DMB said: The assigned reading in my Plato class this week is the Apology of Socrates, where he talks most emphatically about what it means to be the best we can be. In both the content and in the performance of that talk, politeness is nowhere to be seen. In some respects, he was even opposed to it. He defends his god-given role as the gadfly whose job it was to make people feel uncomfortable and, in open court, he calls his accusers ignorant liars and such. He practically says he'd rather die than be forced to be polite. My point? Just that it's not unusual to see dickish behavior among philosophers, you ignorant liar.
Matt: You're, of course, absolutely right, and I always feel bad for Thrasymachus in The Republic. But as I said quite a while back, to Squank, the trouble with people who hold up Socrates, Nietzsche, and Rousseau as their role models is that _they_ were absolutely fascinating. What, however, if you aren't as interesting as they were (and still are), and you're just a dick? That, I think, poses a _rhetorical_ problem, a practical problem, a problem not with one's ideas but with one's practice in disseminating those ideas. That's why I said I wish not to be taken to admonishing people--people can be dicks, I can be a dick. What I was suggesting was an actual _practical proposal_ for moving seemingly stalled conversations forward. People don't stop being themselves, but for the purposes of this X conversation we bracket certain things and lay certain ground rules and see if that helps in progressing (which itself depends on what the people involved agree to as progress). DMB said: And it seems to me that the temperature is one of the best ways to measure the level of caring in the room. Nobody gets all hot and bothered over things they don't care about. Nobody gets angry or frustrated unless they care. We worry only when care about something. That sort of thing is on the negative side of caring. And isn't it super easy to be nice when you don't really care? "Sure, you can have that last slice of pizza, he said, as his overstuffed stomach ached and grumbled and belched." Matt: The temperature comment is what I don't think is necessarily true. I think calm and collected people can be just as caring. And sometimes people _do_ get all hot and bothered over shit they, in retrospect, don't ultimately care much about, or shouldn't. Some people are just anger-balls, and some people are just dicks. That's okay, and temp can be a gauge for caring. And it is easy to be nice when you don't really care. Which is why my practical proposal isn't about people altering their feelings, but about their appearance _for the sake of the conversation_. Call it an experiment, if you will. The experiment might not work out. But it might. It is easy to be nice when you don't care. But one of the reasons I've become a lot nicer in the MD is because I care about the issues more than the people. And I've come to care less about many of the people because of dickish behavior, because my time seems to be better spent doing other things. I enjoy good conversation, but I've come to see that everybody's idea of good conversation is different. But I still make appearances from time to time because I care about the issues, and a few of the people, and it's why I make practical proposals from time to time, too. I think it would help everyone, particularly those who care more than I do now. Not all of us are McCains. Some of us are Obamas. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Stay up to date on your PC, the Web, and your mobile phone with Windows Live. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/msnnkwxp1020093185mrt/direct/01/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
