On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 12:37 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
thanks to NONE of you folks I finally figured out how to attach others email to mine, another step to being less annoying. I have no idea what you mean about a scapegoat. All I know is that the nazis wanted things nice and clean and artists werent exactly included in that group-were they? The Church plays its game/ other groups and clubs play their games and if you dont want to play the game you start your own- I understand that, but since this is my game-or so I thought- I thought I could have an effect and/or a voice. So far I cant believe Bertrand and I are the only ones dubious- maybe we were always the last ones picked for kickball-madawg
madawg, since you so effectively figured out how to quote/attach an email, and the one you chose was mine, I suppose that makes me "batter up" to try to elucidate, or more likely bowdlerize, what I said and meant.
The history of scapegoating is long and rich and you're picked on a couple of the most grievously terrible incidences. A friend of mine, an atheist son of Dutch missionaries, speaks of a theory about religion as a system of scapegoating. There's a book about it, http://tinyurl.com/45u9, "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World," by Rene Girard, Michael Metteer (Translator), Stephen Bann (Translator).
I labeled the happening on the list by the zaphod 42 death kandy person as an overt act of scapegoating. zaphod beetlebrox is a mass nemesis and black undertow. She was a bloodsucker and sought, or didn't seek but effected, by an entropicizing presence and Joseph's (intentionally or not) act of becoming her scapegoat/alter-ego, to deprive everyone of a legitimate voice. You'd say "the sky looks blue to me," and the deathbot would reply "what can you little worm possibly know about the sky?" Or, in reply to "deathbot, why aren't you my friend?" she might answer, "how can you presume to know what friendship is about or especially whether it is anything that would interest us?" and so on, vastly more appositive. (I didn't follow it closely.) Provoked by very little, Zaphod's deathbot slew people and made each one her scapegoat, especially the chosen one, Joey.
It seemed all a little game, "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy," without the babelfish.
Did you really want to play with Joseph and death kandi? You can email them off-list and one or another might oblige for free, though role-playing is always more fun in a public forum, and possibly likely to get sinister in private. See if Eryk knows anything.
If it's a game of kickball and someone slapping kicking an impudent buddy upside the head, and everyone else starts to do the same, do you still want to play? To become a head-kicker, perhaps worse, perhaps better, but manipulated by a non-reactive substance? You'd learn about yourself in the process, for sure, but maybe a lot of us on this list just have decided that trail's been trod. Maybe we're tired. Maybe we've forgotten or never knew how to play. Maybe not. At some point a judgment is made. That doesn't mean it's a unilateral fascist judgment, more a common law to protect the community.
Were we "protected" from ourselves? Sunday Dec 15, "-IID42 Kandinskij @27+" (A) sent first post 1:21 AM EST, Eryk Salvaggio (B) said he got off the list at 2:07AM and A replied at 5:15 AM "Have a nice time?" At 9:20 PM "joseph (yes)" aka "Joseph Franklyn McElroy Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]" (C) responded to A's response to B and we were all suckered in, not really knowing what was some kind of private joke or conceit. It degenerated rapidly.
It's fine to appreciate anarchy and even practice it, but that doesn't seem to be how fluxlist has defined itself. Fluxlist has worked on developing to a certain small degree a "common standard or purpose," which takes it out of the anarchy category-list. Maybe fluxus was more anarchic <http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/Forum/Beats.html>, but they were also more Zen.
If they were politically anarchist, they were "idealistic anarchistic," not "nihilistic anarchistic" as is Zaphod's death terminal Kandinskij 42/27, karei. But the times are different as well. My personal choice is for suspension, and for exile only in the event of something really heinous.
"And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"
(or, if you prefer, "fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou, every one....")
-- Kathy, who has zero fluxus credentials though I once served as list admin dutifully in the summer of 2000 when nothing much happened except 1. Error-message loops, 2. Mail queue loops, 3. Spit-back loops and a few people having intractable subscription/unsubscription problems. It was the summer my dog Sam got irrevocably ill and I couldn't make him better no matter what I tried. And also Patricia being very compassionate (about Sam and forwarding me about Rod's "Calicodependency" and something about a lost sweater or scarf).
I imagined sometimes Mr. Samuel was heartbroken having had to move from living in the city and all his friends in Riverside Bark (as I missed them, our play, talk, routines and doggie advice), and then that creepy boarder dropped him on concrete and walked/dragged him too long for even a huge spunky Boston Terrier. But it seemed he also had a brain and spine disease, apparently degenerative, though no one could ever really tell me for sure, that I realized later had been coming on longer than was obvious. He was a little trooper, my beautiful Sam, the bravest dog in all the world.
