[MD] Virtually meaningful?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
I no longer think we have a shared understanding of "honesty" or 
trust.  I just don't.

[Arlo]
So far the only thing gleanable from your posts is that you bind 
"honesty" somehow to the gray matter the "self" inhabits. So no, I 
guess we don't. Otherwise you'll have to elaborate for me where you 
think my definition of "honesty" is different from yours.

[Marsha]
Do you think you're teaching us some jolting, grand lesson about the 
self?  Do us simple misguided patterns need your guidance?   You make me laugh.

[Arlo]
I'm just stating my opinions on this. You can disagree, but I'd 
prefer if you did so in an articulate and kind way. This is the 
second mean little remark you've made to me. Why? Have I been 
anything but kind to you?

[Marsha]
Call. I'm in Connecticut, not Pennsylvania.

[Arlo]
Setting up call forwarding is pretty easy to do. I've arranged it so 
that if anyone calls from a number I don't recognize a gender-female 
friend of mine will answer. C'mon, Marsha, people are going to figure 
out we are personae sharing the same corporeal host after a while, 
why keep up the illusion?

Or are you of the belief that your words only matter if you corporeal 
host is "different" from mine?

[Marsha]
Arlo, you do not need to justify what you do, JUST BE HONEST.

[Arlo]
When have I not been honest? If you say, "claiming that Marsha is an 
alternate personae of Arlo", I'll let that stand. When else?

[Marsha]
Announce that you do not wish to be one integrated (conventional) 
individual, but would like to assume multiple personalities.

[Arlo]
This describes everyone all the time. Why should I have to "announce" it?

"Integration" here speaks to "continuity", and yes, I've already said 
that we as social beings value continuity across the selves we 
encounter. And we have tricks and devices we use to promote this. I'm 
not sure what you mean by "conventional", unless you mean someone who 
buys the "one body, one self" illusion.

[Marsha]
You could be Arlo(Krimel), or Arlo(SA) or Arlo(Margaret).  I might 
find that acceptable.

[Arlo]
We're grateful you might find that acceptable. Please let us know. 
But again I ask, how would finding out that "Arlo" and "SA" or 
"Margaret" or "Krimel" share the same corporeal gray matter detract 
from the Quality of their words? Tell me something, if I told you 
that "Arlo" was just another fictional character created by the 
personae you know as "Robert Pirsig", would that detract from the 
books that personae has written? Add weight to "Arlo's" words? Would 
you feel deceived? Why?

What if you learned today that "Robert Pirsig" was a pen name used by 
a woman known as "Marianne Smith"? What would that change about the 
value of the words in "his" books? Would the MOQ suddenly be "wrong"?

[Marsha]
At least in your game all would know the rules you play by.

[Arlo]
At any given point in time we can only and always make the best value 
judgements given what we know at that point. If you tie your value 
judgements to the continuity of "selves" as they relate to a 
corporeal body, then you are in for disappointment every time. Judge 
the value of the words, not the "realness" of the messenger, which is 
always a negotiated illusion.

[Marsha]
A particular author writing for multiple characters is not 
deception.  It's understood as the nature of a novel and storytelling.

[Arlo]
Life is an ongoing novel and storytelling. We are all characters in a 
narrative. I don't know where the "one body, one character" rule 
comes from (well, I have guesses), but its one of the impossible 
little fictions that serve us in some ways but hinder us when we 
forget it is just convention and assume its some real condition.

[Marsha]
Arlo, what do you want?   I mean it.  Bottom line, what do you want?

[Arlo]
What difference does it make, "I don't matter", remember? "What do 
you care what I think anyway? I don't even count... Right? I could 
disappear forever and it wouldn't make any difference. I might as 
well not even exist [in this forum], remember?" (Bender*)

* Arlo wonders do we attribute these words to the "John Bender" 
personae, the corporeal body sometimes known as "Judd Nelson" which 
spoke them, the screenwriter(s) who penned them? Does it matter really?