[MD] Theatre and Definitions

[Matt Kundert]

DMB,

I stumbled across Jon Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire" the other day.  It 
was very interesting because Jon blasted the hosts of "Crossfire" (Tucker 
Carlson and the "left" guy) for lowering the level of political discourse.  
Here's a snippet:

STEWART: But the thing is that this -- you're doing theater, when you should 
be doing debate, which would be great.

BEGALA: We do, do...

...

STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan 
hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're 
accusing us of partisan hackery?

STEWART: Absolutely.

CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...

...

STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank 
phone calls.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: What is wrong with you?

(APPLAUSE) CARLSON: Well, I'm just saying, there's no reason for you -- when 
you have this marvelous opportunity not to be the guy's butt boy, to go 
ahead and be his butt boy. Come on. It's embarrassing.

STEWART: I was absolutely his butt boy. I was so far -- you would not 
believe what he ate two weeks ago.

(LAUGHTER)

...

STEWART: You know, the interesting thing I have is, you have a 
responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.

STEWART: You need to go to one.

The thing that got me the most was when he said, "You guys are doing 
theatre."  It makes a lot of sense and it gets in the way.  For a long time, 
I think you and I, DMB, were doing philosophical theatre.  I fell in for it. 
  But I haven't wanted to do theatre for a while and I've tried to stop.  I 
just want to have a conversation and discussion, I don't want to do theatre. 
  I get the feeling that all you want to do is theatre, whether the other 
person wants to or not.

I've described and attempted to define what I understand by "language game" 
and "vocabulary" and you still theatrically react as if I never have 
attempted or tried.  I even thought I understood what position you were 
elaborating on and you theatrically blast me for attempting to build 
bridges.  I mean, according to the script I was handed, to perform "DMB 
Theatre", I'm supposed to begin by saying, "Geez-ez DMB, maybe if you 
weren't so inarticulate I could understand what you meant by 'persistent 
deductions'!"  But I'm not going to continue with the script.  I think the 
script's dumb and I think it hampers good discussion.  I'm done with 
theatre.  Anthony had an objection and some comments, I returned with some 
comments on how I understood the two things we were saying hooked up, 
Anthony replied again, etc.  That's how a conversation works.  We try and 
leave out all the bs.

Think about it this way.  If you had said, "Pirsig, with his distinction 
between 'frontal truths' and 'lateral truths'...." and _I_ had replied, 
"these ideas of 'frontal and lateral truths' are 'foreign imports' from 
somewhere which I’ve never heard of and I think might confuse newer 
members," you would have held my feet to the fire, probably exclaiming 
something like, "You see!?!  This is what drives me crazy.  Your head is so 
far up someone else's ass, you are so far gone and remote from Pirsig's 
philosophy, that you don't even _recognize_ Pirsig's philosophy when you see 
it!  Confuse newer members!?  Pirsig _un_confuses them from all of the crazy 
nonsense from the professionals that you trot in here.  You're killing me, 
and everyone else around you."  But what the hell is the point of that?  
People forget stuff all the goddamn time.  It's like in your "theatre world" 
people have to be perfect, and if they aren't they get hit with all your 
little routines for making fun of people.  That's a lot of pressure, because 
who enjoys being made fun of?  People get to make mistakes when they talk to 
other people, but when they talk to you, they enter "theatre world", where 
the only way to not be humiliated is to ignore you and your laughter and 
make jokes of your own.  But the end result is two guys laughing 
independently of each other, the only one's laughing at their own jokes 
because ignoring each other's jokes is the only defense.  Which is what 
"Crossfire" was.  And its sad.

I'm not perfect.  I'm not going to remember everything all the time, I'm not 
going to perfectly explain myself all the time (or ever, for that matter).  
Maybe I am a little inarticulate.  And then what do you say to me?  Would 
you really beat up on somebody who isn't as articulate as you?  Would you 
really tear into somebody who's trying to explore his thoughts and is having 
a tough time?  God, I hope you would't.  So is that all I've had to say all 
this time?  Did I just have to admit that I'm sometimes inarticulate?  If 
so, then all I want to know is why anybody would have to admit it--isn't it 
a given fact that people are sometimes inarticulate, that when probing and 
questioning in the "high country of the mind" you are sometimes gonna' sound 
like gibberish?  I would think so, but your "theatre world" doesn't allow 
that kind of thing, it pumps up the stakes to everything and doesn't allow 
exploration, it only allows mortal combat.

This "theatre world" isn't new to you, it started pretty much as soon as the 
MD began.  And one can see why.  The MD isn't just a conversation between 
two people, its a conversation with an audience--an unknown audience at 
that.  And so the way a person speaks changes.  The way I used to address 
people was of a piece of this "theatre world," and I regret my 
participation.  Speaking to a person with an audience at hand, like I am 
now, is one thing, but it gets way out of hand with some people.  I think 
its sad.  Ken Wilber stated the situation we find in this "theatre world" 
perfectly when he described it thusly: "most disturbing of all, a great 
number of the Infobahn males are digital predators - egocentric computer 
warriors that couldn't give a damn about intersubjective cooperation and 
mutual recognition."  I'm sick of the Infobahn world I'm forced to inhabit 
when I talk to you DMB.

----------------

What is a "language game"? What is a "vocabulary"?  Both are philosophical 
terms of art that basically refer to the same thing, the common sense notion 
that words have slightly different meanings depending on situation.  That 
words gain their meaning on the analogy of games, all depending on the 
implicit "rules" in place.  A "vocabulary" is roughly words that are most 
important to a particular kind of discourse.  Ad hoc distinctions between 
different language games and vocabularies helps, for instance, when a person 
says "The sun rises in the morning" and the astronomer replies, "No it 
doesn't.  The earth rotated the sun into view this morning."  We just say 
that the two people are playing two different language games, deploying two 
different vocabularies to describe the situation.  There are no discrete, 
universal distinctions between vocabularies or language games, but they can 
be useful to differentiate what's going on in two different sectors of life, 
they help us from confusing the two situations if confusion causes problems.

Three examples:  One, the difference between the vocabulary of common sense 
and the vocabulary of physics is the difference between calling it a "chair" 
and a "cloud of electrons." Two, the difference between the vocabulary of 
physicalism and Pirsig's vocabulary of pre-conditional valuation is the 
difference between saying "A causes B" and "B values precondition A." The 
chair/cloud of electrons doesn't care whether you call it a "chair" or 
"cloud of electrons" and neither does A nor B care whether you say one 
causes the other or one values the precondition of the other. Third (and 
here's where things get a little more interesting), the difference between 
the vocabulary of Christian mysticism and that of Buddhist mysticism is that 
in the former their descriptions of the mystical experience use the word 
"God" a lot and in the latter their descriptions use "Nothingness" or 
"Emptiness."

Matt

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