From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Purity
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:35:46 GMT

[Graydon]
	Once upon a time I thought I ought to go around opening people's
	minds by whatever means came ready to hand.  I turned out to be
	half decent at it, even, but I grew up a little and stopped.
[Me]
	Well, you stopped, anyway.  Is it so much harder to say
	something like "labels don't work for me," and try to elicit
	from people memories of situations in which *they* have been
	unpleasantly labeled (an almost universal experience)?  And how
	is it less "adult" to do so?  Especially by comparison to
	responding using the diction of a three-year-old?

[Graydon]
	Ok - it is possible to use 'an instance of an human being', but it
	doesn't communicate clearly as often as 'a people'.
[Me]
	"A people" doesn't communicate much except that you have a
	serious grammatical affectation.  You still haven't said what
	this does that other, perfectly acceptable, English doesn't
	also do.

	"An instance of a human being" communicates not one whit more
	than "a human being", which in turn says nothing more than "a
	person."

	Let's whittle it down a little more.  How about "I'm me"?

	A basis for this: some psychologists have found that "I'm me" is
	precisely the response given most often by people who have
	most completely accepted themselves.  The less the self-acceptance,
	the more baroque, or off-the-wall, or affected the response.

	"I'm a people" might be a good response from someone with a
	multiple personality disorder.  Hey, let's go with that one.
	So, Graydon: Do you all accept each other?

[Graydon]
	If I want other people to respect which shutters I have closed
	in my mind, it behooves me to respect theirs.  Which means, to
	me, that I can refuse to provide them with a label for myself,
	or do my best to refuse their attempts to label me, but that I
	ought to leave my opinions of their shutters out of things as
	much as I can.
[Me]
	Is this your roundabout way of saying that "A people" is the most
	polite response you can think of?

	Also, when you say "other people", do you mean "other peoples"?
	Or is there only one "peoples"?

[Graydon]
	A capacity to believe that one has an understanding of universal,
	or even very general, applicability is a trait I associate with
	adolescence and madness.
[Me]
	Understanding of what?  Everything?  Then agreed.  But what does
	that have to do with the subject at hand?

[Graydon]
	Ever run into H. Beam Piper's test for an adult?  [Your]
	reaction fails it.  The defintion in question, which I continue
	to find a good thumb rule, asserts that someone is probably an
	adult if, when you say something they do not understand, ask
	you what you mean, rather than telling you you are crazy.
[Me]
	I didn't say you were crazy.  I asked about a third possibility:
	How about when people smile condescendingly and erase you from
	their list of people with whom they can expect to have an
	adult conversation?

	But OK, OK, Graydon, I give in, I take the bait, I'm buying
	the ticket and getting in line: just what DO you mean by
	when you respond "A people"?

---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: soc.bi