association of ideas and character, motive, whatever you chose to call it, however, remains inherent to the exchange of a specific subset of ideas (all the political ones we are all familiar with). so, we are moving toward a solution which removes that subset of ideas which is most closely aligned with this leap from idea to character. perhaps a better way of putting it: the mapping of character assessment to ideas...is always there. the intervention/rules change is effectively saying "there or not...a subset of responses (character assessment..call it attack if you like) is no longer acceptable for multiple reasons: it violates the community standards we are trying to set, it descends too often from observation to character assassination, it has tinges of passive/overt aggression that are not acceptable, it collapses into the vulgar too frequently...it is....as a response mechanism...no longer acceptable. It has potential impacts on the growth of the community spirit we no longer tolerate." so, again (my opinion on the logic of what is playing out), what is being ruled out is a set of responses/behavioral patterns. the logic, however, remains in place.
yea...overly complicated thought process for a simple notion on acceptable behavior. wanted to draw out the the basic notion that eliminating the behavior pattern/response....doesn't eliminate the assessment. we are being told...keep the assessment to yourselves or PMs.