Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 01:21:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: Re:  Re:  New Year, Same Old Crap




On Mon, 4 Jan 1999 Unleesh-AT-aol.com wrote:

> It's not our place to legislate other people's lives and to place the
> "correct" interpretation of events upon them.

There you go again.  Your interdiction on legislation
itself legislates my life, so, by your own standard,
I reject that very standard.  


> This whole notion of choosing between the "correct" and "incorrect"
> interpretation has everything to do with Plato's distinguish simulucra from
> genuine copies (which Deleuze critiques), and Nietzsche's critique of truth as
> a courtroom procedure.

The above attempt to obscure the issue at hand by
invoking an irrelevant reference has already been
deflated by Nathan.  It is your dime-store relativism 
which has nothing to do with Deleuze-Guattari and
everything to do with the nihilism which they,
Nietzsche, and Plato reject.


> It's placing your worldview in hegemony above others.  And particularly,
> "reason" --- a notion which I'm surprised you aren't aware has been well
> critiqued, from Adorno and Horkheimer to Lyotard as well as D&G 

Show me where Adorno, Horkheimer, Lyotard, or D&G
debunk the principle of non-contradiction.


> --- is a
> Western imperialist concept that is not shared by every culture in the world.

Name a culture where 7+5=13.  


> And you may not be aware of this as well, but we are no longer living in the
> Enlightenment when Western rationalists patronizingly "dispelled the
> superstitious illusions" of their "brown brothers" .... It's ethnocentrism,
> plain and simple.

You surround yourself with straw men like a
paranoid Chinese emperor.  And if you actually
saw the color of my skin, then I suppose you'd 
call me an uncle Tom.


> And it's arrogant to not take people on their own words. We can help provide
> alternative interpretations, help them to suspend conclusions and keep open to
> other modelizations, but if we do not listen to people's experience, we have
> violated our right to listen in the first place.

Who's not taking people at their word: the man who
asks whether or not claims make sense, testing them
against publicly verifiable experience or reason; or
the one who pronounces, without any support, that 
all claims are equal, ignoring the fact that most
"worldviews" claim to be true -- not mere viewpoints
bemusing a jaded bourgeois Weltanschauung-consumer.
Who is the arrogant one?  Who is the ethnocentrist?



> And "wrong" or "right" has Nothing to do with it. "Correct" or "incorrect" ---
> these are objectivist obscurations to hide the fact that the speaker simply
> doesn't "like" what's being said or that they are experiencing Cognitive
> Dissonance, or more to the point, Stylistic Dissonance. If it's not your
> style, hey, pass on in peace. But don't try to convince the world that Your
> Judgement is the True and Holy One. It's just Your Judgement. And that has no
> bearing upon their experience.

Yeah, yeah.  Big talk.  Let's put it to the test.
When are we going to meet so I can carry out my 
personal style of destratification on your non-
judgmental person?  It's just your ass; it has no 
bearing upon my experience.


> You're demanding that other people use Your meanings of terms. That's
> arrogance! Other people are "auto-nom-ous" : they Self-Define, they set their
> own terms.

Yes, I am guilty of the terrible arrogance of 
assuming that when someone uses a word like "filter",
they mean something which separates things.  How
unspeakably demanding of me.  I also presumptously
stipulate that "tree" refers to branching, leaved
plants, that "water" refers to liquid dihydrogen
oxide, and that "imbecile" refers to unleash.

P.S.: "autonomous" derives from "auto-nomos", you
pseudo-literate hack.


> You can nitpick these points but the basic sense still remains. 

That is to say, none.


> Personally, I think you're spooked by mystic elves. Otherwise you wouldn't be
> so frightened of them. I say you doth protest too much.

I ain't 'fraid o' no elves.  But since you're 
the Grand Relativist Poobah, you shouldn't be
bothered by my posts -- they're just another
worldview, and you should pass on in peace, eh,
bra?


Cordially,

M.