From: joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Redefining Self
Date: 27 Aug 92 23:14:00 GMT

Mara (mara@panix.com) writes:

    >joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore) said:

    >     >>>I have in mind to be setting myself up a conceptual family....
    >     >>>I'd like to ask Mara to be my mother....

    >and I answered:

    > >>I cannot say either yes or no, because we _are_ a conceptual
    > >>family....

    >to which Joel continues:

    > >Yes I know, or I'm beginning to understand.... But I also have
    > >idea to create a mini-family structure of my own here, using
    > >ideas that never quite seemed to work for me in my blood family.

    >I'm not sure what that is-- to create a family using _ideas_.

My abstract thought and my concrete actions always seem to get tangled
together.

    >Even my own freeform notions of families (I've done any number of
    >emotional adoptions, a couple of which-- one from the net-- are very
    >strong) have not yet been based on ideas at all, but on falling into
    >feelings with the other people involved.

Yes, I think this went through my head when I originally posted.  But it also
seems to be part of my persona explicitly to choose my friendships, not all
but certainly part of the time.  I guess I work actively to create a context
for friendship with people, at the same time that I try hard to avoid
pigeonholing them.  So maybe:  I create a structure, offer it to someone as a
sign that I wish their friendship; then they, in responding, change and adapt
it, and sometimes something is born.

I can be very methodical.  I can be, I think, very spontaneous.  I am probably
paradoxical.  This post was created of some need to play with structures, and
to tell certain people, in an unconventional way, that I appreciated them and
would like to know them better.  I think you understood this....

> ME   > >>>Jess, would you be the younger brother I never had?
> MARA > >>Does this mean that I get to be Jess's mother too?
> ME   >I don't think so, necessarily.

    >Not that I'd mind, but he's had a perfectly fine one already, and I
    >have no need to compete.

Well, my mum was a fine mom, too, despite all our inabilities to communicate.
I don't think I'd try to replace her, so you wouldn't be competing.  Any other
mother would be... the same, a little, and something different.

I think of an old friend, Rob, who once explained to me how he had a Dad, a
father, and a Mom's-current-livein-boyfriend.  They overlapped; and they were
different.

    > >Under this *new* definition of family, I'm the other people's brother
    > >or son (or, heavens, father) and they're my brothers, sisters, parents
    > >or whatever.  But they're not each other's, unless they choose to be.

    >So one of the ideas is that relationships are based on mutual (I
    >assume mutual) choice?  Now that is very different from the
    >ordinary family model, isn't it?

Sort of (taking my own blood family as the model -- dubious).  The labels
seemed to come regardless (``brother'', ``sister'', ``parent''), but the
relationships were kind of pick-and-choose.

    > >Joel,
    > >wondering who or what ``Iolanthe'' is

    >An operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan-- the first I ever learned by heart.

    Hey -- like *all* of the parts?

Joel,
      who has seen four G&S operettas, and struggled hard to follow
      the words

   hecateae@cs.man.ac.uk         Don't dream it; be it.
>  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.