Dealing in Absolutes

"I am afraid that Kunal is no good to do unplanned trips with. He is too used to comforts and keeps complaining if things are a bit rough." I was saying when my friend cut me short. "I don't like talking ill of friends like this" Huh? What exactly was that? I mean, yeah, I would not like to go on impromptu trips with Kunal again, and was saying so, but 'talking ill of him'? It is not like I even thought of him as some sort of evil entity to shun, leave alone saying so. My comment was, I thought, more like saying 'He does not like aaloo'. You get what I mean? A comment on things to do with him, and things to avoid, more than character assassination but... and, anyway, I suppose food is not the best of metaphors to choose these days. It seems to lead to real assassinations, leave alone character assassinations. But this is a problem that irks me these days. If it is a friend you are speaking of, you either are to be uniformly complimentary or you are being a bad friend? Seems to me that this attitude of being absolute about things is all over Society these days. You are either absolutely FOR a person, which seems to mean every single facet of him, or you will be considered absolutely AGAINST him. I mean, what, all those guys who casually comment about how my head creates a halo around me in bright sunlight are not my friends because they are making fun of my baldness? More fool I, then, to have not considered that a 'true' friend would say nothing negative about me. I'm still not convinced, though. Like, yes, I'd not say that I'd prefer not to sleep in the same room as Vinay, considering that he is what my cousin chooses to call a 'sound' sleeper (and THAT, my friends will tell you, is the pot calling the kettle black, if THAT phrase is still permissible), but that does not mean that I do not like or respect Vinay or that I have turned against him totally because he spoiled a night's sleep for me. And saying that he does snore fit to wake up the dead is NOT the same as trashing his character, as far as I am concerned. But, then, I should have known that this absolutism is the bedrock of human behavior. I mean, how many times have I heard 'He? He cannot even string a sentence properly in English." as a firm refutation of the chap's ability to compose music. As though the ability to flawlessly recite 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' from memory is the foundation on which musical ability rests. The basic idea seems to be that, if the chap was no good at one thing, he has to be no good at everything. And the number of times you would have seen the corollaries! The fact that A is a better poet than B being cited as a triumphant rebuttal of an attempt to call B a better businessman than A, and such other major flights of human logic. I SHOULD have known that absolutism is deep-wired into the human DNA. If our daily interactions take this sort of absolutist tinge, it is no wonder that, when it comes to politics or religion, we refuse to see any right in the opponent or any wrong in the leader of our own choice. I mean, a friend is merely someone I support and I cannot say or listen to ANY single negative comment on him without considering it a total denigration of my friend's character (and respond by trashing the chap who made that comment? YES!). SO what then about a leader who I FOLLOW? THAT chap obviously can do no wrong and it is only the evil spawn of Satan who will point fingers at him. And so it goes. Bit by painful bit I learn that all this process of logical thinking, which I learned so painstakingly, is totally useless and only alienates me from my fellow human beings. I am trying to unlearn it and become a better human being but, alas, I fear that by the time I fully imbibe it, it will be too late.