From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Sugar Sphinx)
Subject: Obscuring One's Message (was Polemics)
Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 06:53:04 GMT


Talking about the current thread on polemics, Stephen F. Schaffner wrote the
following to Jesse Carnes: 
> What they're saying to you is that, right now, among these readers, your
> style is obscuring your message and may be hurting the cause of Christ.

Several years ago, a Seventh-Day Adventist named David Buxton posted about
200 Vatican-bashing articles to talk.religion.misc.  He kept up the heat
for weeks; he had culled anti-Rome items from dozens of sources, and sent
them all along with his own commentaries added for emphasis.  (Usually they
were comments about how anyone who went to church on Sunday was just as bad
as the Roman Catholics.)

After a few months of this, he posted an article that said something like
"I've been told via e-mail that perhaps what I've been posting here is giving
people a mistaken idea about my religious faith and practice, and what I
consider important."

Steve Dyer (who grew up Roman Catholic) replied with something along these
lines: "On the contrary, I've found your posts most revealing about what your
religious faith is like, and about what you personally consider important."
Mr Dyer's implication was obvious: if Mr Buxton considered the love of Christ
more important than bashing other religions, Mr Buxton would have said
something about Jesus at least once or twice.  But he spent all his time
attacking other religious groups, to the exclusion of virtually anything else.

Through his selection of topics and style of writing, Mr Buxton revealed
something about himself that he would never have said outright.  Perhaps it
was something he himself did not even know.


How does this apply to the current thread?  Well, people often say things they
don't mean -- but rarely does anybody say things for months on end unless he
means them.  I have flamed once in a while, but I've never done so for any
extended period of time.

If someone spends a lot of time on something, and repeats himself over and
over again, and ignores comments about style or arrogance, it seems unlikely
to me that this is a result of saying stuff he doesn't really mean.

Someone in a thread about St Mary used the subject "Our Lady of Guacamole"; I
suppose he didn't know it was insulting, or he did know but didn't care.  In
either case, that tells us something worth knowing.  The author of the article
gave away clues about what we could expect within; had he written the subject
line and then deleted it, those clues would have been missing.  We would not
have known him as well as we otherwise might.

People are now telling Jesse Carnes that he's condescending, or in some other
way rotten, and that this is interfering with his message.  He's asked them to
show where he's been condescending.  I don't know of an absolute standard of
condescention, so I can't really help in figuring out whether he's guilty.
But if he writes something that you think is inappropriate, and he cannot
figure out how it is inappropriate, then that's something worth knowing.  It
says that you & he have very different ideas about what is acceptable in
discussions.  You probably won't be able to fix it and settle on a single
standard -- but just knowing that you have different standards is useful.

The point is that Mr Carnes's style, and his standards for discussion, cannot
obscure "his message" -- they are part of Mr Carnes himself.  Artificially
limiting these facets of himself is to deny others access to his natural style
of writing; it deprives them of clues they can use to evaluate "his message".
That will not be doing anyone any favors; neither the messenger nor the
potential audience will benefit from it.

(Personally, I find Mr Carnes's style of writing exactly consistent with the
 content of his posts.  I do not understand why others believe there is any
 disparity.)


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"Some people, very intellegent people I might add, do not realise how much
 they inadvertantly reveal about themselves when they speak, and then are
 taken captive by it.  No wonder we are warned to speak little." - Dave Talaga