wmoore

See??

Toontje

Leave me out of your nonsense, please.

You could have quoted Ghandi without mentioning me......

USA & Pakistan

The irony, of course, is that you are (or appear to be) defending "Retire To Italy" by telling us to treat others as we would like to be treated, when in fact, we are boycotting her posts because she is not treating others as she would (i am assuming) like to be treated.

Retire to Italy is in fact handing out misleading, irrelevent and erroneous information and I for one would expect no less than a boycott and some really bad karma for purposely trying to screw with other peoples lives.

You are batting for the wrong team and I find you monologues boring and any point that you are trying to make gets very lost in all the B.S. And again, I am treating you as I would like to be treated if i were posting such pompus crap.

(Although that one line about the the World According To Ray was a good one.)

Marnee

eugene_lyubov

You are a thinker!

Once again, my apology for failure to be lucid. There is a misunderstanding (and that's where the irony is lurking). Re-read what I wrote about the nature of respect. I am not against what you call “boycotting.” Neither am I opposed to preventing "misleading, irrelevance, and errors." I am simply against denigration, belittling and the like. Pillorying someone in a demeaning way for pure amusement wreaks silent damage in the soul. Maybe the context of my remarks will be clearer if you glance again at some of the messages other users had posted before I initially interjected.

About pomposity: it is recruited for no other ends than eliciting light-heartedness and enlivening boredom.

ian-mstm

Whose soul? If someone screws up, I take it as my duty to inform them that the brains that god gave them are as useless as tits on a bull. The pillory is a time honored tradition of public ridicule - and I hold myself up to be the judge of stupidity and foolishness. I have great sympathy for those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in unfortunate circumstances, but I have no sympathy for those who, apparently, go out of their way to make life difficult for themselves.

You, for example, are probably a perfectly nice person full of wit and able to carry on a conversation on a variety of topics, but you come across as a pompous ass! Your use of flowery language, while somewhat amusing as an exercise in self-aggrandisement, defeats its own purpose by causing those who might otherwise read it, to simply skip over it and move on with their life.

Normally, I might engage you in a battle of wits... but I'm pretty sure that anything you'd have to say would so utterly bore me to tears that I'm not going to bother. I've already wasted several minutes of my life on this message - precious minutes that I'll never get back!

Ian

Rete

A sign of respect is to converse with others in the language and level of your fellow conversants so that they are not made to feel inferior. You chose instead to wax poetic on a level far removed from the common language of a newsgroup such as this. One need only to read a few posts to ascertain the common language used by the members of this forum.

In reality your posts are just as denigrating and belittling as those posts you say you are protesting against.

I do hope you don't fall from the high horse you are riding.

Rete

Just Jenney

Must be so difficult to type all that when you've got to flip through a thesaurus to get every other word you're going to write.

I've always found it ironically funny that the people who think they sound like the smartest ones in the room are the ones no one listens to, because they are so wrapped up in listening to themselves speak that they lose everyone else's attention. Instead of sounding intelligent they sound arrogant and self-absorbed, as well as completely insensitive to those around them. Your posts are excellent examples of this.

Bottom line is, this Retire to Italy person is a troll. She gives out wrong information deliberately. The worst part is, unlike other trolls, she expresses her misinformation in such a way that it hides the fact that she's a troll. That could lead someone to take her seriously and that could MAJORLY mess up their lives, and the lives of their loved ones. This is no laughing matter.

The fact that you seem to be coming out of nowhere to defend her -- all your BE posts have been in this thread, save one -- seems very suspect to me. I'm not accusing you of anything, just saying that it seems very, very odd and perhaps more than coincidental.

~ Jenney

eugene_lyubov

Thanks, Rete. You are right!

It's time to be fully forthright.

Finally the better angels of our nature are given a voice. In contrast to the sentiments expressed in the early posts on this thread and elsewhere, many of us no longer think it’s “fun” to toy with other minds, to engage them on a level that eludes their linguistic and reasoning capacities, and in such fashion belittle and denigrate them. Responses to my posts make it ever so clear. It is not a “laughing matter” when it is we who bear the brunt of elusive, demeaning remarks. When it is we who are confronted by obnoxious smart alecks, we find their comments “boring, self-defeating, ironic, arrogant, self-absorbed, completely insensitive, suspect, etc” (all of these epithets are from this thread).

It is through style rather than content that I chose to communicate to the majority here. (I don’t expect everyone to be well-versed in the humanities.) As I confessed from the start without fully revealing its purposes (Recall, “I take delight in circumlocution”), my sanctimonious, pompous style was deliberate. It accomplished what I hoped it would: evoke the same responses in relevant forum users which their own posts evoke in others when they address them in a self-righteous, belittling, unempathetic fashion. Content was not unimportant and, at important junctures (e.g. on respect and giftfulness), was quite straightforward, but it was secondary to style as a medium of communication.

Everyone here is capable of great good, as many generous, thoughtful contributions to legal commentary on this forum show. But everyone here is also vulnerable to some wrong, known and unknown, deliberate and unintended. What I addressed in my posts I personally take be a form of wrong, even though it was practiced with some unawareness and innocence. It is not restricted only to the treatment of RTI. Disparaging posts in response to confused and negligent questioners occur from time to time elsewhere in the forum, and the response to such posts is virtually always the same: resentment, irritation, frustration, etc. Belittling and the like never foster meaningful communication and relationship with others and rarely, if ever, contribute to genuine self-transformation.

JENNEY: Re-read my response to USA&Pakistan re: RTI. She could be a “troll,” though more likely she is emotionally disturbed (which in turn impacts her cognitive capacities). The point is that the initial posts thought it “fun” to toy with RTI, not because she was a troll, but because, in their judgment, she was a dimwit. About thesaurus: A good, experienced doctor does not need to consult that often the medical reference book when dealing with simple everyday matters. The same is true of an avid reader with respect to everyday, casual writing.

IAN wrote: “If someone screws up, I take it as my duty to inform them that the brains that god gave them are as useless as tits on a bull. The pillory is a time honored tradition of public ridicule - and I hold myself up to be the judge of stupidity and foolishness. I have great sympathy for those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in unfortunate circumstances, but I have no sympathy for those who, apparently, go out of their way to make life difficult for themselves.”

Ian, If you are interested in reaching a reasoned judgment about empathy toward others, reading some serious philosophical literature on ‘freedom of the will’ might be a good start.

Ian wrote: "...I hold myself up to be the judge of stupidity and foolishness."

A Chinese Proverb:
Once a frog that lived in a well bragged to a turtle that lived in the Sea.
"I am so happy!" cried the frog, "When I go out, I jump about on the railing around the edge of the well. When I come home, I rest in the holes inside the wall of the well. If I jump into the water, it comes all the way up to my armpits and I can float on my belly. If I walk in the mud, it covers up my flippered feet. I look around at the wriggly worms, crabs, and tadpoles, and none of them can compare with me. I am lord of this well and I stand tall here. My happiness is great. My dear sir, why don't you come more often and look around my place?"

Before the turtle from the Sea could get its left foot in the well, its right knee got stuck. It hesitated and retreated. The turtle told the frog about the Sea.
"Even a distance of a thousand miles cannot give you an idea of the sea's width; even a height of a thousand meters cannot give you an idea of its depth. In the time of the great floods, the waters in the sea did not increase. During the terrible droughts, the waters in the sea did not decrease. The sea does not change along with the passage of time and its level does not rise or fall according to the amount of rain that falls. The greatest happiness is to live in the Sea."

Just Jenney

You're right -- except your writing style is anything BUT casual or everyday. If it were then you'd sound just like the rest of us.

To expand on your analogy, the way you write is similar to a doctor who deliberately uses complicated medical jargon when a simple, "You probably just have a cold" will do.

~ Jenney

ian-mstm

Who exactly is "us"? Have you actually taken a poll in the field to support the assertion that there really are "many" of you who feel this way? I think not. I think, perhaps, that "some" and not "many" is closer to the truth. For someone who uses language so eloquently, I'm surprised you didn't pick up on the difference!


I, for one, don't believe my posts are elusive - indeed, I make every attempt to be perfectly clear in my thoughts. Also, I felt your remarks were not demeaning although they were crouched in language specifically designed to obfuscate. So, I think your premise is incorrect.


You say this like it's a bad thing!


Again, your premise is incorrect. Your assumption is that meaningful communication is the goal - and that's not always the case... at least, not for me.


What makes you think that I'm at all interested in "reaching a reasoned judgment about empathy toward others"? Oh, I did like your little proverb although I suspect that you see me in the role of the frog - which could not be further from the truth.

Ian

eugene_lyubov

JENNEY: If, and only if, you are interested in understanding me, please re-read my previous post to grasp the purposes of my “deliberate, complicated jargon.” Also, casual writing does not have to be bereft of orotund language. To me, casual writing is writing on the spur of the moment without much research and premeditation.


IAN: Aristotle once said, You can’t argue with a person who does not want to be happy. I say, Woe to him who is content with unreasoned judgments and meaningless communication. Someone else also once said: Do not give to the dogs what is sacred, and do not throw your pearls before pigs. I say: No person is a dog or a swine, but every person can sometimes miss the truth by grunting and barking at it.

IAN wrote: “Oh, I did like your little proverb although I suspect that you see me in the role of the frog - which could not be further from the truth.”

A caterpillar does not know what it’s like to be a butterfly which it might become one day.

ian-mstm

Geez... all you have to do is look at my avatar and you'll know why I bark! I'm not sure I grunt, though - although Tim Allen, in his former stand-up comic days, often said that men are pigs... but I'm sure that wasn't meant to be taken literally. That said, I'll certainly give you credit for causing me to pause and consider things more than I might otherwise do.

Ian

bridgecross

True, but even a physician using medical jargon would not be this bad. He doesn't talk like a university professor, he talks like what somebody THINKS a university professor talks like. He must be pulling our collective legs.

I'm waiting for a "vis-à-vis" You know he wants to use it in a sentence. Come on, say it! Say it! VIS-A-VIS!!!!

eugene_lyubov

Bridgecross, you do not seem to have taken care to understand the purposes of my earlier style. I think, however, that you will find entertaining the following examples of 'genuine' academic writing. I wonder whose leg these guys are pulling.

“The human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates to itself, or that in the relation which is its relating to itself. The self is not the relation but the relation’s relating to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. In short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two terms. Looked at in this way a human being is not yet a self. In a relation between two things the relation is the third term in the form of a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation, and in the relation to that relation; this is what it is from the point of view of soul for soul and body to be in relation. If, on the other hand, the relation relates to itself, then this relation is the positive third, and this is the self….” Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death.

‘The Intersubjective Reduction is not leveled solely against the ‘solipsism’ of the ‘primordial sphere’ and the relativism of truth which would result from it, in order to ensure the objectivity of knowledge, which depends on the agreement between multiple subjectivities. The explication of the meaning that an I other than me has for me—
primordial me—describes the way in which the Other Person tears me away from my hypostasis, from the HERE, at the heart of being or the center of the world in which, privileged, and in this sense primordial, I place myself. But the ultimate meaning of my ‘mineness’ is revealed in this tearing away. In conferring the meaning of ‘I’ to the other, and also in my alterity to myself through which I can confer onto the other the meaning of I, the here and the there come to be inverted into one another.” Levinas, Entre Nous.

“To begin with, we can say negatively that finite knowledge is non-creative intuition. What is presented immediately and in its particularity must be already on hand. Finite intuition looks to the intuitable as something on which it is dependent and which exists in its own right. That which is intuited proceeds from such an essent and for that reason is also termed intuitis derivatus, ‘derivative.’ Finite intuition of the essent is not able by itself to give itself an object. It must let the object be given. But not every intuition as such is receptive—only the finite is so. Hence, the finitude of intuition lies in its receptivity. Finite Intuition cannot receive anything, however, unless the latter announces itself, that is, the essence of finite intuition is such that it must be solicited or affected by a possible object.” Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.

“I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.—So I don’t know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question no the assertion makes sense. Any more than the assertion ‘I am here,’ which I might yet use at any moment, if nonsense in the same way, and not a proposition of arithmetic, apart from particular occasions? ‘2x2+4’ is a true proposition of arithmetic—not ‘on particular occasions’ nor ‘always’—but the spoken or written sentence ‘2+2=4’ in Chinese might have a different meaning or be out and out nonsense, and from this I see that it is only in use that the proposition has its sense. And “I know that there’s a sick man lying here,” used in an unsuitable situation, seems not to be nonsense but rather seems matter-of-course, only because one can fairly easily imagine a situation to fit it, and one thinks that the words “I know that…” are always in place where there is no doubt, and hence even where the expression of doubt would be unintelligible.” Wittgenstein, On Certainty.

bridgecross

That's just wild! [do not seem] [to have taken care] [to understand the purpose] You rock!!!