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In my experience, the American society places a high value on 'balance' - from "checks and balances" to balanced individuals, to balanced meals, to balancing criticism with some praise first, etc. When this balance is off, most people's innate reaction is to reject the imbalanced person, and by extension, their ideas, regardless of any objective measure of the value of those ideas. Being direct creates an imbalance, for example when one describes an issue or person purely from a negative point of view, regardless of whether all of it is actually true. Most people will innately attempt to say something positive about that same person to restore some sort of balance to the discussion. Generalizations are also an example of imbalance, with people typically having a strong reaction to it, even though I think most people would agree that if 97 times out of 100 something is true, it's safe to say that thing is true. Lastly, as a special case of generalizations, taking an absolute stance is also seen as imbalanced, and therefore bad, because, I assume, most things in life aren't black and white - there's lots of gray areas, so it's pragmatic to start out assuming that in actuality there's a gray area with any issue. This is all to say that Stallman doesn't speak in a balanced way, which is why I think his speeches and ideas do not appeal to the American audience, or any other audience that places a higher value on balance than on the actual ideas. If he were able to convey those same ideas in a less absolutist, more nuanced and more pragmatic manner, I think he, as a person, would be more appreciated in the US and perhaps people would listen more closely to what Stallman has to say. I've lived in several other countries, particularly in Europe, and generalizations, absolute positions and speaking in a direct manner are all generally appreciated by the society there, or at the very least it's tolerated much better and won't get you dismissed right away (since that's how most people speak). At the end of the day, I personally think Stallman is right. When I look at what he says, I see a non-compromising idealist who places more value on truth, and how things "ought to be", than on pleasantries and gray areas, and that's a difficult sell to the American audience. When I focus on his content with the understanding that he's converting gray into either black or white, I see a dreamer and a believer in a utopian society. I too would like to live in a world where all software is FOSS and we all write FOSS code that runs on FOSS hardware, but I recognize that's a dream. It shouldn't stop us from trying to make that dream a reality though. |