{Party Matters [continued(3)]}[12th February 1973]

[Redbook1:277-280][19730212:0238b]{Party Matters [continued(3)]}[12th February 1973]

(Monday) 197302120238

[continued]

            It is ridiculous that two people who are agreed roughly about what should be done should discover, while tight, an apparently unbridgeable gulf over why it should be done.

            He would not accept that the crucial difference between us – as it emerged – is that he sees suffering only in relation to his personal experience, whereas I see it, I hope, or am prepared to see it, wherever it occurs.

            The most noticeable aspect of the discussion was that when I became too clever in my arguments I was using smart-ass </smart-alec? I can’t remember> arguments (which may be true) but when he did I think he felt it was justified.

            He continually returned to my having been at [my school], and to my mother – at one stage picturing her aged eleven hung naked over the school railings, and otherwise appearing to insult her – but when I pressed him as to why he pushed these kinds of things, he seemed to think I was being smart-ass </smart-alec?>.

            But when I became ‘smart-ass’</’smart-alec’?>, he sometimes returned to the image of the underprivileged bloke in the bar who at <this> stage would resort to fists.

[continues]

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