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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Poet who wrote (5806)	2/14/2001 12:58:32 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"to call her "morally corrupt" goes too far, IMO." Morning Poet I think if you are going to put words in quotes, they should be the actual words they wrote, don't you? There is a difference between "corrupt" and "bankrupt". What that distinction is will have to wait. I must go now, to my lowly profession, drawing water, hewing wood. AHGGGGG Have a good day. I'm glad you are X's friend. Greg

To: Poet who wrote (5806)	2/14/2001 1:21:35 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

I will correct myself. X personally may not be morally corrupt. Some of her friends who I know and respect assure me she is not, and that in "real" life she is actually a very nice and highly moral person. I haven't seen any direct evidence of that here on SI, but you're right, I am premature in condemning X the person without more knowledge, particularly in the face of such assurances from people I have grown to respect. (And I will say that you are moving into that category rapidly, if that matters to you.) But I do consider some--many--of her posts to be morally corrupt. As you say, we only show pieces of ourselves here and develop cyber personalities which are divergent from our real personalities. (Is this cyber-schitzophrenia?). But the pieces of her she chooses to share where I can read them, and the cyber personality she chooses to present as, are, IMO, morally corrupt. So I will correct myself, or perhaps simply be more explicit. I consider the cyber-personality X the Unknown to be morally corrupt. But just as a highly moral novelist may write a first-person novel in the persona of a highly corrupt, dedadent, and immoral protagonist, it is quite possible that the real life person behind the persona X the Unknown may be a very nice, highly moral person. Indeed, if I can believe the evidence of people who know her, that seems to be the case. But I the X the Unknown persona to be a waste and abuse of an obviously high intelligence. For myself, I consider intelligence a gift to be used wisely and appropriately, like any other gift. Just as I abhor physical bullying -- just because Billy is stronger than Danny doesn't mean it's okay for Billy to beat Danny up -- I abhor intellectual bullying. Unfortunately, intellectual bullying happens just as physical bullying does. I quit Mensa when I realized that the members of Mensa, despite being selected for intelligence, were no more or less nice than any other people. (At that time, in my early 20s, I had the illusion that "smart" people would be nicer than less smart people, and that I would improve myself more associating with them than associating with people of average intelligence. Boy was I wrong.) But I think there is something wrong about people who have been given the gift of intelligence using it to bully those who have less of that gift. So I regret the choice of persona X the Person has made. Who knows. Maybe someday X the Person and I will meet in real life and find out that, egad and gadzooks, we actually can like each other. Stranger things have happened (though I can't offhand think of one right now! <g>)