From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Sat Feb 12 2000 - 17:35:37 MST
At the risk of wasting bandwidth or extropian synaptic cycles, let me add a
bit more.
Damien wrote:
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, since that `in turn' does seem to support
Robert's reading."
Whoops! Seems I've messed up again. Wrote poorly. Miscommunicated.
Let me clear it up.
I said: " Robert and Ralph have got it right...", by which I meant their
vision is unexcelled.
Then I wrote, "... --end of story."
Which is ME being the bluntly confident one. (They, Robert and Ralph, seem
to me to be confident as well, perhaps even "bluntly" confident, but in
this instance, I am not suggesting that it is they who are blunt, nor
should anyone hold them responsible for bluntness, excessive or otherwise,
on the basis of my report. They are--seems to me-- "confident"; I are, on
the semi-unimpeachable authority of knowing my own mind, "blunt". Just
call me Mr. Blunt, or The Blunt One. )
Then I wrote, "I realize that such blunt confidence is off-putting to some,
and rationally insupportable to others, often outrageously so."
Which sentence was followed immediately by:
"Yet I, in turn, consider *their* analysis feeble, and *their* vision puny."
It was my intention to have the pronouns *their* above, refer back to the
"some" and "others" who may find my "blunt confidence" off-putting or
rationally insupportable.
I was thinking that this same 'they', in THEIR turn, consider my blunt
confidence yadda yadda, then I, in MY turn, consider their analysis and
vision yadda yadda. But if the expertise of highly-respected thinker,
author, and futurist visionary Damien Broderick carries any weight--and it
does with this apprentice wordsmith--then it seems I got tripped up by the
'in turn' thing, which--mea culpa, mea culpa, mea minima culpa--was
ill-chosen for its intended purpose.
Which is to say that I, The Blunt One, find thinking easy, and writing
hard. Whereas those of the feeble analysis and puny vision find thinking
hard, and writing,...well, when your analysis is feeble and your vision is
puny, the quality of your writing is pretty much irrelevant (unless, of
course, it earns you a living, in which case--the bottom line being what it
is--writing is everything, and analysis and vision are irrelevant).
Summary:
Robert: Excellent,
Ralph: Excellent,
Damien:Excellent,
Me: Best of All (Draws blinds, dances little dance of self-adulation, while
dog, lying before fire, looks on thinking, "What's gotten into him?")
Unenlightened non-extropic others: Who cares!
-----------------------------------------------------
As always, to horizons of love, or good luck, or more love.
Best, Jeff Davis
"He was blunt, but clumsy with his antecedents."
Ray Charles
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:26:46 MST