RE: MD No to absolutism

From: Jonathan B. Marder (jonathan.marder@newmail.net)
Date: Sun Jan 12 2003 - 12:55:54 GMT

  • Next message: Platt Holden: "Re: MD No to absolutism"

    Hello David,

    Since you address me personally and with a modicum of civility, I will
    respond.
    Please first re-read ALL THREE sentences of what I previously wrote.

    JONATHAN (previously)
    I've been lurking in the background, pleased to see newcomers coming in
    and
    asking good questions, but mostly distressed to see many large
    "contributions" that appear to serve mostly the poster's ego.
    I struggled through one of those posts to its end where the writer
    signed
    off "Thanks for your time, assholes." Frankly, the writer doesn't
    deserve
    my time.

    To which Matt said:
    I think DMB was refering to how I signed off the post for which he was
    replying: "Please, please, please. Don't be like my asshole friends."

    DMB says:
    That's right. I was responding to Matt's comments with humor. But
    there's
    even more to it than that. I was making a point.

    JONATHAN replies:
    I understand your explanation. Maybe you should have apologised and we
    could leave it at that.
    But no . . . you go on to imply that it is ME who is in the wrong.

    DMB continues:
    The last sentence prior to
    sign-off in question went like this; "Ignore the insults, but address
    the
    frank and direct challenges as if your reputation as a philosopher
    depended
    on it, because it does." And then, as if to test your ability to see
    beyond
    the percieved insults and adress the points being made, I signed off
    with a
    broad meaningless insult toward all readers. "Thanks for your time,
    assholes." Ironcially, Jonathan did the oppostie. He looked beyond the
    points being made and instead focused on the insult. I wondered if some
    hasty poster would fall into this trap. Ha! As if your reputation
    depended
    on it.

    JONATHAN says:
    I think you have done much the same by completely ignoring my first
    sentence above. You also ignored the rest of my post (the one that
    started this "No to absolutism" thread. That being the case, DON'T YOU
    THINK YOU ARE BEING JUST A TINY BIT OF A HYPOCRITE???
    I don't know ho many kilobytes there are in Lila and ZAMM together, but
    I bet that you have personally posted many, many more kilobytes than
    that. I'd have no problem if you matched Pirsig's level, but IMHO your
    voluminous contributions (e.g. 83 kbytes so far this weekend) contain
    little of value - quantity rather than quality. That's what makes your
    insult all the more insulting.

    I don't deny that you occasionally produce something worthwhile. The
    biggest irony is that I align strongly with your liberal socialist
    outlook; in the "political compass" test, I found myself closer to you
    than anyone else. That makes me all the more uncomfortable to see you
    use rambling and flawed rationalizations to support the cause.

    Courteously yours,

    Jonathan

    MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
    Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
    MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net

    To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
    http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jan 12 2003 - 12:57:28 GMT