From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 01 2005 - 21:09:23 GMT
>My question is this.
>
>Is all fair in love and war, water off a duck's back ... or should we
>be rejecting the kind of direct personal negative statements in Mark's
>post as unacceptable, however incidental they are or however well
>intentioned the central point or aim ?
>
>I'm genuinely curious as to the concensus.
>Ian
I guess my only comment would be the motivation to publicly proclaim that
"I'm not reading so-and-so". One can make the decision to ignore all of
Arlo's posts, and Arlo would have no hard feelings. However, if one decided
to email the group and say "I ignore Arlo!", Arlo would wonder what the
point of that was.
What he stated, in other words, is the obvious. All of us select and filter
our emails, have certain interlocutors we read and others we ignore.
Doesn't this go without saying. Should I publish to the list the names of
those who I deem "ignore worthy"? Should we all? For what point?
Certainly, Mark, yourself, all of us should freely read and respond to
those posts we value. We do anyways. Who can disagree with that? Some of us
value collusion, some of us value disagreement, some pragmatics, some
epistemology. We all filter. We all make value judgements. That's life.
So, the point of Mark's email, the only one that I can see, was to publicly
say "I think so-and-so is unworthy". And the intent of that is subtle
disparagement. Were I to post a public statement that "I will no longer be
wasting my time reading Ian's delusions that there is common ground between
Arlo and Platt" :-) doesn't that smack of nothing more than my needing to
say to the group that I think Ian is an idiot? What would be the point?
Does Ian need to know I am ignoring his posts? Does the group need to know
that I am ignoring Ian? Why?
Don't get me wrong, I take no offense at Mark's post (maybe because I was
not among the list of shunned... yet), I just question the value in the
motive. The underlying act is something we all do all the time. But, why
declare a List of the Shunned?
Arlo (who publicly declares that Ian is NOT on his List of the Shunned)
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