The List War Did Not Take Place

[domine vobiscuits]

There may indeed be no resolution.  But there has also always been something
a little unsettling about the occasionally high levels of emotional
investment that show up on a cyber reading list.  The conflict itself
becomes a little silly because it is so inconsequential.  The idea that the
List is a space for the discussion of ideas has been almost lost and
replaced with a space for quiff-airing.  Regardless, it's rarely
(particularly under its present mode) a space where any form of change is
fostered, and there is rarely a changing of minds.  It has, however, become
a space for playing language games in order to perpetuate attacks and
conflict.

If you don't like it, short circuit the attacks at the sender's level: don't
respond to it.  In this particular mode, especially with regard to flame
wars &c., I suspect that there might be a level of participation in conflict
simply by acting as a receiver (or, more importantly, by acknowledging your
role as receiver by responding to the flame/flame bait).

It's a language environment...you create it...

Keith W

Terrence:
> It may be as you say,  the case for the world, for the list,
> for  "poor fallen corrupt human nature. " Thus to hope for
> or struggle towards resolution is hopeless and perhaps even
> harmful. The conflict may in fact be caused by the
> antagonistic relation between  two polar dimensions of the
> human experience or human condition or human nature.
> Moreover, there is no reason why the conflict needs to be
> resolved.  TRP seems to take this position, not the position
> of the dialecticians Brown, Marcuse,  Marx, Schiller. But
> TRP does not advocate conflict of the sort practiced here.
> No, and if human potentialities are to realize themselves
> freely, surely the sensuous, long subjugated to reason, when
> it reasserts itself, or even asserts its privilege as the
> taking of what ever pleasure may be had in accepting the
> hopelessness of the situation, must be prevented from doing
> so in a destructive and savage manner.
>