[MD] The MoQ.org STRANGLES Creativity

[Case]

In post after post, year after year, Platt has waxed on about the beauty and
value of individual freedom. He uses the MoQ hierarchy of value to justify
his belief that armed communists and Mexicans are camped in the bushes
waiting to march all freedom loving folk off to the Gulags.

I find it ironic then that he continues to participate in the MoQ.org
listserve where his freedom of expression is so unjustly and arbitrarily
restricted. For make no mistake the MoQ.org is a society. Its individual
members contribute and each plays a specific role in the social structure.
Arlo and Khalad the token liberals, Platt the right winger, Matt the
professor of philosophy, DMB the mad rambler, Marsha the artist, Ant the
certified academician, Mark Maxwell the angry jester in disguise, SA the
philosopher poet, and the host of us other students, seekers and agitators. 

But we are, none of us, free to express ourselves. There is a subtitle
tyranny at work. But I think this tyranny speaks volumes on the nature of
Freedom and Platt's failure to understand both it and the MoQ. We are, all
of us bound by text. Not the obvious limitations of the English language or
our inability to vocalize. But by TEXT. We are forced into the bygone age of
the manual typewriter. We can not change our fonts to suit our modes. We
cannot change their color or size to match our personalities. We can not
boldface or underline. We cannot even control how other members of our
society see what we type, as we all use different e-mail clients and have
different default font settings respecting the font face, color and size.

The injustice is we are all forced to speak OR TO SHOUT AT EACH OTHER TO
MAKE A FRICKIN' POINT.

I can tell by the number of odd characters strewn among people's posts that
others either consciously or unconsciously feel the pinch of this tyranny.
This antitypography rule is a static latch taking us all back to the 1960's
an era near and dear to some but so irritating to Platt I can not imagine
why he voluntarily chooses to remain confined by its rules.

This set of rules is completely arbitrary. I can not say how many times I
have longed to bold face or italicize a point. Or to insert a picture to
illustrate a point. Or insert the sound of my screaming outrage. 

Please know that I am not advocating for a change here. I am not suggesting
that Horse change the format of these discussions anymore than I would argue
the music would be more dynamic if we abandoned the chromatic scale. Things
are working very nicely thank you. I do not think the Quality of these
discussions would be improved by the use of smilies. What Ian Shoales called
the graphical equivalent of baby talk. 

It is not the Static Quality of the rules we live by but the Dynamic Quality
of each individual's ability to work within those rules that make this forum
interesting. There are intelligent and creative people here but these
Qualities are foreground against a background of Static and arbitrary social
conventions. Rules and Static Quality do not strangle the individual they
set us free. Freedom without restriction is Chaos it can only lead to
disorder and dissolution. 

The Metaphysics of Quality is always about the union of opposites. To argue
that one level has primacy or that one aspect is supreme misses the point.
Quality shines not from freedom but from the balance of freedom and the rule
of law.