My answers are irrelevant to you.
There is a social interaction taking place. But commenting on the characteristics of a third party seems like gossip to me. I would not even post a favorable comment in that context.
It was a rhetorical question.
phyllo
Fair enough. I can respect that. There is probably a line one has to cross before gossip comes into being however.
I admit to some bad behavior.
Why are you apologizing to Phyllo? Arc appreciated your comment and she deserved the comment.
I wasn’t criticizing you.
WendyDarling
I was not apologizing. I was picking up on the third party aspect of what phyllo was saying and admitting to some bad behavior. I don’t believe I was gossiping - to me that holds a broader context - one that has not been defined in this discussion.
phyllo
I know that. But you did pick up on something that I was in error of - but like I have stated, it is not defined.
gossip: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true.
I constrained my conversation to one comment.
You did not gossip via the definition you gave. Phyllo derails a thread to accuse you of gossip…funny stuff. 
which you did not do and you did not apologize but were ashamed via 
. That’ll teach you to be a friendly human. 
No decency allowed on this forum…philosophize by Phyllo’s rule book of irrelevancy or else!
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It’s all my fault. 
You Catholics all expect Sainthood too I take it? :-" 
Sainthood is over-rated! 
… so is being Catholic!
While I’m still breathing … this is my song: Imagine by John Lenon
youtube.com/watch?v=XLgYAHHkPFshttps:
For my last breath … this is my song: My Way by Frank Sinatra
youtube.com/watch?v=egY8rUpxqcE
A crowd is a crowd … is a crowd! … a family is a ‘crowd’ … two people are a ‘crowd’ … and there is no “individuation” in a crowd!
Ancient Grrek thought has had and … continues to this day … on the Western Psyche … a paradigm of “either/or”.
OTH … Semites had … seems to have disappeared … a paradigm of “and/both”
In order to reconcile today’s enormously complex and increasingly violent activities humanity needs to move towards “and/both”
I didn’t accuse him of anything.
So to be “relevant”, one should have an emotional attachment to the posts and the posters? That about it?
What is your justification for this statement?
So, what was the topic for discussion then?
Thank you, Wendy, for your affirmation. I did appreciate his comment - although on the other side of that coin, I do not always consider myself to be that “good”.
There are times when I have to wrestle with this or that. Even now (I don’t mean at the present moment necessarily) I am reflecting on something which I did and questioning its so-called decency and goodness. Don’t get me wrong. It’s nothing Earth shattering and probably is not harmful to someone at all (but could we even know this in a little way) BUT from my own point of view I have to ask myself in all consciousness, is/was it good, is it decent? What was my motivation in doing it though I pretty much surmised the answer to that. Am I making too much of a thing out of it or not? Sometimes if we give ourselves permission to think that something or other is/was not so much of a “big” thing, it’s easier in the future to NOT question whether something else might or might not be “much of a thing”. …which might be a bigger thing which could possibly do someone harm. I know. It sounds a bit convoluted but not to me.
So there is a bit more than a quantum of guilt and remorse. My question to myself at this point is “Do I 'fess up” or not? There is always the question of trust and self trust in doing something like this.
So you see - both you and encode_decode I am not all that and at all times that “good” but I’m not the devil except when I choose to be. Sometimes being the devil is fun. What I was talking about above is not so much the happy devil.
I think that, for me, decent is someone who for the most part, lives by a particular positive and caring code of ethics, and who tries to remember “to do no harm”. Of course, we are far from perfect and we do struggle to maintain decency at times. I know I do.
Strive to me is the struggling, the mindful, conscious awareness of keeping ourselves in check, keeping ourselves aware of what we are doing and how that can affect others. We have a dark side, a shadow side, so it is oh so easy to slip, to fall, to lose awareness of what “decent” means. We’re lazy creatures.
I know that that wasn’t a good example of strive but you do know what the word means.
I would have you imagine “keeping on” as in the children’s book “The little engine that could” .
A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill. “I can’t; that is too much a pull for me”, said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. “I think I can”, puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”
As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, “I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can.” It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Littl … That_Could
Profound in its simplicity, yes?
“For the most part?” I think that what I meant in that moment was inasmuch as is humanly possible in that moment. “For the most part” also means to me a pretty good measurement which one could be satisfied with - though “ought” one to be satisfied with “for the most part?”