...or a Lurker's Lament (unaccustomed as I am to public speaking)
warning possible high rant content
When I started looking in here a few months ago I thought to myself: here's something unique -- adults talking to other adults about language. I was much impressed with the erudition and scholarliness of those such as Bingley and NicholasW; with the net finesse of many here, providing links to fascinating sites I'd never even dream of looking for; with the seemingly genuine companionableness and open friendly manner on the part of almost everyone. Then of couse there are the wits. You all recognize I suppose that the true wit still has a modicum of the child in him. Ah, and here's the rub.
I'm going to assume that most of you are old enough to remember when Transactional Analysis was a Big Thing. According to TA, the ideal communication state, that in which the most effective transactions can take place, is Adult to Adult. But when a Child is present, there is a strong urge to resort to Parent-Child communications. And what we seem to have had come out here is an Alpha Parent who wants to control all the unruly Children.
So we have been presented with a Code of Conduct. And guess what? All of the other Adult/Parents feel constrained to chime in -- and the Child(s) has another good laugh at their expense.
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Everyone here shares a certain (sub)set of interests, but not the same value set. To take a trivial example, but one which certainly has manifested itself here: the emoticon. We have some who shun its use altogether; e.g., wwh and Faldage. (This could well be the onliest thing that they will ever agree on.) We have others who use it liberally. It's usually just a matter of style -- I've talked to people about this and some feel that attaching a laugh to a post is like laughing at your own joke. And, I think, there are some who seem to believe that they can say almost anything and it's OK as long as they attach a smile.
Anyway, my point would seem to be that it's generally fruitless to argue about values, be it religion, politics, or the latest test match unless it's just for the sake of argument, which is in the room down the hall. If the group is large enough there's always going to be someone who takes the whole thing personally, can't detach themselves enough to be objective.
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Here's a petition for you all:
I solemnly swear that I will continue to read these posts objectively, searching assiduously for content and not seditiously for intent, and if I can no longer manage to do this to my own satisfaction I will quit this place forever.
Dear tsuwm: I suffered through many months of T/A as a staff psychiatrist at VA Hospital. We had a series of such startling revelations, each over-throwing its predecessor. I have no idea what the prevailing doctrine is. But as you have shown, it did have some relevance to our posts here. I have sinned more than I was sinned against. I hope to do better in the future. But mine is a naughty Child.
One of my more interesting classes in college, was a values class. the whole course was very simple.
week one. assignment.. make a list of 100 things you value
week two.. write a sentence about each thing you value
week three, stack rank them
week four, five and six from the top 25, write a pargraph about the values
week seven and eight, from the top ten, expand the paragraph to three paragraphs.
week nine and ten, from the top five, expand three paragraghs to full essay
week eleven, twelve and thirteen, be prepared to present your values to the class, and read one of your essays aloud.
what a class! what lists.. interesting (for example, i was the one in the class who has sex in my top ten list.. and when i mentioned it.. half the class blushed, and realized, it they hadn't even listed it in their list of 100! (glad i am not married to them!)
tsuwm is right... our values are different.. not good or bad, better or worse, just different. our vocabularies are different too. and we all find our self using cliche catch phrases.. that are different! it is certainly one of the things i love about this place.
it might be fun to have a values thread.(then again it could be dangerous!) and rather than add to it, we could edit our posts.. so i might post some of the things i value.. and later, if i wanted, i could edit my own post, rather that add to the thread.. it might grow to be longer than 100-- but only if we had over 100 regular posters..
But that will be easy, because we could not possibly read "seditiously". "Sedition" means "inciting rebellion against the authority of a state" -- and none among us would speak with such authority, of course.
Perhaps, if tsuwm happened to mean "sedulously", stales' acronym would be preserved.
as I pointed out to someone who shall not be named (wsnbn) via PM, I used seditious in a broad figurative sense of 'given to causing tumult'; to wit: 1. Of a person or body of persons: Given to or guilty of sedition; in early use, ‘factious with tumult, turbulent’ (Johnson); now chiefly, engaged in promoting disaffection or inciting to revolt against constituted authority. 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden, Thirdly, he is verie seditious and mutinous in conversation, picking quarrells with everie man that will not magnifie and applaud him.
Boy, you guys are good! Understanding each other, with a meaning so unusual that it isn't in bartleby or webster! I am impressed! Good to have it specified so that everyone else understands too.
As Max's home page says, "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."
as I pointed out to someone who shall not be named (wsnbn) via PM, I used seditious in a broad figurative sense of 'given to causing tumult'; to wit: 1. Of a person or body of persons: Given to or guilty of sedition; in early use, ‘factious with tumult, turbulent’ (Johnson); now chiefly, engaged in promoting disaffection or inciting to revolt against constituted authority. 1596 Nashe Saffron Walden, Thirdly, he is verie seditious and mutinous in conversation, picking quarrells with everie man that will not magnifie and applaud him.
I stand by this after much soul-searching.
That's our tsuwm! Never writes anything he doesn't mean and always the right thing at that.
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