--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: --- In [email protected], "whynotnow7" <whynotnow7@...> wrote: > > Could be, though that again raises the point -- Are we reacting > to Ravi's behavior, regardless, or trying to set this up as "a > teachable moment" in which we align Ravi's behavior with an > assumption about his consciousness, or his mental health?
What's interesting to me is that most of Ravi's posts are loving, playful, funny, often even wise, but we freak out when he has a negative outburst and start discussing his mental health, even asking whether he should have freedom of speech or be ejected from the forum. Yet there are others here whose posts are *routinely* negative, whose tone typically is "demeaning harshness," to use Curtis's phrase, frequently coldly, calculatingly cruel and hateful, and we seem to have learned to take them in stride, without wondering about the writers' mental health. We had one of those posts this morning, in which the writer not only went to considerable lengths to harshly demean those he calls "crazies" (i.e., his critics), but actually recommended his own twisted form of censorship by counseling others not to interact with the "crazies" in order to freeze them out and make them shut up. And there wasn't a peep of objection. Indeed, Curtis emerges from lurkdom to pompously pronounce judgment on Ravi while arrogantly declining to concern himself with the possibility that there may be worse transgressors of the social compact holding forth here. He chastises Ravi for what he perceives to be homophobia, apparently having entirely forgotten the remarks of the negative poster described above intended to insult Robin by suggesting he was gay (not to mention his betrayal of Curtis's confidence by citing something Curtis had said to him in private email that, taken out of context, made Curtis appear to be impugning Robin's sexuality as well). Curtis further fulminates over Ravi's insults to a woman when he has never been upset by the "demeaning harshness" with which the negative poster treats women he doesn't like. It's fine with Curtis to call a woman a "dumb cunt too stupid to live" as long as there's no mention of blow jobs. (BTW, Curtis, the word is "aplomb," not "aplaumb," and it's never used in the plural.) Bob and Obbajeeba are right, the hypocrisy around here is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It makes me physically ill. Thank goodness I have only one more post left this week. RESPONSE: Anyone who tries to answer Judy here will necessarily contradict themselves. And by this, I mean that Judy's post holds within itself so much more reality than those posts which have attempted to turn Ravi into a lunatic. Moral intelligencein the context of the metaphysics of postmodernismrequires that we goes as far as we can to open ourselves to the truth, no matter how devastating or hurtful it is to us. The self-righteousness of some FFL posters in the wake of Ravi's uninhibited violations of the privacy of selfhood has re-made reality and would have us make of Ravi that which would enable us to escape from whatever *possible* truths, or semi-truths, he was hitting in his shameless and unabashed style of insult. Judy here has made certain the anaesthetic starts to wear off, so that we are once again in the dilemma of attempting to come up with a version of truth which is at least equal to whatever truth was behind Ravi's intoxicated and violent desecrations. What Ravi struck in certain people became the motivational basisalbeit unconsciousfor their retaliation, and their assumption of having, as a consensus began to develop, dealt him a death blow. Ravi lives; he is the strangest creature I have ever come across. But I think we should alland most everyone of us has been subject to his ecstatic abusesattempt, first of all, to see whether he has hit something in us which could only be hit by the very extremism of his language and the outrageousness of his modus operandi. Judy has restored some sanity and balance to this latest episode of Ravi's loving cruelty and savage playfulness. I had thought that because of the failure of everyoneexcepting the two persons Judy mentionsto honestly and courageously meet Ravi exactly where the content of what he said was aimedand instead to make his sacrilege the issuethe integrity of FFL was doomed. But Judy has, in one remarkable post, allowed all of us to re-discover the right perspective on this business of Ravi Yogi and all that has gone down since his initial reaction to one of Alex's posts. I was aware of one thing: the sense of triumph, of vindication, of justiceonce everyone had had their saythis had left a false note. As, ironically enough, no one had really taken Ravi on on his own terms. No matter how gravely Ravi has transgressed against our sense of decorum, our right of privacy, our self-respecthe is truly without any discretion whatsoeverwe owe it to ourselves to examine one thing: Did he touch some nerve in us which we recognized could not warrant then ganging up on him and making of him a moral pariah? Judy has prevented us from turning Ravi into a martyr. And I for one am glad of this. Again I say it: if someoneanyoneat FFL attempts to refute the main point Judy has made in this post, that person will have to be dishonest. I am sure some counter-post is being composed in this moment, but I will compare it to Judy's post, and I know what that verdict will be: someone who wants to control the context of truth rather than someone who wants to let truth control the context.
