Subject: Re: Societal differences and rudeness calibration From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/09/27 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3147423288485857@naggum.no> * Marcus G. Daniels | I'm not inserting that premise into the argument. It seems to me | emotions are an important part of motivation and thus thought. a tacit premise for a reasonable discussion is that the particants do not contradict themselves simply because it suits their argumentation. I find it rather bizarre that you believe you can get away with it. | I believe you practice what you preach, in terms of directly stating what | you think and feel. (You might do this out of necessity, but I can't | prove that.) why do _you_ need to engage in such foul play, Marcus? is it because you would have nothing to say otherwise? | However, directly stating what one thinks and feels can be an obstacle to | communication, if there are alternative ways to express oneself that are | less likely to create a fight, but still get the message across. I wonder, why is this a choice between "directly" stating what one thinks and hiding it behind polite language? why did you need to narrow the argument down to _directly_? is it because it's a good argument that you can't defeat unless you narrow it down to something much more specific but also wholly irrelevant to the discussion? why do you go out of your way to make this as unpleasant as possible? is it to see how I react to your twisting my words, shifting the context, and narrowing the argument so it is no longer what I have said at all? yes, Marcus, you succeed in making me quite annoyed at your inability to stick to what I say, but I have seen your kind quite a lot: people whose distaste for something cause them to _invent_ something that is clearly bad in order to get an easy time fighting it. such propagandistic communication is perhaps the _one_ thing I find most to be disrespected in somebody. | I'd replace the idea of politeness with the notion of civilization and | social order. I often wonder how different suburban neighborhoods I know | would degenerate if the water and power went away or if the police and | emergency support was not available. It's not hard for me to imagine | seemingly nice people turning into cruel people in a short period of | time. If that happened, it wouldn't necessarily be because the | hypothetically cruel people in the degenerate neighborhood didn't have | their own morality. It might be that civilization gives them enough | latitude that consequences of the deep structure of their beliefs are not | superficially evident. well, let's take a similar stretch of imagination and deprive somebody of air. I "often wonder" how people would react if you took away their air supply. it's not hard for me to imagine nice people turning into cruel people in a very short period of time, making a hell of a lot of noise and commotion. but what does that have to do with polite discussion? why do you think this is a valuable comparison to anything we're talking about? do you think a newsgroup is the victim of deprivation of power and water or police and emergency support when somebody is direct and clear and does not cushion every possible criticism so hypersensitive twits won't have anything to react to? you seem to be arguing about the final stages of an all-out war, but who cares what you have to say about that if you are so opposed to it becoming that way? what should have been interesting is to discuss how it all starts and develops. I suspect you don't have a clue. nobody starts off with the insanity you seem to take for granted, just as no conflict starts with depriving people of power and water. I'm beginning to suspect that you are emotionally disturbed by the absence of such necessities of your life as polite conversation in a newsgroup that you don't even _see_ that those who start these things are incredibly rude people who have already dispensed with decency when they start firing at me. imagine starting a war over not being polite enough? who are they _kidding_? you certainly give of an air of wanting me to be blamed for all ills, but being a tad more intelligent than Raffael Cavellero, understand that you have to be more circumventious to achieve your goal of removing all responsibility from those who do what I react to: (1) post a bunch of false accusations, (2) assume the worst without even the possibility of making a mistake, and (3) react as if they have been personally hurt and in need of defending themselves from bodily harm. in short, you are so off the mark that your smug, nasty drivel is obviously completely irrelevant to anything I do or say, and can have no bearing on it except what slander you might make people believe, and I think even you would agree, if you were able to think about it, that such abuse of a medium in order to destroy somebody is cause for mounting a defense. consequently, I'm not sure if you're doing this for the same kind of demonstration purposes as your comrade-in-arms Raffael Cavellero, but it sure looks like you're just as shifty and unable to stick to your arguments as he is. | If a person mainly values a pleasant atmosphere, and someone goes out of | their way to make it unpleasant to see how they'll react, then its easy | to see how the interaction will be violent. I detect the foul smell of hatred in your words, Marcus. why do you have to make this complex issue into a simple black-and-white who's-to-blame? first of all, there is no grounds for anything you're saying here. if anything, people who accuse me Nazi sympathies or accuse me of favoring murder and torture of third-world workers are certainly going out of their way to make it unpleasant, and we already know that one of them did it to see how I'd react. whatever is wrong with you manage to decide that everything is my fault? please take your nicely worded hatred elsewhere, Marcus. I would prefer if you engaged in a little introspection, but I now have to assume that this would only lead to even stronger hatred and destructive desires, complete with the passive-aggressive "politeness" of your words. which sort of proves my point: if you can lie and inflict harm with a smile, are you better or worse than if you do it while it is obvious that you are angry at something? in my view, somebody who acts to destroy while appearing friendly at the same time is bordering on psychotic, and is certainly in no position to speak of pleasant athmospheres. if you have anything to say about the present situation or anything that could be applied to the present situation, I'd be interested in hearing it. as long as you keep making statements that purport to be relevant to the present situation that couldn't even apply to it in a fantasy world, communication with you is indeed impossible, and will never be otherwise. #:Erik