Posted by Adam Quinan on May 12, 2012 at 14:15:37 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Avoid expressing personal views, please Re: S&A 1974 Film - a retrospective view posted by Duncan on May 12, 2012 at 08:18:42:
TarBoard is a community of sorts and as such we can look at other communities to see how people are expected to behave in them.
While TarBoard is not a naval officer's mess, it has this in common that the only way to leave is to abandon ship. It is well known that in those circumstances, the discussion of politics, religion and women was effectively banned as leading to dissension and cutlasses at dawn.
We could argue that TarBoard is more like a university Common Room where the discussion could be violent because the issues were so insignificant. In a Common Room dispute and dissension may be more appropriate for the intellectual cut and thrust, but then enmities build up and some people refuse to speak to each other and factions abound.
No one minds a person with committed beliefs whether political, religious or something else, who quietly goes about living their life and giving their opinion informed by those beliefs perhaps but in a sober and logical manner. However if they start preaching them too openly or telling people that they are wrong to hold any other belief, they become very difficult to live with.
I think most of us would prefer a TarBoard where everyone can discuss matters and we avoid factionalism and so I suggest that it is better for us all to adopt the idea that we may express our opinion on Ransome's attitudes about contentious issues and keep our own personal opinions under check.