Ogri the trog said:
Entirely,
But please see my point of view. I went throught the organisation enjoying the things we did, I also joined the military, where I (largely) enjoyed the things I did. The whole is my life experience and has made me the man that I am today.
The wearing of a uniform, to my mind, does not necessarily convey the attributes of neo-naziism, dictatorship, fashism and the other negatives you have mentioned. To me it conveys team spirit, common goals, loyalty to the ideals that you hold dear.
Neither of us can compare with another lifetime of experience as we've both had only one childhood, so we must agree to disagree.
Ogri the trog
Orgi. I don't think that anything I have said, no matter how critical of the origins and structure of scouting, has been intended to attack, hurt, diminuate any individual on this thread (although in defense I may have been a trifle blunt) with the possible exception of B.P and that was only because someone brought him up as being against political correctness. I wouldn't have said anything about him if he hadn't been wheeled out into the fray (poor ol baden)!
I know that there are people on the forum who don't like what I have to say sometimes, and have probably taken silent exception to me personally. But I think that we are sometimes over polite to each other in this medium of forum, and I'm sure that when we meet personally we are more accepting of each others views than this.
I see this all the time on these fora, people get so annoyed so quickly with people over the subtleist of textual nuances, if this happened in real life we would have all killed each other by now.
I'm sorry for 'hijacking' this thread for a while but I honestly felt that what I had to say needed to be said in the context of the thread, right or wrong, I just thought that a list of badges, knots and woggles wouldn't project a sense of how I felt about the movement (I have included one just in case).
No I don't want to start my own thread about scouting, what would I call it "does Baden Powell like Hitler?" or "Baden Powell - saint or sinner?".