Ooh, this is interesting!
It's something I mull over (or related versions of it) quite a bit, and still haven't finalised an answer for myself! (See mum, I am unsure of myself occasionally!
)
On the one hand I can empathise (I won't bother explaining why here) with the frustration oppressed communities have to endure, and I can appreciate why so many get vocal and passionate about it all. On the other hand, it can get to a point where you do indeed appear to be just as bad as the oppressors, which doesn't win much in the way of support. But then if noise isn't made to attract attention, no progress is made because the community is ignored.
At the moment I'd tentatively agree with what Lennon said (
http://www.bestofyoutube.com/story.p...met-the-walrus) about violence begetting violence, with peace/love being the only way forward. That said, my rationalism can often come across as aggressive, probably because I like to either have someone tell me why I'm wrong or agree with me, while I often get (at least with some people) a kind of "agree to disagree"/"we'll each believe what we want to" response about things, which I simply can't stand - I hate any form of stagnation, to be honest! I really don't care whether I'm right or wrong about things at any given moment, so long as I'm
striving to be right about everything. I mean, if you took all the things I argue passionately about, I'd consider them each to have about a 95%-99% chance of being right, but because I argue passionately about a lot of things, I'd say there's very little chance that I'm right about everything I argue passionately about!
By way of example, about... let's see, perhaps eight months ago, I ardently argued for scientific realism - I'd take on any anti-realist! Then I gathered more evidence and logic arguments, and I'm now an ardent scientific anti-realist!
A rather opposite viewpoint, to be sure!
Basically, all I'm saying is that I don't like the notion of holding personal beliefs that are held in the face of rational argument or evidence. So while I often appear very stubborn, I'm ultimately pretty flexible underneath!
My "core belief" set is pretty minimal (e.g. physicalism,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism), with a lot of Occam's Razor employed! I try to get by with as few unprovable beliefs as I can!
What also usually doesn't help the appearance of my apparent stubbornness is that I don't like to argue about things I'm unsure of - I just listen to what people have to say, and slowly come to a well-defined, but in principle tentative, position.
Yet another rant from me!
I hope the only people that read them can enjoy them, or at least find them informative!