One Reason I Sometimes Change My Mind

I used to have IOZ in my blogroll. I removed him quite a while ago, but didn't say anything about it publicly. I had my reasons, and I think they were entirely legitimate and even important reasons (important to me at any rate, given my particular perspective), but I don't choose to go into all that now. More generally: despite his obvious and unusual intelligence and frequent perceptiveness, IOZ often irritates me, and very deeply. I find more than a few of his posts unbearably condescending toward almost all of humanity, and his writing tends to be suffused with a particular kind of cynicism that profoundly alienates me. I think it very likely those qualities will resurface in the future at some point.

And yet...for this, I set all that aside. I set it aside with deep sadness in my heart, for IOZ's own pain, and for what he is able to see through his pain.

Read it, absorb it, ponder it, let it into you. Think about what your government does all over the world, and here at home, and think about what you may do in your own life without even realizing it.

I cry a lot these days. I've cried very easily throughout my life, but it's been much worse these last few years. IOZ made me cry again.

He's back in the blogroll.