[lit-ideas] Re: Eric's hypocritcal wars
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 00:03:34 -0500
Andreas Ramos:
"But to argue that he can say whatever he wants yet not act upon it, and
we should honor that?"
Again, nonsense. This is an email list and none, or perhaps only a few,
know each other in any meaningful way. There is the danger of
developing a sort of misplaced concreteness to these relationships so
that one has the illusion that we actually know each other well enough
to make personal comments. We don't, so we shouldn't. If we held that
people had to live according to what they say, 'Andy' would have been
sent packing. This is only an email list and the rules of concrete
relationships don't apply because the full range of social interactions
is lacking. We should expect each other to be, at the very least, civil
and follow the written and unwritten rules of the list. Making abusive
personal references threatens the civility of this list. Perhaps some
people are willing to sacrifice civility for ideology but I am not.
Civility is the ground of all political and social discourse and to
threaten it is to undermine the discourse itself. In short, if two or
three people agree that civility can be dispensed with for some higher
good, then this list cannot function as it was intended.
Sadly,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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