On Fri, 3 May 2002, Matt Grimaldi wrote: > > Julia, I'm not sure this is a good question for on-list > > discussion. First of all, I'm not sure it's possible for a > > person who distrusts Jeroen to answer it without violating > > the guidelines, as doing so necessarily involves making > > public an assessment, presumably negative, of Jeroen's > > chraracter. > > > > As if THAT stopped them from "making public a negative > assesment of Jeroen's character" before. Jeroen's had to > fend off accusations that could get him fired or worse if > they were made in a different forum.
Regardless, I'd like not to start yet another round of accusations and defenses, which was my point. I agree with the > principle, however, that we should not disparage our > neighbors on this list with personal attacks, and have > said as much before. The challenge, I think, is to find some way to "wipe the slate clean" and give everyone a fresh start. We've reached a point where almost every exchange between Jeroen and his sterner critics ends badly; and no matter whose fault you think that is, I think the biggest problem NOW is that every new debate must carry all the baggage of all the past arguments that have turned sour. We need to convince ourselves to drop our baggage -- to lay down our burdens, really -- and start anew. Crafting a "web of shame" won't do that. Continuing to snipe at one another, searching for evidence of evil intent behind every post won't do that. Mediation might. Each individual just taking a deep breath and just getting over himself might. I believe that if we want to get along, we must all hold certain things to be axiomatic. This is specifically for list-life, where nothing material is at stake. 1. "Judge not lest ye be judged." In other words, we don't know one another. We think we do because we've talked so much, but we really don't. Even though we think we can take a post or a group of posts and conclude from them that "so-and-so's a #(&!," we really can't, not accurately. A person's posts to Brin-L reflect a very small slice of that person's life, and we need to give much greater weight to our genuine ignorance than we give to the limited knowledge that we glean from a person's on-line arguments -- no matter how utterly CERTAIN we feel about the conclusions we can't stop ourselves from drawing. It's one thing to say, "No personal attacks," but that's not enough, apparently. To prevent that, we have to take an attitude of humility towards our supposed knowledge of the other person and what we think we know of his or her intent. 2. "What I wrote means what the reader thinks it means." If the reader believes I said something different from what I meant to say, then it's my obligation to clear up the confusion as best I can. Any serious reader is going to look beyond the immediate meaning of my words and search for all the possible implications and reasons for what I say. It is neither reasonable nor fair of me to assume a reader is only going to take my words at face value, so it's my obligation to be as precise as possible, to anticipate and clarify objections, and to shoulder the burden of making my meaning known. If I fail to make my meaning clear, then I need to reflect on rule #1 before I make any accusations. Am I being as fair to him as I want him to be to me? 3. "Your misbehavior doesn't excuse my misbehavior." I trust implicitly that taking the high ground will give my arguments more weight than matching whatever dirty tactic I think the other guy is using. Marvin Long Austin, Texas
