[lit-ideas] Re: Interpretation and Elision

Phil Enns wrote:

Mike Geary wrote:

"Phil resents being tricked by Irene."

I don't. What I resent is the abuse of the trust we share when we post
under our real names. Posters on this list who, to one degree or
another, hide their identities implicitly acknowledge that they refuse
to fully share in this trust. And as long as this is a minority group,
the practice is tolerable. The list suffers, however, when the trust is
abused.

"Trust" is something that should be a rare commodity. It should be earned. I don't trust easily, and I would not trust a chat room or an online listserv because these are inherently "open" to hiding behind pseudonyms, assumed personalities, etc.

Since this is the right time of year, it might be interesting to explore Santa Claus and Listerv trust. When parents lie to children about Santa, they are actually doing them a favor. Children need to learn that even loving, honest parents have some limits to their honesty and can NOT be trusted 100%. This is healthy for children to learn about adults.

Years ago, I helped run a WordProcessing BBS. One poster claimed to be a 14 year old Californian. But the consensus of the group was that it was another member "trying out" a persona for a story they were working on. It doesn't matter, really; it was interesting either way. 

I am John Wager.  I am. I'm not lying.

BUT: I must admit that sometimes I "try out" ideas that I may not fully believe here; this is a "safe" place because of the limited trust to explore a bit. I of course only explore a TINY bit; I do not go overboard. But what does it matter to the rest of you how much I exaggerate, or explore? It's something I think we all do, or at least we all should be ABLE to do, in a forum like this one.

Without this exploration, I think the list would be more constrained but less interesting.

Let's trust each other enough to be able to handle a little bit of mistrust, OK?



And to the degree that I value the list for all the
contributions of posters, even those who greatly annoy me, I resent the
abuse.

It seems to me that not all is well with Irene.  I wish her the best but
I couldn't trust her to mean what she writes.  And that is unfortunate.


Sincerely,

Phil Enns
Toronto, ON

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