Moderated on RoR

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Moderated on RoR

Now I have become moderated on RoR.

You can read the incredible misstatement by Rowlands of my ideas here.

Apparently he sees me as some kind of danger to Objectivism. (It's funny how others more well versed in Objectivism don't agree with him.)

Calling me filthy and untrue names on his forum is OK. Responding to that on his forum is not OK.

Fine, it's his forum. His rules.

Michael

[Ciro]

Michael, I am sorry if my discussion with Ethan may have caused you to be put on moderation.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ciro,

Thank you for the sentiment. The problem was not your discussion.

Michael

[Kat]

Joe certainly did grossly mischaracterize your views. Again, people are trying to paint you as an evil altruist. You have wasted too much time over there with people who are hostile and would rather attack than try to understand you. I am still waiting for people to make their case that you are dishonest and that everything you say contradicts Rand. I think they turn on people when they suddenly realize that they disagree on details and then denounce you as an enemy of Objectivism. Nasty vicious people with sharp pointy teeth are trying to run you out of town. LOLOLOLOLOL

If you would like, you still can post here at Objectivist Living, at least for now, as I have not decided to ban or moderate your ass yet.

Kat

[william.scherk]

Moderated on RoR

Now I have become moderated on RoR.

You can read the incredible misstatement by Rowlands of my ideas here.

__________________________________________________

Well, as a (new) member of OL and a member of SOLO and a member of RoR, I would say, "So what?" : )

In any case, you then submitted your apology and the moderator posted it. RoR is open to you still . . .

Everybody is moderated here, you are banned from SOLO, and now you are moderated at RoR. I would just say that it doesn't really matter where you post comments in this day, or where you respond, or who says what particularly there or here or somewhere else.

Your and Kat's departure from SOLO was a bit icky, but I figure Linz did you a favour. If it was going to get even muckier there (which, it seems to me, it did), then you can stay relatively clean. Just make sure you observe every civility here (always) that you demand of others anywhere on earth. Never exceed your own speed limit. : )

The only honourable option that I see for myself is to participate in an initial 'Concordance' as I note at both RoR in a reply to Jenna Wong and at SOLO on my Blog 46.

There are a few tripartite members still left, O Moderators of OL (!), so let's make use of them while the top dogs are banning and moderating and shunning and grandstanding and barking and slavering and raging about the stage as if players in Grand Opera (or Grand Guignol) . . .

In other words, this is the internet. armed with a sharp a href= and the proper "s and 's and width=""s and the correct >s and <s, you can comment on anything written anywhere, and your interlocutors cain't do a dang thing about it . . .

So, no ruffled feathers about moderation or banning or shunning or whatnot. If you and Kat are now Empress and Emperor of the Objectivist Universe Castle and Hobby Farm [OL] then thank the other Emperors and Empresses like La Mertz and La Perigo and La Rowlands -- they have done you a favour! You now are acknowledged as an actual locus of evul.

Not too many people have accomplished the same thing in the same amount of time.

[Edit: as noted, posters here are not moderated. Sorry for the gaffe. I hope my point about that danged newfangled internet still stands.]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL...

Welcome to OL. It's about damn time, too. After you made a nice "ick factor" comment on the Dastardly Everyone Cuss-Out-Everyone About Starving-the-Young Discussion on RoR, I mistakenly thought you were (1) older and (2) not a newbie to Objectivism. So I sent you a long invitation to join OL with some comments that were not for such young, unsullied, chaste, innocent ears.*

I have since been harboring intense guilt feelings about being an inadvertent Comprachico. (Please tell me it ain't so and put an end to my misery!!! Tell me you did not mentally grow into the form of a pot... I hate myself...)

ahem...

Don't you worry your pretty little head about moderation. You have talent. Oodles of it. Only the spiteful talentless need tremble in fear on OL.

(If you thought our departure from the badlands was icky, you should have seen what was going on in the wings...)

Michael

* There is a whistle that only dogs can hear. Humans cannot. I have that kind of capacity with people bearing a certain form of... something different. We hum to the same frequency and others do not perceive it. I have only heard the whistle online a few times in the past, so I sent out precious few invites. You were one I heard cockeyed. Sorry about the mix-up. My trusty ears failed me for once. Now your siren's whistle just turned into a horn. And as always, OL is humming right along...

[Rich Engle]

Other than an application to be used for mitigation of the confused, the flamer, or the professional troll, moderation becomes the refuge of the cowardly, the afraid, the control freak. It's either that way, or what is left?

Nothing more than a practices and standards committee. A bureau of propaganda.

With ROR, I see it as more of a smug, elitist mindset, although they surely are so so immersed in their static, immovable gestalt, one in which there is a great, deep miring. Cemented shut, really. It may not be agreeable, to the freethinker, but it is surely understandable- it is a hallmark behavior that goes deeply back into civilization. Without the construct, the warm, non-fluidity that is the fundamentalist, there would be the fearful task of facing not only the dynamic nature of life, but all that in the world of the "we;" the diversity of thought, what acceptance is, what grace is. Many things. If it were taken away, you would be looking at some very frightened folks.

Yup, MSK on moderation- the deadly malevolent flamer that he is.

Nobody, but nobody is going to moderate my ass. Because, moderation (at least their type) is nothing more than insecurity in action.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You know, I've been thinking about it.

Actually no one is moderated on OL. Moderation means that your post has to be reviewed before it is allowed to be published. We don't do that here.

The rules are pretty clear. Like in the Old West, you are asked to leave your guns at the door when you come in. That's not moderation. That's called house rules.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Exactly, MSK.

It's called the honor system. Now, I suppose elsewhere the same claim could be made, but it is not so. Much more simple- if you aren't down with the party line (which in and of itself free-floats a bit, depending on, er, the social metaphysics at hand, mood, gastrointestinal state, and in general which way the wind is blowing and how hard), then you are going to get it, because that is what deep insecurity demands.

What I thought amusing was what happened after I chose to leave SOLO, since I clearly was, in my attempt to dialogue, not in the club (primarily due to the fact that I had become a Unitarian. Though I had experienced a profound spiritual shift, I still had (and have) a great deal of Objectivism

integrated into my personal philosophy/belief system. The upside of this was that my background gave me a pretty unique ability to dialogue with Objectivists, being that I know the language. And of course, while this undertaking was, for sure, modestly successful. I am convinced that bridges were built here and there, as well as goodwill, tolerance, understanding...

In any event, there is a point in such things where you know you have hit the saturation point, and I chose to leave- at a time when the lynch mobs were particularly in play.

The funny part was that I was put on moderation pretty much immediately after I made the announcement. It was said that this is a standard op there, because, well, you never know when someone becomes disgruntled and can go off. I found that whole process retentive and generally odd. Anyone that knows me knows that kind of thing would never happen because, for one, it never has.

So, even after what I considered a reasonable and courteous disengagement, there was a need to do that, and that points to something about Joe R's nature, I think, and it appears to involve, once again, control.

[Dragonfly]

I think that this kind of moderation is a sign of weakness. It can only confirm the suspicion of many outsiders that Objectivism is a religion or a sect. If opinions that deviate too much from the canon are not tolerated, the purpose of such a forum seems to be not to have a real discussion but to spread the true faith. Apparently it's too dangerous to rock the boat.

[Rich Engle]

It is absolutely a sign of weakness. Weaker yet is the move of saying it publicly.

They are becoming Orwellian-- a little more each day.

[JennaW]

It took me 9 months in the fundamenalist Christian ICOC cult to be called evil. That's my standard. If it takes less than that for someone else to call me evil... well, I'm not sure what to say. I'd sure know what to DO.

[william.scherk]

Thanks for the nice note. I don't recall the invitation (or have a false non-memory of it). I may have ignored it. I probably began reading posts in this archipelago at the time, but reserved membership till I cared to post myself.

Re: the ick factor, this has been my garbage-can-lid-banging tune since my first SOLO/RoR post O these many months ago. It is amusing some that this kind of thing appears on the new SOLO. Bang bang bang. "Aren't there a few things about O-ism that are a teensy bit icky?" Bang bang. Ick. Bang. "Whatchagonna actually do with the dang baby in the woods, y'all?" Bang. Ick. Bang bang bang. "Yo, Objectivistic Man, done much research into emotion, or much of anything besides Rand?" Bang Bang.

My birth date has been in my SOLOHQ/RoR Profile since I joined that evul place . . . : )

. . . so the special tuning fork organ in your brain wasn't much use to you in this instance. : )

Re: Comprachico. Oi.

I must tell you all that the hair stood up on the back of my neck when I read that essay (one of the few freely available on the web: anyone else ever figure that the best thing to do with the corpus is to put it all into the public domain?).

I thought to myself, "I must be mistaken. I get the impression that Ayn Rand is telling what she thinks is historical fact."

Now that I see much of O-ism and O-istic activities online as entertainment, courtesy of Bill and Teresa . . . I don't really think it matters. Then, I thought it was an awful, tendentious essay, reliant on myth and emotion to browbeat the reader into agreement. Now, I know I was wrong. She was just a stirring the bucket -- during those years, there had been a sort of ersatz pedagogical revolution, and her percepts were timely and well worth the hyperbole and bombast.

Please don't call me 'pretty,' if you can help it -- it was the bane of my childhood, my adolescence, and my early performing career. My New Romantic photo is/was an expression of vanity, of course. Being squat, old, hairy and ugly now, I treasure the memento . . . : )

As a aside, I read the commentary of yours in another thread here, excerpted below. I actually found this surprising and sad. Those three paragraphs of yours, whatever your occasional ranting verbosity and sometimes wandering locutions . . . are worth the price of admission to Objectivist Living. I did not know Lindsay Perigo did this backstage management . . . and it saddens me in light of my Sunny Days post at Blog 46.</b> It gives me a reason to test for a link between this and this (although I hope the link does not exist and that I am having a fit of paranoia brought on by standing too close to the hot white sink of evul).

Michael, although I will never be in the disciplined vanguard of your supporters (like Jenna perhaps, just not much of a Team Groupthink Faction Nine joiner), I appreciate the large effort you have taken to build what amounts to an archive . . . and this forum. Yours is an alright castle, easily comparable to the others on the distant evul horizon . . . Yours is the moderation policy. Yours is the opportunity. Yours is an adequate stage and launchpad, stately piazza and retiring parlour.

You have a pulpit now, as I alluded to in reference to the castle now ruled by you and Katherine the Greatest.

*********************

As court jester, Your Majesty, I may once in a long while tweak your nose over a royal misstep or misrule in matters of State. I ask for credit on this account at this time, payable in cold hard laughter to the Bank of Charitable Humour.

Mr John Newnham did me a favour when he seemed to dismiss me as a clown. Similarly, you can inhabit and exploit whatever stupid epithet applied to you or slung at you or branded into your metaphorical forehead . . . if people mis-estimate one's self and potential, and if one refrains from refraining from earnest self-criticism . . . one is left with a lucky, precious, wonderful insight into one's own worth and value. As my esteemed colleagues Jody Gomez or Jenna Wong might opine, in much tighter a fashion than me, "I is I."

It is telling to me that those who are tone-deaf to other people's emotions and motivations oft try to belittle those they do not comprehend. They do not recall the salient warning of their grandmas: "Don't be small, Missy. Puttin' other people down don't put you up, you is acting nasty. Now you go out on the porch with no pie and you think about it.'

Me, I sat in the star-spangled darkness with no pie, and tried with all my little might to understand what she meant about being small.

Thank you for understanding and perhaps reading my lonely Blog 46 . . .

[Excerpted from MSK post "Conspiracy Theory":

Giving your opinion about a person who has wronged you to a

friend is in no way “manipulation.” Sciabarra and Maurone

had a friendship that he tried to preserve. Hsieh ditto.

According to the information in her article, she was

embracing sworn enemies of Sciabarra, and Maurone was

embracing her. Sciabarra tried to fight for his friendships

and warn these people he cared about to ensure that they

did not suffer the same indignities he had to bear from

“purists.” Nothing more is evident to me from the excerpts

Hsieh posted – certainly not her own theory of a deadly

single-person e-mail conspiracy against ARI.

Now if you want to understand what real offline

manipulation is, you should get near Perigo during one of

his campaigns. I was – for several campaigns. Here is how

it works. Once someone has posted something online that

Perigo believes in (usually meaning something bad about

someone he wants to attack), he starts e-mailing and

phoning like mad to make sure that people post agreement.

(I never talked by phone with him, though. He requested my

phone number and I sent it to him, but that happened right

when our relationship was deteriorating because I would not

cave in to his pressure against Barbara. I have about 500

e-mails to and from him on file.) He is extremely conscious

of the impact of public agreement and he manipulates that

in the wings quite well. He even says things like “it looks

bad if no one comments,” or “now is your chance to say

[whatever],” or “isn’t [so and so] a sanctimonious twat?”

Yada yada yada.

If you ever wonder how his discussions seem to generate so

much interest, one of the main reasons is his ongoing

“whispering campaign.” ]

[Edit: added links to "The Comprachicos" and blog comments by Peter Cresswell and Lindsay Perigo ]

[Robert Campbell]

WSS,

In answer to your first post on RoR, I haven't seen anything on Paul Ekman's research on emotion out in Rand-land.

However, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies published Marsha Enright's article on emotions in Fall 2002.

And Steve Shmurak's article on Silvan S. Tomkins' theory of basic emotions (including an imaginary dialogue between Tomkins and Rand, and a CD-ROM of a young baby's emotional reactions) is due to appear in the next issue (Fall 2006).

More proof, I suppose, that the "false friends of Objectivism" all flock to JARS.

Robert Campbell

[Rich Engle]

William-

Good heavens, you are a true Coffee Achiever to have rolled that one.

A good deal to digest, but off the rip, I like your style, man.

In particular, the outing of Perigo's back-door Johnny tactics and strategies. Always in a petulant frenzy, that one. Above all, he is a narcissist, when you rip the covers off. All that scrambling and phoning and emailing! I have heard of this more than once. He needs to take up yoga or origami or something- someday he will blow a mainspring!

[william.scherk]

Thanks to Robert Campbell and Rich Engle for their notes and references. I will try to find Enright's piece (and look forward to the imaginary dialogue).

Robert, I just don't get the distance some objectivism supporters hold from scientific inquiry, especially neuroscience, social and evolutionary psychology. It's not that Faction A or Faction B1 takes a 'Pinker is insane and immoral' or a "Chomsky. Look into the leftist eyes and shudder" point of view, it's that there seems to be almost no engagement. Nobody seems to be in the game in the larger world (save for Dr Machan, who is everywhere). I mention the Churchlands and I can hear the snores . . . a note on Susan Haack put several into a coma from which they have not yet awoken.

And Rich, no, that was MiSK turning the mole on LziP, not me. I knew nothing of this, so was saddened. O how SOLO needs a jester.

Jester outfit from anytimecostumes.com

WSS

[Jody Gomez]

WSS-Did I miss something, where did you mention Haack? Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate is one of the books I most frequently recommend to people. As a matter of fact, that reminds me that my copy is on loan, and is long overdue.

[william.scherk]

WSS-Did I miss something, where did you mention Haack? Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate is one of the books I most frequently recommend to people. As a matter of fact, that reminds me that my copy is on loan, and is long overdue.

Mine too. Who woulda figgered.

Of course, Jody, the coma could be mine, as I am known to sleep through internet history . . . I gave a Haack reference in a note to our Dan Edge ("Rand and Psychological Revolutions ") on the thread "Review of Robert Campbell's JARS Essay." I think I may have droned on about Haack at length at RoR in the last several months -- where it did not have quite the attraction of my Diana Mertz Cyclops: One-eyed Empress of the Universe post . . .

I first fell for Haack upon her hypnotic 1997 Skeptical Inquirer essay on 'Preposterism.' It helped crystalize my attitude towards Most-Podernism (and is actually congenial to Randian-influenced thought).

Holy shit, I thought, in the Tractor-Pull of today's philosophy, here come Da Krushah.

I love the way she guns the afterburners and then just steamrollers Rorty with her big fat common-sense realism. And when she takes apart Bruno Latour's pretensions like an express diagnostic Mrs Lube mechanic . . . Mary Bloody Midgley! Crushed in the mud! Mean Mother Dennet! Crushed in the mud! Red Rockin Rorty! Crushed into splinters and muck . . .

(I had almost extinguished my intellectual spirit during a mistaken attempt to tackle the Caverns of Derrida, so Haack was like a puff of oxygen as I lay sweaty, stunned and expiring in a deep crevasse -- one puff of Reason into my lungs and I was able to scramble back to the surface.)

And to drone on even more boringly about Haack, it is wonderful to see her straight-up-but-nuanced realism used by such as Meera Nanda (on Butterflies and Wheels) to push back the tide of irrationalism (in this case, Hindutva and Vedic Science).

On another even more psychotically-boring note, what do you think of the idea of a J-Con this summer in the good old USA? I can be in San Francisco some weekend in July/August. How about you?

-- I've been spending time on Miss Wong's blog and it gave me the idea that the way to win her heart would be to carry her books (no mean feat as she reads fifty pounds of material a day). Would be cool to hang out with somebody who thinks libraries are fun.

By the way, Senor Gomez -- do you find it as remarkable as I do that Haack is apparently HUGE (well, as huge as can be philosophy in a capitalist dictatorship) in China?

+++++++++++++

From the Unversity of Chicago Press:

Haack, Susan Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays. 240 p. 6 x 9 1998</p>

Cloth $22.50spec 0-226-31136-8 Fall 1998

Paper $13.00 0-226-31137-6 Spring 2000

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

"The virtue of Haack's book, and I mean virtue in the ethical sense, is that it embodies the attitude that it exalts. . . Haack's voice is urbane, sensible, passionate—the voice of philosophy that matters. How good to hear it again."—Jonathan Rauch, Reason

"A tough mind, confident of its power, making an art of logic . . . a cool mastery."—Paul R. Gross, Wilson Quarterly

"Few people are better able to defend the notion of truth, and in strong, clear prose, than Susan Haack . . . a philosopher of great distinction."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, National Review

"If you relish acute observation and straight talk, this is a book to read."—Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa)

"Everywhere in this book there is the refreshing breeze of common sense, patiently but inexorably blowing."—Roger Kimball, Times Literary Supplement

"A refreshing alternative to the extremism that characterizes so much rhetoric today."—Kirkus Reviews

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1: Confessions of an Old-Fashioned Prig

2: "We Pragmatists ...": Peirce and Rorty in Conversation

3: As for that phrase "studying in a literary spirit" ...

4: "Dry Truth and Real Knowledge": Epistemologies of Metaphor and Metaphors of Epistemology

5: Puzzling Out Science

6: Science as Social? - Yes and No

7: Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist

8: Multiculturalism and Objectivity

9: Reflections on Relativism: From Momentous Tautology to Seductive Contradiction

10: The best man for the job may be a woman ... and other alien thoughts on affirmative action in the academy

11: Preposterism and Its Consequences

Acknowledgments

Index

You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, consult our international information page.

[william.scherk]

WSS-Did I miss something, where did you mention Haack? Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate is one of the books I most frequently recommend to people. As a matter of fact, that reminds me that my copy is on loan, and is long overdue.

Mine too. Who woulda figgered.

-- a small coda to my lengthy rant above, a dose of pure, unadulterated Haack:

Pseudo-Inquiry; and the Real Thing

A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the color of that truth. This is a tautology (Webster's: "inquiry: search for truth . . ."). A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for the truth of some proposition(s) determined in advance. There are two kinds of pseudo-inquirer, the sham and the fake. A sham reasoner is concerned, not to find out how things really are, but to make a case for some immovably-held preconceived conviction. A fake reasoner is concerned, not to find out how things really are, but to advance himself by making a case for some proposition to the truth- value of which he is indifferent.

Neither sham nor fake inquiry is really inquiry; but we need to get beyond this tautology to understand what is wrong with sham and fake reasoning. The sham inquirer tries to make a case for the truth of a proposition his commitment to which is already evidence- and argument-proof. The fake inquirer tries to make a case for some proposition advancing which he thinks will enhance his own reputation, but to the truth-value of which he is indifferent. (Such indifference is, as Harry Frankfurt once shrewdly observed, the characteristic attitude of the bullshitter.)(3) Both the sham and the fake inquirer, but especially the sham, are motivated to avoid examining any apparently contrary evidence or argument too closely, to play down its importance or impugn its relevance, to contort themselves explaining it away. And, since people often mistake the impressively obscure for the profound, both, but especially the fake reasoner, are motivated to obfuscate.

The genuine inquirer wants to get to the truth of the matter that concerns him, whether or not that truth comports with what he believed at the outset of his investigation, and whether or not his acknowledgement of that truth is likely to get him tenure, or to make him rich, famous, or popular. So he is motivated to seek out and assess the worth of evidence and arguments thoroughly and impartially. This doesn't just mean that he will be hard-working; it is a matter, rather, of willingness to re-think, to re-appraise, to spend as long as it takes on the detail that might be fatal, to give as much thought to the last one percent as to the rest. The genuine inquirer will be ready to acknowledge, to himself as well as others, where his evidence and arguments seem shakiest, and his articulation of problem or solution vaguest. He will be willing to go with the evidence even to unpopular conclusions, and to welcome someone else's having found the truth he was seeking.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wee Willie,

Things are moving way too fast for me to keep up. I find that I am in desperate need of a speed reading course. (I simply will not compete with our dear Jenna W, though. I have a natural threshold that will never permit me to digest 50 pounds of books a day - sort of like a short man knowing he will never be tall.)

I had not read Susan Haack before. I clicked on your link to her essay, "Science, scientism, and anti-science in the age of preposterism," read the first two pages, from which your quote above is taken, and immediately became a fan. What a wonderfully clear mind.

Shades of judging PARC (sham reasoning)...

Her clarity was such that it cut through the distraction of all those blinking thingies saying that I have won a 42” plasma TV or a laptop. Even so, I copy-pasted the essay to a Word file, as I want to drink deeply and slowly from this goblet - sip so to speak.

I have one the the books by the Churchlands (Neurophilosophy by Patricia Churchland) and I fully intend to digest it. I have no choice but sip this one, as I have an artistic bent, not a scientific one.

On the empire of OL, you are most welcome as our official court fool since you post here, however, you have strong competition from one who does not. You also mention the disdainful John Newnham. I fear our paths are different. He seeks to drink from an illusive fountain of wisdom that will allow him sit on his ass and do nothing, yet achieve deep meaning. Something to do with discovering pride through bitching...

What a wonderful Comprachico sign! I am so relieved that you did not grow in the form of a mental pot because of something I sent you. (whew!) Yet you object to having a pretty head... (I will respect your wishes, but I dearly hope this has nothing to do with pots.)

I must say that I do not seek the pedestal this growing empire provides. I have no guru urges. (However, I do admit to harboring great pleasure on contemplating the image of Kitten the Magnificent.) I tried to save the world once and almost lost myself. Now I seek "genuine inquiry" and leave the folly of preposterizing to others more competent at it, to use Haack's language. My trusty ear takes no delight in the siren call of sham or fake reasoning.

And with you, I feel that my trusty ear may not have failed me after all...

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

WSS wrote:

I did not know Lindsay Perigo did this backstage management . . . and it saddens me in light of my Sunny Days post at Blog 46. It gives me a reason to test for a link between this and this (although I hope the link does not exist and that I am having a fit of paranoia brought on by standing too close to the hot white sink of evul).

Cresswell is a long-time close-comrade-in-arms of Perigo's in the battle against EVUL. You're likely not having a fit of paranoia.

Contra Cresswell, I enjoy your writing a lot. I became a fan with the first couple posts of yours I read on RoR.

Ellen

___

[william.scherk]

Contra Cresswell, I enjoy your writing a lot. I became a fan with the first couple posts of yours I read on RoR.

Thanks, Ellen -- you may also enjoy this simulpost (with pictures here -- I seem to be too incompetent to make the post feature HTML):Denunciasaurs (and toadies and flunkies and lapdogs and anonymous pitbulls, hyenas, vultures and friends) are hypocrites.

Not evul immoral folk, and thus irredeemable, no -- the common Denunciasaurus-Rex is a simple, bumbling hypocrite, all too human, alas1 . . . all too human to be roasted on a spit, shredded, marinated in blog-spit, pounded to paste, spread on white toast, chewed, spat out, ground in the sidewalk, napalmed, hosed off with bleach, and finally cast off into the hideous punishing darkness of the inner 0-ring of Heck (Ottawa)2.

No, we must pity them for their un-remarked and un-corrected mistakes. We must be tolerant. We must obey our stern internal moral injunctions (e.g., do NOT act like Miss Nasty while pretending to be Miss Nice: "But she started it, the poo-poo head!! She's a fucking immoral piece of shit."3).

The plangent whinging and whining and high dudgeon are unseemly of any pretender to the throne of scholarship or the throne of Micronesia (which the SOLO archipelago brings to mind for all its truck and trade with the world, being the crossroads of reason and passion and all). The revelation of La Perigo backstage activities4 put all of this posturing and fervour in perspective: hypocrisy comes in varied delicious flavours.

Cringing hypocrisy

('I was forced to be nasty by Events. It's not my fault -- I didn't know I would be caught')

Amnesiac hypocrisy

('I disremember. I can explain the discrepancy. How can I remember everything I say in private?')

Towering hyocrisy

('Yes, I publish private correspondence. But I have a Higher Purpose!!! I am never immoral myself, in any way: all my errors are undertandable and explicable! I am King [Queen|EmpressFlying Spaghetti Monster creator] of the only moral planet in the universe, cur . . . stupid undergrad, manipulative liar, evul poo-poo head, TOC-infected sub-optimal and unfortunate Jenna Wong-wannabe. I will not engage with the uncivil (except in cases when I am busy or distracted. Don't imagine that I disagree or agree with any comment on my blog. I am strictly neutral and objective. You are banned, cretin.')

Wheedling hypocrisy

('But she hurt my feelings. And my feelings matter. And people are Nasty to me, and I NEVER almost ever except for sometimes am Nasty myself. And I was provoked by secret whispers and she hurt my feelings and none of the other kids will like me if she keeps lying about me. Boo hoo, sniffle, grizzle, snort hiccup sob screech . . . She was supposed to be my frie-eeeeeeend! She was never supposed to tell on ME! She was supposed to support ME! Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo, O woe is me, I hurt so much . . . why doesn't anybody understand?! Now I have to find a new best friend and that's HARD!!! Boo hoo whinge, wheedle, cry, snuffle, cough, load aim KABOOM!!! Hi, wasn't it fun to blow Chrissy's brains out? Wanna be my besssssst frie-eeeeend?! That's a pretty anonymous name you have. I won't ban you if you're nice to me . . . ')

Shameful hypocrisy

('all of the charges of hypocrisy are themselves hypocrisy, and bad and evul and I won't tolerate them in my comments and send me your secret emails too, huh, please? and all the charges of nastiness are themselves nasty, and you are banned from here, mister, and that's not what I said, you're banned from commenting, and you and you and you and even you if you look at me the wrong way. I'm tired. I write over 5000 words every day of top-flight philosphy. It is tiring. You tire me. You are banned. I'm going away on tour and if you are Nasty while I am gone I might have to spank everybody. I might have to pre-spank you all unless you are very very nice while Auntie is gone. I heard that. You are banned too, mister. I warned you. I don't tolerate stuff around here. And no, NOBODY GETS PIE except ME. Got it? If you don't GET IT, consider yourself pre-spanked, pre-banned, and pre-deleted.')

When an author writes "I . . . [he] . . . me . . . digusting lies,"5 we enter a new rhetorical universe. We leave the universe of 'my esteeemed colleague'6 and the planet of, 'my friend and former associate'7 and plunge into the dense atmosphere of 'immoral, contemptible, scum-sucking poo-poo head.'8 There we stagger about deprived of oxygen and cordiality, barking harsh communications at all others we can perceive.

Mertz's routine invocations of her fairness and even-handed objectivity (on her blog here, and here, and here*) are revealed to be a sham. As if a raging Borderline patient9, she turns on her closest bosom buddies, she dares not give real love for fear of melting, she feels anguish at real and imagined betrayals, she denounces what once engendered comradely devotion . . . unbeknownst to her, her ability to navigate the social landscape is significantly impaired10.

What kind of friendship did she imagine she was performing in her mentor/mentee relationship with Sciabarra? How many confidences did she extract from him? How many has she betrayed in public? How much is she holding back in the mountain of archived communications? How much is she not telling? Who opened this Box of Nasty Emails?

Her 400 email trove is then as neutral an object as is Sciabarra's opposing trove (in these two camps, a thumping historical record of their mutual communications; in the massive engorged Inboxes of both, a mountain of material for a future objective historian) -- Mertz's +/-400 vs Sciabarra's +/-400.

(Note from administrator: Broken image link) http://weirdeurope.bitacoras.com/evul1.jpg

What can we see of these troves? Not much more than what is squoze out by one of the interlocutors.

I will reserve judgement on these matters until that future day when the material is open to view. Until then, I consider this a messy internal affair of Rand-followers which is really none of my business . . .

This leaves me with the impression of the world as it is: imperfect, full of imperfect people performing imperfect behaviours. I no more indict Diana Mertz Hsieh for her denunciation of Chris Matthew Sciabarra than I do Sciabarra for his stately, scholarly silence in the aftermath11. The are both human, imperfect and yet valuable.

With my sense of life (in which it is I, Me, Mine own universe, My precious self doing the living among a lot of imperfect Them) there is no option -- I cannot see round every corner, down every rathole or sewer, nor can I see into the hearts of all the men and women who stagger about the earth -- I can only be staggered myself by the rank hypocrisy which stinks up the public sphere from time to time.

To subvert a Fahyism, when one farts in public, the only seemly behaviour for other riders on the train is to ignore it (British and French people will allow a moue of distaste to appear on their granite faces, London/Paris often stinking in other ways12; Americans will open a window with a great irrelavant clatter12A; Scots will be stinking drunk and think it their own crepitation -- and giggle13; Brazilians will hardly notice another sewer smell on their grossly-overcrowded Metro14; Russians will imagine that someone has a trove of home-raised mushrooms in a bag somewhere between their legs and will sniff deeply in an attempt to detect its origin15; Chinese will pull up their face-masks and sign inwardly as they watch the stock ticker on the train car -- installed by the Communist Party16; Swedes will not smell the fart, as the train unit has already detected and removed the methane to a collector-tank where it is fed back into the bio-fuel engine17; Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders will all think that the party has started and fart themselves. Accordians will appear. Foot-stomping dances will be performed, babies will be conceived18; Canadians will entertain suspicions that it is a secret Yankee** riding the train whose rectal-blurt so befouled the public sphere, and will ask their government to install fart-detector buzzers on every transit seat at an expense of $850 million tax-funded dollars19).

WSS

_________________________

1. [Diana Mertz Hsieh:] "Generally speaking, although I do not take a casual approach to my writings, my basic attitude is that I am perfectly willing to err, even in a spectacular and public fashion. Of course, I would prefer not to do so. Of course, I strive to avoid it. But when it happens, I take it as an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than a blow to my self-image. In contrast, when I joined Toastmasters back in 2001, I rather disliked being told pretty much anything other than that my speech was wonderful. Although I understood its theoretical function, I was generally averse to criticism. But in that friendly and supportive environment, I quickly realized that improvement required strong and direct criticism. Of course, some forms of criticism are genuinely destructive. Good criticism aims at correcting errors by noting and encouraging some change for next time. My attitude towards the possibility of error and the value of criticism changed for the better, I think."

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004/04/fro...g-to-error.html

2. [scherk:] "Finally, I like that Campbell is open to inquiry, to refutation -- and sets himself an even tone. Although I appreciate the Grand Guignol of the enraged discussant here wishing him to roast in Hell (or Heck, or the Randian equivalent: Ottawa), I still don't know why people are so belligerent and oafish here on occasion."

http://www.solopassion.com/node/841#comment-6432

3. [Mertz:] "Perhaps NS regards both Chris and Robert as obviously beyond the pale. To be clear, I cannot remotely concur with that judgment. Whatever our philosophic disagreements, both have been good friends to me over the years. Along these lines, I should say something about Noumenal Self's comment in that same post about my relationship with Chris. There NS wrote, "Maybe soon she'll turn a similar critical eye to the works of a certain NYU-based dialectical scholar she continues to regard as a friend." Chris Sciabarra has been an excellent friend to me over the years. He has consistently encouraged me in my philosophical work. He was both supportive and challenging in our many discussions about my dissatisfaction with TOC. As my friend, he is worth his weight in gold. Notably, my friendship with Chris does not imply agreement with his dialectical approach to Objectivism, nor with his approach to academia. I have substantial questions about the former and substantial doubts about the latter. Both will surely be hashed out over time, using the same critical eye I employ in all intellectual endeavors. Yet our friendship, which is grounded in far more than a mutual interest in Objectivism, will not thereby be brought into question."

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004/04/fri...philosophy.html

4. [Excerpted from MSK post "Conspiracy Theory":

Giving your opinion about a person who has wronged you to a friend is in no way “manipulation.” Sciabarra and Maurone had a friendship that he tried to preserve. Hsieh ditto. According to the information in her article, she was embracing sworn enemies of Sciabarra, and Maurone was embracing her. Sciabarra tried to fight for his friendships and warn these people he cared about to ensure that they did not suffer the same indignities he had to bear from “purists.” Nothing more is evident to me from the excerpts Hsieh posted – certainly not her own theory of a deadly single-person e-mail conspiracy against ARI.

Now if you want to understand what real offline manipulation is, you should get near Perigo during one of his campaigns. I was – for several campaigns. Here is how it works. Once someone has posted something online that Perigo believes in (usually meaning something bad about someone he wants to attack), he starts e-mailing and phoning like mad to make sure that people post agreement. (I never talked by phone with him, though. He requested my phone number and I sent it to him, but that happened right when our relationship was deteriorating because I would not cave in to his pressure against Barbara. I have about 500 e-mails to and from him on file.) He is extremely conscious of the impact of public agreement and he manipulates that in the wings quite well. He even says things like “it looks bad if no one comments,” or “now is your chance to say [whatever],” or “isn’t [so and so] a sanctimonious twat?” Yada yada yada.

If you ever wonder how his discussions seem to generate so much interest, one of the main reasons is his ongoing “whispering campaign.” ]"

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...post&p=3849

5. http://www.solopassion.com/node/893

6. [Perigo: ] "Note from Linz—Yes, I'm cheating. This is a reprise. I thought with all the discussion raging here about PARC, ARI, TOC, SOLO, the Brandens, etc., and the TOC Summer Seminar coming up, with me among the presenters, it would be timely to re-run this. It's reprinted exactly as it orginally appeared—no ARI-type airbrushing! Smiling

I have just returned to New Zealand from The Objectivist Center's Summer Seminar in Vancouver. I am feeling the blues that must inevitably accompany a return to the world of nihilism from one of exuberant rationality. Yes, "exuberant"! Yes, TOC! Just as you, dear reader, thought you'd never see me saying that, so too did I never think I'd be writing it. Fact is, the Seminar was a blast.

First, the speakers. I met and heard the world's best-kept secret: a philosopher who is also a stand-up comic (or perhaps that should be the other way round). His name is Fred Seddon. He has a vastly different take from Rand on Kant and Hume, but argues his case brilliantly and entertains uproariously. His presentations are not lectures, they are performances. Though his staple leitmotif, "Did I tell you I like sex?" is arguably overdone, there is no question that this man's comedic talents make him unique in Objectivism.

There was Molly Hays, who delivered solo a presentation on "The Necessity of Romance" that was intended to be delivered in tandem. Her unavoidably absent co-presenter, Larry Sechrest, would have been proud of her. The only question mark over Molly is her musical taste—she kept insisting that Linz sing, even after he obliged her.

There was Tibor Machan, in booming good form as always; David Kelley, delivering a tour de force about Islam; Nathaniel Branden, unmistakably aging but infinitely endearing as he ad-libbed in an unfamiliar interview format; Madeleine Cosman, magnificent and majestic as she swept aside the horrors of socialised medicine and conjured up free market alternatives; Stephen Hicks, suave and sophisticated, aglow from the publication of his new book; Francisco Villalobos, outrageously beautiful but annoyingly reluctant to proffer the empirical validation of the title of his lectures, "Look Better Naked." There were many more, whom it is unjust to omit but whom I cannot include simply because I didn't get to hear them. I walked out of one lecture only, because the speaker was less audible than the one in the next theatre who resonated passionately through the wall and thus staked his claim for my attention. As for my own presentation, I shall leave it to others who were there to post about if if they wish; suffice it for me to say that I couldn't have hoped for a better reception.""

http://www.solopassion.com/node/1

7. [Perigo:] "Great to see these comments & good wishes - and some fetching new colour photos! Kat in spectacles! All the better to match-make with! Adam B - how can we know you're what Ashley says you are - a blone cutie - without a colour photo?! Get with it, man! Sir Edward Hudgins - thanks for your good wishes. The fact that you have signed on will no doubt be reported on Diana's blog. Do you know what you have done?! Smiling Diabolical - that was a quick emergence from invisibility! "

http://www.solopassion.com/node/1#comment-64

8. [LapdogOne: ] "You love the smell of your own brain-farts."

http://www.solopassion.com/node/906#comment-7479

9. "Kernberg believes that borderlines are distinguished from neurotics by the presence of "primitive defenses." Chief among these is splitting, in which a person or thing is seen as all good or all bad. Note that something which is all good one day can be all bad the next, which is related to another symptom: borderlines have problems with object constancy in people -- they read each action of people in their lives as if there were no prior context; they don't have a sense of continuity and consistency about people and things in their lives. They have a hard time experiencing an absent loved one as a loving presence in their minds. They also have difficulty seeing all of the actions taken by a person over a period of time as part of an integrated whole, and tend instead to analyze individual actions in an attempt to divine their individual meanings. People are defined by how they lasted interacted with the borderline.

Other primitive defenses cited include magical thinking (beliefs that thoughts can cause events), omnipotence, projection of unpleasant characteristics in the self onto others and projective identification, a process where the borderline tries to elicit in others the feelings s/he is having. Kernberg also includes as signs of BPO chaotic, extreme relationships with others; an inability to retain the soothing memory of a loved one; transient psychotic episodes; denial; and emotional amnesia. About the last, Linehan says, "Borderline individuals are so completely in each mood, they have great difficulty conceptualizing, remembering what it's like to be in another mood.""

http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/bpd.html

10. "Unstable and intense relationships.

People with borderline personality disorder may idealize potential caregivers or lovers at the first or second meeting, demand to spend a lot of time together, and share the most intimate details early in a relationship. However, they may switch quickly from idealizing other people to devaluing them, feeling that the other person does not care enough, does not give enough, is not "there" enough. These individuals can empathize with and nurture other people, but only with the expectation that the other person will "be there" in return to meet their own needs on demand. These individuals are prone to sudden and dramatic shifts in their view of others, who may alternately be seen as beneficient supports or as cruelly punitive. Such shifts other reflect disillusionment with a caregiver whose nurturing qualities had been idealized or whose rejection or abandonment is expected.

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx10.htm

11. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/

12. Especially in the Tube/Metro

12. No offence to my American brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties and drunken racist great-grandpas. They are just can-do kinds of folks and they always smell great.

13. Considering their diet of Scotch and stodge, deepfried candyfloss and sheep offal-and-butter sandwiches . . . who could think them wrong?

14. Though the major cities of Brazil share this special scent with other slumb-ringed holes across the developing world.

15. No offence to the Slavs -- their mushroom-hunting skills are empirically-demonstrated

16. With apologies to the Chinese engineers and owners of the German-manufactured Shanghai Maglev, which smells like boondoggle

17. I extrapolate from recent news of the cow-powered train. Not cow-dung powered, cow-powered. Reference on polite request.

18. This is of course, utter nonsense, silly and extemporaneous. I am Norwegian myself.

19. This is too kind to Canadians. The suspect yankee was probably maced and dragged off the train and sentenced to a Canadian re-education camp, but not before being subjected to the horrors of Socialized Medicine, in the form of waiting in a line for 30 years, an appointment with a busy former Death-Squad butcher, then a pitiful lingering death from taxation . . .

. . .

666. . . . This is an all-purpose reference to the unbelievably quite awful and bad to the max, Mr Evul Stuart Kelly, also known as the Spawn of Satan in the Ur-Objectivist Cosmology. See "I have met evul and he is MSK," as yet unpublished in a refereed journal . . .

* -- Like La Mertz, I am sometimes too lazy to look up references on blogs . . . as she was in her condescending, contemptuous and disproportionate screed against La Wong, which I also will not bother to look up.

** -- 'Secret Yankees': many Americans are indistinguishable from Canadians until they open their mouths.-- (Not because of their barking delivery, but because of their perfect teeth, a result of a superiour dental health system over that of the foul, socialized Saddamite Canadians -- Ed.)

[Aaron]

MSK - I've seen several recent posts from you on RoR. Does this mean the moderation has been lifted, or you're posting messages regardless and Joe has been letting them through?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Does this mean the moderation has been lifted, or you're posting messages regardless and Joe has been letting them through?

I have no idea.

Edit - My last post was submitted to the moderator queue.

Michael

[JennaW]

WSS-- thanks for that Susan Haack quote! I have her stuff on my to-read list. I'm also going to copy and paste that quote into my blog so it can be shared...