Subject: Re: NEWS FLASH : Naggum strikes again ! ( All beware his 20 cent popgun ) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 09 Dec 2000 22:58:17 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3185391497019108@naggum.net> * israel thomas <israelt@optushome.com.au> | Eric, abuse and insults are usually the result of a limited vocabulary. Trying to explain others based on your family history does not work. | As for the not-so-veiled threats in your .sig , I am | terrified..... ( yawn ). I hope that one day you will understand the purpose of .signatures and will advance to an average USENET reader, your best hope so far. | If this is the Lisp community, I think that I'll stick to Smalltalk | and Java. Funny you should talk about communities. Your posting here makes you ipso facto part of the Lisp community. Outsiders do not _exist_ on USENET if they post to the newsgroup. However, if I were you, I would try very hard to escape being considered part of whatever community I was part of in your way, too. It is quite interesting, actually, how people who break laws and make a general nuisance of themselves tend to view themselves and behave as outsiders. There is something in the ability to understand that one becomes, or desires to become, a _member_ of a community that prevents certain immoral and destructive activities. People who think they are free to remain outsiders feel and probably _have_ no moral obligations towards the community and hence can post Marcus G. Danielisms and other reprehensible trash _to_ the community. The inability to feel part of a group of people which one has joined is central and fundamental to the criminal mind. It is in fact the _first_ thing that has to be instilled in children whom their parents want to become successful in the societies they are about to enter as adults. The feeling of being "outside" is the primary cause of a fundamental sense of _rejection_ that usually never leaves the people who suffer from it. Every social construct is based on this fundamental ability to form relationships with other people and actually take _part_ in group activity, i.e., to overcome rejection where it might actually exist, because it does, too. While the concept of "I" does evolve unaided in children, maturation does not occur until the "I" has become able to think in terms of "WE" without removing or destroying the "I" that joins some "WE" of the "I"'s own _choice_. Failure to choose the "WE" can lead to loss of "I" in many people, as has been found in such at first strange and unexpected phenomena as the Stockholm syndrome. In people who have not matured to this social level and who either do not have a "WE" concept or think it means obliteration of the "I", we find hostility towards _any_ form of authority, real or imagined, as the prevalent personality disorder, probably because any authority is deemed an enforcer of unwanted and dangerous thoughts that would mean the "WE" vanquishes the "I". This has been thought to explain why teenagers rebel against their parents, the "WE" that is the family, and goes as far as to explain the high teenage suicide rates among those who realize that they have rejected _both_ "WE" _and_ "I" who would end up as outsiders to _every_ group, while equally unable to form their own, hence lost and utterly lonely and better off dead, in their own mind, where nobody cares about them, either. Outsiders to life in general. The concept of "outsider" is why I can write a lot of psychologizing and highly damaging comments about Israel Thomas and not feel bad about it at all. He has himself decided to remove himself from that circle of people that he respects. Consequently, I do not have to abide by the same sense of obligation towards the community that I would have if he had accepted and respected himself as part of that community. The same happened to John Foderaro not long ago when he made a remarkably sharp distinction between the rational people who saw case issues his way and every deranged lunatic who still wanted upper-case symbol names and adherence to the community standard. I only feel regret about the fact that he never understood how he hurt the community and how much he hurt me personally through his actions. Humans, or any other social simian for that matter, have never been nice to outsiders, and we never will, either. What causes our ability to be civil is the idea that somebody who was an outsider may become an insider with some effort on both sides. Marcus G. Daniels doesn't believe in such lame bullshit, of course, preferring the no-effort option to be the ridiculing asshole outsider with no holds barred and no obligation towards anyone else (hence his _periodic_ appearances), but this motivates the Israel Thomases of the world to think they join _his_ group of hostile outsiders, like people join and remain loyal to terrorist groups only as long as they do not actually succeed in anything, like getting what they have wanted, after which they fight eachother violently, instead. Of course, the Palestinia Marcuses reject the Israel Thomases and everything they do, even though they share almost everything, up to and including the same caliber ammo. (See? I can even make fun of their _names_, which would have been really tasteless if they had been part of the community and there would be even a smidgeon of a chance of them feeling hurt in a way I cared about at all, but they are self-defined outsiders, and I am prohibited _by_them_ from caring about them, and since I feel like playing with these utterly unenjoyable jerks right now, I can do so. Man, what would I have _done_ without outsiders?) | ( defun ( Lisp ( Lots of Irritating Silly (Pompous ) Pricks) ) ) Well, this _does_ explain your presence here and your need to post, but you are mistaken about the number and nature of everybody else. You should just send your snide remarks and general idiocy to Marcus G. Daniels at <mgd@forager.swarm.org>. Since you don't have any qualms at all sending proof of your personality disorders to me in private and personal communication, and he has no qualms at all posting evidence of his deep-rooted anti-social attitude, the two of you should be a match made in, uh, wherever, but a good one, I'm sure. But, hey, anyone cam make mistakes. Welcome to the community, Israel! (Marcus G. Daniels doesn't make any mistakes, by his own admission.) #:Erik -- "When you are having a bad day and it seems like everybody is trying to piss you off, remember that it takes 42 muscles to produce a frown, but only 4 muscles to work the trigger of a good sniper rifle." -- Unknown