Even though the following post does not bring any answer to Mr TU's
questions as raised in "Rawism and friendship", I embarked in this short
article after reading his note.

I deem it important not to appear as  dogmatic in the eyes of those who do
not know about instincto. It 's just a matter of respecting their beliefs,
however conventional these might be .  However I confess I do not have the
same oratorical precautions vis a vis those whom I know are conversant with
the topic (like we 're all supposed to be here, theoretically at least... ) .
How can I be so determined  to mitigate my speech   based on one's dietary
adherence/non-adherence  instead of one's  social or individual
circumstances ? Let me try to explain it to you :

Vindication  of diplomatic stance vis a vis the Cookists   :

I guess I share with all Idealists the idea that the world as it is, has no
interest in truth. As long as this situation will prevail, truth will
represent a threat, a menace to be discredited every time it shows up. I do
think,  in such circumstances, that if the world has no interest in
fostering truth, I have no interest in sharing with the world that little
truth I managed to foster for myself.
Is this intended to do away with all efforts to "convert" the "cooked" ones
? Yes and no. Yes because we can only "enlight" the already "enlighted", and
because "converting the cooked" sounds very much like "coveting the
crooked"... And No, because many people ignore that they are sheltering an
inner light that only needs to be reckoned as intentional, humane or divine,
to bear the most delicious fruits. Like any  religious group, we are thus
split between the temptation of quietism and the temptation of evangelism.


Vindication of cynical attitude vis a vis the Rawists  :

I think PETER put it quite nicely in one of his earlier post. He said "Only
my soul brothers do I have the freedom to trash". Indeed I consider it as a
mark of mutual friendship and love, that we all share out thoughts together,
whatever tone we might fancy using to express our point of view (anger is
also part of our nature).
In my view there really is something special about all of us sharing our
experience, our fears, our hopes, our love, our deceptions. We really are a
congregation , in the historical , reformed sense of the word. A
congregation without priests,  without buildings, a congregation without
frontiers. It is this very feeling which makes  my heart beat a little
faster every time I press "Retrieve Incoming Messages" on my e-mail... For
unlike all the web crawlers, we all have here a very visible reason to share
friendship and love ( I'm not saying that we should distrust the love of all
those who do not share with us the same very visible reason ...)

Confucius once said  " No one ever really minds seeing a friend fall off a
roof". I do, as I would mind seeing any of you fall down from the "rot" to
the "rotproof" (i.e.  from the perishable to the unperishable) . Hence my
(sometimes ennerving) admonishing tone.

Cheers
Denis