From: an5934@anon.penet.fi
Subject: No Subject
Organization: Anonymous contact service
X-Anonymously-To: alt.culture.indonesia
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 21:34:06 GMT

______________________________________________________________________ DA

   /\   Why all the Threads and Flames ? What's its Relation to
  /  \  Personality as the Identity of an Individuals Posting Them  ?
  \  /  @}--v--- "viewed psychologically"
   \/
______________________________________________________________________

Recently there were discussions on this newsgroup concerning
Indonesian equivalents of English terms, Indonesian computer
language, corruption in Indonesia and many others. Some even
related those issues to "pride of being Indonesian" and  one
participant felt "raped" due to other's using English language 
in aci. And the discussions seem to be hotter and hotter still, 
especially after there was one guy posting a religious article --
meaning is, religion-related article, but not religious in its
contents in my opinion.

But first of all, I'd like to emphasize that this article is not
necessarily a summary of all articles submitted to the newsgroup.
But rather, in this article, I hope that I could expose my own
observations about the trends of articles in this newsgroup, and
other newsgroups as well.

Probably, like in other newsgroups, general issues and opinions in
forms of articles and letters will usually be followed by disputes
and polemics, and sometimes even flames. My standard taken
procedure for such threads is just skipping them.. because most of
the time, the discussions are more of the personal aspects of the
writers. I'm sure that most people are not interested in buying a
magazine solely consists of "letters to the editor" full of flames
and derogatory remarks.

@}---v--

People has their own personalities, due to their family background,
their social interactions with people around them, and many other
factors evident to most of the readers here. In addition to that
fact, I'd also like to guess that most of the readers feel that
they are different from other people writing articles here, their
coworkers, their students, and even their parents and siblings. The
personality turns out to be the key factor which differentiate one
person from another, one homo sapien from the others. 

But such consciousness of one's uniqueness in role and position
among people around him/her does not come instantaneously. It takes
about three years or so (?) for an infant to know his/her name, and
it takes some longer times for him/her to refer to him/herselves
using that name. 

In most cases, infants use their names in nominative cases. The
concept of possesive cases, pronouns and adjectives come later as
they grow up. In the earliest development of infants, sometimes
they don't even realize that their own parts of bodies are under
their control. Parents must have been aware of this fact, since
there are alot of infants with thumb-sucking habits right after
their pacifiers are taken off. 

Continuous interactions with people around him/her makes an infant
realize that he/she is somewhat different from other people. He/she
will soon realize that, if he's called Joni, nobody else is called
Joni except for himself. That's one of several reasons why using
the same names for father and sons is not an advisable practice for
the son's personality development. Then Joni begins to use "I" or
"saya" "gua" "aku" "urang" "beta" "awak", or, personal pronouns.
Later on, he will start using "punya saya" "punya gua" "mine", etc.

But, unfortunately, other people are also using "I", and there are
not just a few people using it. In the USA alone, there are about
two hundred million people using "I" to refer to themselves. Each
love their own "I" and sanctify it. What are "mine" is usually
better than what are "yours", "I" am better than "you", and so on
so forth. {Up to this point, unhonest people tend to say.. Nope, I
don't feel that way...., but by simply saying this, they have said
implicitly that: Nope, I don't feel that way.. like others do}

@}---v---

Then what's the relationship between foregoing paragraphs and this
newsgroup, or Usenet newsgroups in general ?

Every person in the newsgroups refer to themselves by "I", and each
person has the same right (from Above) of calling themselves "I".
I have rights to write an article about that I like Bobby Brown,
how awesome he is for ME, and how meaningful his songs for ME. 

But there may be other "I"s, at the other ends, who don't like
Bobby Brown, or even hate him. They will read my article and find
a sentence like "I like Bobby Brown". Unconsciously, this sentence
will bring uneasy feeling to them, as if they DO like Bobby Brown.
They don't, and there's a sentence stating that "I like Bobby
Brown". Their selves have been offended by such statements. The
most likely response is: "I DON'T like Bobby Brown, why did you say
that I LIKE Bobby Brown ?".

Hey, wait a minute.
I'm sure that fellow readers have already had a clue, what's going
on here. There's a misunderstanding which I goes to whom. That's
because everybody's using the same "I" (In uppercase too).

By writing a follow-up article simply stating that "Hey you, I
don't like Bobby Brown", the people who hate Bobby Brown have
restored their identity, or defending their selves from unvoluntary
changes done by others (which is not the case). This will trigger
a recursive process, since there may be other Bobby Brown's fans
feeling offended by such articles.

@}---v---

It could be very messy, "I" think to keep on going like this, since
there are approximately five billion "I"s in this planet alone. The
more "I"s involved, the more severe the arguments could be. Look at
the newsgroup alt.society.china, with total "I" population on its
mainland alone at about one billion, and several millions in other
continents. 

Therefore, it's imperative to clear up the difference between "I"
and "not-I", before and during writing, or responding to, articles.

*End of Part 1*
B
___________________________________________________________________

I'm looking forward for responses from fellow readers of aci before
continuing the articles. Please, remember that "I" in this article
refers to my "I", not yours :-) 
Greetings for all readers, and even though I prefer to be anonymous
at the current time, I could tell that I am of Chinese descendant,
I was born in Indonesia but spent most of my time in the USA.  
Thumbs up to you, LiangHoei, with your "Buku Lagu2 Kecil", and I'm
looking forward for your next postings. They indeed gave some 
fresh atmosphere in this newsgroup.

Thank you. 
Esc(ape).

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