From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Bullshit (was: *Any* kind of r.a.b. split, or at least a *serious*
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 18:32:53 GMT

In article <24DEC92.06545989@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:

>Oh really?  I will quote these words of Barbara's for you again:
>
>>>>People who engage in what passes for communication here have to 
>>>>understand that we, collectively, form a brand-new culture, one 
>>>>that has a life of its own.  Not everyone is comfortable with its 
>>>>manners and rituals as they've more or less evolved, just as not 
>>>>everyone in the world is comfortable eating with knives and forks, 
>>>>or with chopsticks; it's not Their Way.  But it's the way it is 
>>>>*here*. 
>
>How would you interpret these remarks?

Barbara seems to me to be saying what countless people who've studied this
medium have said. Namely, that the *feel* of online discourse is different
from that of other kinds of discourse, and that there are different norms
here. There's one example in this very posting--at a party, I don't
normally quote the person I'm talking to in the course of replying to him
or her.

Yet I'm quoting you quoting Barbara here. 

Barbara is also addressing the fact that it's easy for people to feel
offended here. This medium makes it easy to objectify folks you're talking
to, and it concomitantly makes it easier to feel objectified. I believe
that you have fallen victim to such a feeling here.

And at the same time, you're objectifying those who disagree with you.
One of the hazards of Usenet is that it's very easy to attribute bad
motives to those who disagree with you, and to filter all subsequent
comments from those people through your expectations that they have bad
motives. That is what you are doing to Barbara here.

What Barbara is trying to get it, but what I think you're unwilling to see
in her posting, is *not* a *justification for exclusion*, but an *explanation
for discomfort*.

>And let me again quote these words of Barbara's:
>
>>>>this goes with the territory.  One person's attempt at formality 
>>>>and courtesy will inevitably be interpreted by *some*one, *some*where 
>>>>as rudeness or indecisiveness.  There's no end to the ways we are 
>>>>capable of misinterpreting one another. 

Are you saying there *is* an end to the ways we are capable of
misinterpreting one another? And I thought *I* was an optimist about the
human condition.
>And I said

>>>Ever read the Gettysburg Address? 
>
>*Have* you ever read it?  

Yes, of course. Most recently in Garry Wills's article in THE ATLANTIC.

>Can you say that any attempt at courtesy and politeness is rendered
>meaningless because someone, somewhere, won't understand it?  Is there no
>common ground of civility?  Of decency?  Of honor?

Not only can I *not* say this, but Barbara didn't say it, either.

>If there is no such common ground, why do we bother talking at all?

There can simultaneously be "common ground" and "no end to the ways we are
capable of misinterpreting each other." Barbara did not say there is no
common ground.



--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost 
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