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

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (57554)	9/15/2002 7:42:41 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 82486

None of your post addresses the fact of my post which was about the ugly and silly pantomine of E's danger to the world! As to the article you posted, I don't see anything in that article that anyone here has disagreed with. Naturally people on SI can be both principled and unprincipled; just as they can in their backyard or on the phone. After all they are the same people! Read that as often as it takes to register. Naturally the pot-bellied guy with the beard and small feet driving the white van around the school yard could be posting on SI. And naturally people should exercise an abundance of caution when getting to know others. It would be foolish to repeat your banking PIN number out loud with strangers stranding nearby, and it would seem incautious to display certain information on a public bulletin board, whether it be in a public library or on an SI web site where it can be read by anyone including millions of people who are not SI members. As to the fact that people can play dungeons and dragons on SI? Well? They can play it anywhere, can't they? It does not make them any less real or authentic. A lot of very talented people make a very good living by playing roles in a place called Hollyweird. But none of that is pertinent or justifying of X's carte blanche dehumanization of the SI investment community. These people signed a contract with SI in order to share their thoughts and feelings on investment and other topics of common interest. If you had wanted to interact with animations you could have bought a Nintendo and made love to half the characters and killed off the other half! You CAN do that with pretend characters. Hell, you can do anything. But you CANNOT do that to people on SI because they are REAL PEOPLE...and every single solitary one of us knows that.; and that is why we have a contract and terms of use in order that rights of person may be observed and enforced.

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (57554)	9/15/2002 8:38:33 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

As you still seem rather confused over people being the same people whether or not they are on the phone or in the pool--just expressing different aspects of their being with different levels of censoring--I will try to make it clearer for you. It does seem to me that you got drawn into an embarrassing position because someone else created a dog in the manger dichotomy and was too prideful to let go of it. I don't know that I have ever discussed a more ridiculous question than whether or not the people who post here are "real people", rather or not they are "knowable", or whether their use of different names (which all people do) in different sets and settings invalidates their claims of being authentic humans. I say again: it is DAMN STUPID! For some reason, some find it necessary to depersonalize and dehumanize people, and that is what this is about. An opinion that you are irrelevant does not impact on whether or not you exist--or on whether you think or feel. It does not change the fact that not a single one of us thinks otherwise. We ALL know we exist. It is not in doubt! Some might simply say that it doesn't matter--as we don't exist for them. One originally said we did not exist for anyone. Then it was admitted that we exist, but that we are not knowable. But then came an insurmountable problem: if one insists carte blanche that people are not knowable, then one runs into the tiny barrier of personal experience, and the testimony of SI people who DO know one another and who share pictures, web-sites, dinners, vacations, letters, phone calls, etc.! That argument is thus reduced to ashes. So a person admits that people exist and are knowable but not personally! But, again...a wee problem! Personal experience! They were met face-to-face! At this point one is boxed into a corner where one must either withdraw a ridiculous dehumanization against members of SI, or retreat to admitting that there exists no trust in the interpretation of ones senses in the existence of these real and knowable people. This latter would be a queer position to adopt if a person continued to claim one of these "unknowable" persons as "friend"-LOL! So what was stated by another was irrational--but was it intentionally so, or is that person dim? We have no proof of the latter, in any event. What does it mean? I think the answer to that is clear. Some would depersonalize and dehumanize all the people interacted with on SI. At this point the problem does not invite a rational solution, but demands instead a psychological one. Some have been sorely mistreated here, and may perhaps have developed bizarre defenses. Many could speculate on the intrapsychic dynamics which inform such a bizarre motive (and some would not mind such speculation because in the dehumanized world we do not matter (to them) as people, and they (supposedly) do not matter to us as people). Nevertheless, I think I will leave such speculation to speculators! I am quite sure I can rise above the claim that I don't exist; and I have every confidence, JC--that you can, too! If anyone here TRULY believes that the people were not real and knowable, then how would they account for the registration process, and how would they rationalize the purpose of the terms of use? How would they explain the real penalties which are exacted against real people for infractions of those rules and regulations intended to protect the rights of real people? Surely, SI ADMIN. considers the people to be real, and thus capable of being wronged or harmed. Surely the people who request sanctions from SI Admin. believe that others are real. Why would anyone in the face of such evidence claim that these people are not real. When someone claims rights have been violated and requests the ruling and intervention of SI--all of that is de facto acknowledgement of the premises. It is one thing to claim that people may be devious, cunning, cruel, and unprincipled on SI (just as they clearly are in face-to-face, although they likely censor their cruelty a great deal more in face-to-face). People are people whether they talk on the phone or over the fence; whether they sing in the shower or walk in the woods. But was it said that these people are not good, or that they are only bad? Or was it said that they do not exist--that they are not human? If people do not take offence at being declared inhuman, and by extension, dispensable--then I really think they must have a very low sense of self esteem, and a negligible sense of self worth. It was good to see Poet put someone in their place a few days back. Poet was saying loudly and clearly: "You may not think that YOU are real, but you will not reduce ME to a "disembodied voice". I know I'm real, I know I'm human, and others know these things...and I won't take any more of your dehumanizing CRAP! :-) This helped me to get off the fence and decide whether or not I would allow respect and sympathy to win out over watching real people be dehumanized and taunted. I had to decide whether it was rational to say nothing while real people were attacked, dehumanized, mocked, and scorned by one who claims to believe she is interacting with vacant, emotionless, irrelevant LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET...rather than passionate human beings seeking to find and give something of HUMAN benefit on SI. IF WE ARE NOT REAL PEOPLE, THEN WHAT ARE WE? People on SI are real. They signed a contract as real people. And they agreed to observe certain rules of conduct and propriety in their interactions on the bulletin board. The contract intends to protect their interests and rights as real people. And all of us have every right to share our opinions about other posters and the appropriateness of their behaviour and actions. Some may pretend" <g> they are not real; but the rest of us will act as we see fit in discussing real people and in interacting with each other and forming friendships. I heard it claimed that people were being unfair to Christopher by claiming that Christopher could be unfair to Poet! Do you see how silly that is!!?