If Sticking to Facts = Living in an Ivory Tower
Sign me up, Rapunzel…
I’ve been long-time frenemies with a man on Medium, who by his own admission likes to argue (it’s even a part of his profile name). We’ve bumped along for several years, sometimes having fairly amicable discussions and sometimes having ones that aren’t so friendly, but largely managing to live and let live. We even discovered a couple of places where we actually quite agree with each other and had a bit of fun telling each other, “Hey, look at that, we agree…”
Unfortunately, that is now a thing of the past since I blocked him this morning. Not long ago he wrote a story, naming me, where he mischaracterized a bunch of things that I’d said and largely tried to undercut many of the subject areas that I specialize in — not by refuting facts or data that I had presented — but with theories that just feel right to him that came to him on his walk to work. When I pointed out that you don’t get to make up new definitions for words or how some of his suppositions didn’t fit into existing and well-defined sociological paradigms, he accused me of “living in an ivory tower.”
But if living in an ivory tower means sticking to known precepts, facts, and data, please — sign me up. I very much want to live there.
