From: mlloyd@westmark.Stanford.EDU (Mike Lloyd)
Subject: Re: Socratic silliness (was Re: Multiple Orientations?)
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 06:30:24 GMT

I think David has neatly addressed d's salient points - better than
I could.  So I'll stick to a different issue, of why I got into
this latest convoluted thread.

tweaver@nyx.cs.du.edu (T.C.Weaver) writes:
: [soc.bi] is a more liberal forum even than "enlightened" Athens...
: which wasn't, really. Especially for women. 

Point taken.  By the by, I'm still looking for more comments over the
censorious tones and hurtful stuff in our less-all-encompassing
past.  Having fielded a little email, I may try to come back and
say more clearly what I was trying to get at before.

:  mlloyd@westmark.Stanford.EDU (Mike Lloyd) writes:
: >OK, so I'm terribly cynical about highly-respected figures, esp. that
: >the likes of Greek philosophers or playwrights of good repute.
: >This is probably because I'm too lazy to read them myself, so
: >I need to justify my ignorance by calling them dumb ... *smirk*
: 
: hehe. Well, we won't hemlock you just yet. Try some Aristophanes, you'll love
: it... really.. Mike? Mike?

Suggestion noted (and you didn't think you could dispose of me that
easily did you? :-)

The point I want to make concerns the motivation for the above (as
queried by d).  I guess it's just another way to express my
disrespect for unproven authority.  I had a flatmate in Edinburgh
who I would upset terribly by saying things against the Queen
(well, her station, not her person), or by telling him God was
female.  I could do the same trick with anyone from Socrates
to Freud (granting them no respect until warranted that is, not
calling them female).  He thought I was *incorrigible*.  {Aside:
I don't think he ever figured out that the kitchen was occupied
by a gang of >bisexuals< that night after the Pear Tree :-)}

Anyway, I digress.  I'm trying to say that it has been my
experience that those I am told I >must< revere as Great Men (almost
always Men) are generally not deserving of their reputation,
in my horrid little personal opinion.  I particularly look
out for people inflating reputations for their own ends;
I think of Shakespeare, lauded beyond all proportion for
what appear to be nationalistic reasons (I once heard Brian
Gould, British MP, call him "The greatest genius who ever lived"
on the BBC.  Poppycock, I say!).

Now I know there's a bad taste of impishness here, because I really
don't know enough to criticise the way I do.  Still, I'd say that
I believe I am more often right than wrong (oh my! that's a boast!)
to presume guilt until shown otherwise.  What I hear of Socrates
doesn't make me particularly weak at the knees in awe of his
stupendous faculties.  He sounds smart, he sounds early, he
sounds like someone with the usual swathe of crap ideas along
with his lasting and impressive ones, and he sounds like someone
we're *supposed* to be in awe of for ill-defined conservative reasons
quite separate from the (no doubt worthy) claims of his works.

And what I particularly resent is that echo of a Latin phrase I
dimly remember and will probably butcher, along the lines of
"dulcia et decorum est, pro patria mori".  The correct 
consonants have slipped away (Colin? Help?) but the burned-in
memory of the unforgivable suggestion that it is somehow right,
proper, nay glorious, to die for one's country, lives on.
Some people kill and die for ideas too.  Me, I avoid such
extremism.  I love ideas, deeply.  I just won't ever >deliberately<
die just because I'm not allowed to say my piece.  I'd far rather
get out if possible, and if not, live a more contained life and
spread what little message I could.  Death is NOT honoroable.
It is a waste.  Sometimes it is necessary - generally, for me,
to stop more of the same waste - but I still abhor it.

Hah.  Enough.  Anyone who thinks I should post this elsewhere
should tell me where - I wouldn't have a clue.

Mike, trying not to fall off his soap-box
-- 
Mike Lloyd, B0/1 h- f- t w- c g+ k+ s m- e? |"Bloody nose and burning eyes
      Retro-hippy, music nut, bi and        | Raised in laughter to the skies"
          backrubber of devotion            |     - Bruce Cockburn
 ....."I suffer from internalized homophonophobia"....."Their, they're".....
Newsgroups: soc.bi