Dialectic
Mar 2nd, 2005, 01:51 AM
I know that I sometimes come across as a blunt, condescending asshole to some people (generally, but not always, other blunt, condescending assholes). As this is not likely to change, I want to give a few reasons why I post the way I do.
One very simple reason is lack of time. I simply don't have enough of it to run through lengthy posts in repetitive week-long conversations with anonymous people about subject matter which has already been developed and clarified at length in both this forum and the brighter and more compassionate minds of the world. This is part of the reason why the Declarations, Rules of Engagement, and Integral Slated forums exist: to give a solid grounding in basic and fundamental moral/cognitive issues so that we may further push the boundaries of understanding of every possible level of development here.
The next reason has to do with "pattern-interrupts." I want to use a conversation I had with Anarchrist a few months ago as an example. Quite a few people on this and other forums were ripping into "The Last Samurai." Yes, there was a legitimate reason to do it: White dude lives, becomes a Samurai, and gets the girl through a set of highly improbable circumstances and accomplishments. Asian dudes die. As is the case in uncontrolled and angry discussion, however, people began to level accusations at the movie which were objectively untrue. Anarchrist, a person whose intelligence and morality I deeply respect, was a part of this, and I was very surprised that he was accusing the movie of depicting and characterizing races and ideas in a way that it quantifiably did not do.
I made a comment, then, about how he was in danger of slipping into a dark and closed tunnel: you start changing facts to fit your accusations, you start on the road to fanaticism.
This was not well-received, and Anarchrist made it quite clear that he thought I was being an asshole, and I think there may even have been a break in his posting after that (we're cool now).
Could I have handled it in a less threatening and abrupt manner? Certainly, yes. I could've made a much lengthier post, made the tone more understanding and compassionate, and gone through, in a polite and unthreatening way, each factually erroneous point that he and others made. Frankly, I didn't have the time to do it, and more, I wanted to make certain that what I said had not only an intellectual but also emotional impact, which long posts tend not to do.
Fighting 44s is not here to breed fanatics or loyalists. That would be EASY. Given the sheer number of angry, fanatical men who have come to our site and the rate at which they post, we could have encouraged that anger and irrationality, fanned the flames of their fanaticism, and actually swayed them into doing some fairly significant and possibly damaging things to people and institutions around them in real life. Along with this, we could have made AT LEAST a few grand by now selling merchandise to our loyal and fanatical followers doing almost no work: all it would take is the occasional "Whitey sucks! Fuck Team America! Go shoot Bai Ling!" and a simple merchandise page.
But we have NOT done that. That's not what we set out to fucking do. We set out to plant a few big ideas in the world, to meet cool people, and to OPEN MINDS.
So this means that when we hear bullshit, we call it out. Yes, we do it 'cause it's just fun and we're not above being the occasional asshole, but we also do it because we don't want to see minds going to waste fixating on stupid, useless, and wrong thinking. And we don't have time to take every member by the hand and leave him/ her through it.
One very simple reason is lack of time. I simply don't have enough of it to run through lengthy posts in repetitive week-long conversations with anonymous people about subject matter which has already been developed and clarified at length in both this forum and the brighter and more compassionate minds of the world. This is part of the reason why the Declarations, Rules of Engagement, and Integral Slated forums exist: to give a solid grounding in basic and fundamental moral/cognitive issues so that we may further push the boundaries of understanding of every possible level of development here.
The next reason has to do with "pattern-interrupts." I want to use a conversation I had with Anarchrist a few months ago as an example. Quite a few people on this and other forums were ripping into "The Last Samurai." Yes, there was a legitimate reason to do it: White dude lives, becomes a Samurai, and gets the girl through a set of highly improbable circumstances and accomplishments. Asian dudes die. As is the case in uncontrolled and angry discussion, however, people began to level accusations at the movie which were objectively untrue. Anarchrist, a person whose intelligence and morality I deeply respect, was a part of this, and I was very surprised that he was accusing the movie of depicting and characterizing races and ideas in a way that it quantifiably did not do.
I made a comment, then, about how he was in danger of slipping into a dark and closed tunnel: you start changing facts to fit your accusations, you start on the road to fanaticism.
This was not well-received, and Anarchrist made it quite clear that he thought I was being an asshole, and I think there may even have been a break in his posting after that (we're cool now).
Could I have handled it in a less threatening and abrupt manner? Certainly, yes. I could've made a much lengthier post, made the tone more understanding and compassionate, and gone through, in a polite and unthreatening way, each factually erroneous point that he and others made. Frankly, I didn't have the time to do it, and more, I wanted to make certain that what I said had not only an intellectual but also emotional impact, which long posts tend not to do.
Fighting 44s is not here to breed fanatics or loyalists. That would be EASY. Given the sheer number of angry, fanatical men who have come to our site and the rate at which they post, we could have encouraged that anger and irrationality, fanned the flames of their fanaticism, and actually swayed them into doing some fairly significant and possibly damaging things to people and institutions around them in real life. Along with this, we could have made AT LEAST a few grand by now selling merchandise to our loyal and fanatical followers doing almost no work: all it would take is the occasional "Whitey sucks! Fuck Team America! Go shoot Bai Ling!" and a simple merchandise page.
But we have NOT done that. That's not what we set out to fucking do. We set out to plant a few big ideas in the world, to meet cool people, and to OPEN MINDS.
So this means that when we hear bullshit, we call it out. Yes, we do it 'cause it's just fun and we're not above being the occasional asshole, but we also do it because we don't want to see minds going to waste fixating on stupid, useless, and wrong thinking. And we don't have time to take every member by the hand and leave him/ her through it.