Date: Sun, 2 Apr 1995 10:29:17 -0400
From: Brad4d6-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: Posture


>The trouble with spelling and grammar checkers is that they take a 
>certain level of literacy to get any good out of them.
>
>Laurie Cubbison

First, let me be seriously playful or playfully serious for a moment.  I'm
really envious of how you addressed Alan Sondheim, as

>technology-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu  1-APR-1995

One of my obsessive aspirations in life is to *be* transcendental
intersubjectivity and Universal culture.   If Alan is as you have addressed
him, he's further along on that path than I am (for he has become collective
subjective spirit, i.e., this mailing list, even if not yet universal
subjective spirit).

Now to address the substance of your response.  Of course I agree with you,
and I believe it's a tragedy.  I grew up in a social milieu in which either
one was altruistic and did good for others (to one's own detriment) or one
was selfish and did good for oneself (to others' detriment).  I went to a
prep school named after St. Paul (whom I've always wished, for the sake of
the future of humanity, would have fallen off his horse *a lot harder*).  As
an adult I've learned that activities which are beneficial both to oneself
and others are possible.  So I would hope, anent spelling checkers, that
(relatively) privileged people like myself would have the opportunity to use
them in order to elaborate our privileged literate accomplishments *and* that
we would use this opportunity to do writing which helps raise up the literacy
level (and other life conditions) of the more unfortunate persons of whom you
speak, not as personal privation but as a way of exercising our privilege
which is beneficial both to us and to them (a "win win" situation).  Aside:
*This* is why I despise (that's a pretty strong word, isn't it?) much of what
calls itself postmodernism, because it seems to me a way in which privileged
people use their privilege to titillate each other without regard (Sorge) for
the less fortunate rather than using their privilege in ways which are good
for both themselves and the less fortunate.

Brad McCormick


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