Subject: Re: flame wars, humor and serious request /was Re: Effective approaches
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2001 11:56:18 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3208766174622961@naggum.net>

* Roger Corman
> I thought civilized people would not put up with the kind of invective
> that has become common on this newsgroup lately.

  I thought civilized people would be above your behavior, too.

> I tend to filter to the trash any message threads being sent between Erik
> and anybody else, because I don't need the negative stimulus.

  Somehow, you think it is acceptable to post this.  Why?

> We all know Erik posts useful messages at times (often, even) but the
> level of discourse he inspires probably drives many people away.

  Yeah, of course it is my fault!  That attitude is the core problem here.
  It is somehow appropriate for this forum to discuss me and blame me for
  it at the same time, as if you are all mindless morons who cannot help
  themselves and I am the person responsible for everybody else's actions.

  You do the exact same thing, Roger Corman, and you, too, think it is
  somehow appropriate to discuss this as if it were a matter of fact.

  If people, you included, could stop discussing _me_, there would be
  nothing for me to be angry about, because the core problem I see is that
  people have this bizarre personal need to attack _me_ every damn time I
  say something about someone's _behavior_, and they certainly do not
  confine themselves to _my_ behavior.  _Are_ people so defensive and do
  they really have so low self-esteem and self-confidence that they cannot
  distinguish between their behavior and their person?  That is, why do
  they behave as if their behavior is always correct and should remain
  unchallenged and preferably be lauded no matter how counter-productive it
  is?  There are people here who have an obvious and serious personality
  disorder that they cannot back down from their position if it has been
  criticized, and who start to attack the _person_ of those who criticizes
  them.  Why are such people posting to a newsgroup?  They are clearly not
  able to deal with normal human discourse and certainly not able to deal
  with people who _will_ shoot down stupid suggestions or arguments.

  In the case of Erann Gat, please do make the effort to see how he has
  behaved towards me from the start in this thread.  His behavior is not at
  all my fault.  That he cannot keep his personal needs away from the Net
  is not my problem.  That he attacks me so insanely as he does, does make
  it my business to stop him.  I have no other gripes about Erann Gat, but
  a lot of people have personal gripes about me as a person far beyond
  anything I have ever actually done to anyone.  This puzzles me.  I find
  it very odd that semi-intelligent people need to be so obsessive about a
  person that they cannot discuss whatever they (say they) want to discuss
  but have to blame someone else for their very own despicable behavior.

> I am trying to open my mind up to new things, and to try to see things in
> a fresh light. Perhaps we should bask in the colorful language and
> insults.

  Perhaps you should realize that by discussing me, you contribut to the
  problem.

> I am still looking for more colorful phrases and insults, and I know you
> guys won't disappoint me.

  I find your behavior more delibarate and thus much more dispicable than
  those who post in obvios anger.  Have you no self-respect?

> By the way, I am serious about this--I will make the program available
> when done.

  Reconsider.

> When I see people in this group calling each other such nasty things, I can
> barely believe it.

  I cannot believe how you found the personal need to post what you have.

> Please, let's act like grown-ups.

  Do grown-ups discuss others as if they were things and casually place the
  blame for many other people's behavior on a single person?  Real grown-ups
  are a tad more mature than that.

> I don't believe technical expertise absolves one from polite discourse,
> particularly in a public form like this.

  So it is OK to be gravely insulting and grossly unfair if you are "polite"?

> And I say lisp, because I believe that Common Lisp is not the only
> language definition nor the final one.  I like it fine as it is, but I
> admit to the possibility that others, perhaps more original thinkers then
> me, could come up with improvements that would make lisp that much more
> exciting and powerful.

  Until we have it, it makes very little sense to discuss Common Lisp in
  terms of what could have been or could be.  No other language community I
  know, have a higher regularity of people who argue just this way, and it
  simply means that people will wait for the next great thing instead of
  using this great thing while they can.  It is if people refuse to use the
  greatest language in the world simply because something better could be
  made.  To me, this simply says that people have too little need to use
  these powerful tools, but around masturbating to it, instead, like people
  do with Scheme or other "academic" languages.

///