[MD] To Matt from A Short History of Decay a repost

[david buchanan]

Matt extrapolated on a useful mantra, "it is not always safe to care":

When I respond to people's posts, it is because I'm letting down my guard to extend some caring.  The extent to which a person is sincerely trying to understand another person's point of view and is truly open to it is a function of care.  I don't care about everybody's viewpoint anymore: people who seem to me more concerned about rhetorical grandstanding than a mutual conversation with me are people I've decided to systematically avoid, because in opening myself up by caring about them enough to try and understand them, I've regularly been slapped across the face.  The people I talk _to_  now are people I think it is worth talking to.  ...
The ability to sense sincerity and openness in writing is difficult.  The history of the MD is a record of people misreading other people's level of sincerity and openness.  It is also a history of misunderstanding, and a history of people being open only to be slapped and then slapping another who was trying to be open, and--most tragic of all--a history of pairs of individuals who are open and get slapped, and then trade places, with the slapper now ready to be open, but getting slapped by the other whose face still stings.


dmb says:

This has a very interesting tension in it. It is both an essay on the virtues of sincerity and openness in writing and it is also a confession of your own guarded nature as a writer. Concern about your stinging face allows you to be open only selectively, so it's really the other guy's fault that you only care sometimes and in some cases. But you don't care in the case of said slapper, even if he is now open. Is that about right? Oh, and I presume that you're systematically avoiding me. Except in those cases where you only pretend you're avoiding me, such as this one. 

Yea, there's a lot of "interesting" "tension" in your writing. I just wish it wasn't so guarded. One gets the distinct feeling that something is being held back, that something has been left unsaid. It's as if the real point and purpose has only been alluded to obliquely but never stated outright or explicitly. But, for whatever it's worth, I think your spelling is immaculate.