[MD] Decision

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Matt and all

You really do have a nack for making things way more complicated than 
they are. In this case, you missed *the* crucial point Horse has tried 
to make twice now:

Bo is telling people that the SOL is Pirsig's idea.

That's it. It's not about clogging bandwidth, interpreting Pirsig his 
own way or catching new people like fish. Bo was putting words into 
Pirsig's mouth that he explicitly had rejected.



I've also tried to do some philosophology in the old archives and found 
this post as the first reference:

http://www.moqtalk.org/archivedata/old_lilasquad/9802/0079.html

However, in that post, he referred to Hugo, but I can't really find that 
Hugo ever said anything like SOL. Hugo's earlier post was:

http://www.moqtalk.org/archivedata/old_lilasquad/9802/0074.html

Where he do discuss similar issues, but never really mentions what Bo 
inferred from it.



Lastly, has anyone heard from Bo since the Decision post? On a personal 
level, I think we all realize that it might have hit him a bit hard. But 
Matt, "a few screws loose"? I thought we tried to refrain ourselves from 
name-calling here, or were you a teeny bit drunk whan you wrote that?

	Magnus




On 2010-07-08 06:27, Matt Kundert wrote:
>> The only point of yours that actually got my hackles up was the "I
>> haven't followed the threads that led to this decision (but I'll opine
>> anyway)" angle.
>
> Yeah, I know, right?  Heh, I hate that shit, but I read
> Steve's brief intercession and went, "What the hell
> happened when I wasn't looking?"  And everybody else does
> it, so why not indulge.  And since, when I read Horse's
> original post "[MD] Decision" and had gotten the impression
> that administrative action was being (or going to be) taken,
> I also thought it was a timely issue that needed prompt
> response if response was to happen at all.
>
> Reading Horse's later post of clarification today, now I'm
> not so sure.  I guess I really don't know what is going on,
> which usually isn't a big deal (maybe not even new).
> When Horse clarified what he meant by "inference [etc],"
> which I had picked up on for philosophical extrapolation and
> whatnot, he accorded himself exactly with the way I see
> Bo's aggressions on intellectual integrity.  But then, that
> just clouds my understanding of exactly what's going on
> even more.  I thought something new was going on, but is
> this just a camel/breaking/straw/back situation?
>
> I'm still not sure why we need to "draw a line" against
> anybody for "clogging up the entire MD bandwidth," but
> maybe there are practical/material/physical/electrical issues
> that have been aired in the previous stuff I'm ignorant of.
> I don't understand computers.  But if it's just about really
> wanting Bo to "give it break," then I still think administrative
> action is the wrong practical move (though it's unclear that
> anyone was suggesting it now).  Did Bo kill somebody, or
> some analogous intellectual incursion? 'Cuz otherwise I can't
> imagine why "even-handed tolerance" should be lifted as the
> general rule to take care of particular cases.  For example,
> the reason why Fox News represents a different problem _in
> kind_ that requires us to think seriously about lifting the
> general rule is because of the difference in _scale_ between
> a TV network and a crackpot on the corner (just as yelling
> "Fire!" in a crowded theatre represents a different problem
> in kind because of the difference in _urgency_).  Bo seems
> to me just a guy on a corner.  Horse, as he well-understands
> his position, has the kind of power over the
> structural-institutional shape of what we do to effect what
> goes on, and it isn't clear to me that tweaking of the
> structural shape (the "rules" for admission/rejection) is the
> best way to deal with Bo (or anyone).  Can anyone fill in the
> X ("scale," "urgency," etc.) that makes Bo a situation that is
> different _in kind_ from, say, me?
>
> Without a doubt, Bo represents a weird problem, because I
> think Mary gets the issue wrong when she implies that
> (roughly) all Bo is saying is that the kernel of an idea was
> in ZMM that Pirsig drew out differently when he moved to
> Lila (fork-in-the-road shit).  Mary seems to be able to
> conduct herself to say precisely what she means: Pirsig
> went the wrong direction.  Bo, and this is the appearance
> for many of us, does not have the rhetorical control to say
> precisely that, but rather ranges all over the place between
> "Pirsig took the wrong path" to "Pirsig took _my_ path," and
> thinking he's saying _the same thing_ in all the versions.
> And, on top of this, Bo plays this same dynamic out for
> every individual interpreter, I think clearly illustrated by his
> commandeering of my "Excavating SOM" post and the brief
> conversation that ensued.  There is just something
> cock-eyed about how Bo conducts himself on his intellectual
> path that seems intellectually dishonest--Bo's sincere, but
> that just forces everyone else to add, "yeah, sincerely
> delusional maybe."  I don't doubt Bo's sincerity, but I also
> have come to conclusion that he has a few screws loose
> that makes it impossible for me to talk to him, even if there's
> an intellectually sound position to be had in the
> SOM/SOLblahblah thesis (though it is not, in its
> completeness, Pirsig's thesis).  I think Bo staked out a
> genuinely interesting position, though he has increasingly
> become ingrown in his articulation.  I have nothing, and take
> it that Horse and everyone else has nothing, against Bo
> articulating his ideas.  But we are sincere in thinking there is
> something genuinely screwed up in his representation of his
> position, though it is actually quite hard to put your finger on
> it.  (I do sincerely think it is a lot harder than some others
> perhaps do, because I don't think "intellectual dishonesty"
> gets to it, though it may be the closest we've been able to
> get; put another way, we have a blurry dynamic sense that
> something smells like shit, though I'm not sure we've found
> the static latch for it yet, though I'm okay with ceasing to
> look for it).
>
> Horse added a number of practical suggestions about
> newbies and whatnot, and all of them I can get behind,
> with the real background issue of SOL being the misleading
> of people trying to find their feet (which you echoed Ian).
> But administratively, I don't know what one can do other
> than select certain pieces and positions as authoritatively
> standard (like when some years ago I started talking about
> "mainline interpreters" of Pirsig, my designation for Anthony
> and Mr. Buchanan) and highlight them on the frontpage, or
> where you sign up.  And even that is a contentious step,
> though not unheard of and less contentious than a booting.
> Because the issue I want to wrap my head around is why
> Bo is felt to be different in kind than other idiosyncratic
> posters.  Is the only reason I'm not on the receiving end of
> a decision because I'm not that involved anymore (kinda'
> like a difference in scale)?  There are all kinds of sliding
> continuums we go up and down on, axes along which we
> slide.  Some days I'm abusive, and if that was the only way
> I wrote, the only end of that axis that I was at--given the
> rules about abuse--it would make sense to boot me.  We go
> up and down these axes.  What are the other axes in play?
> seems to be a good question.  Being explicit and systematic
> about them is important, and I'm hazy on what this particular
> (cumulative) "violation" is, in terms of what I would need to
> do to not incur it myself (and I just use myself as a
> convenient lightening rod).  It's one thing to say that
> boots-on-the-ground, practical decisions need to be made
> for which there are no explicit rules (the apotheosis of
> phronesis, praxis over theoria, rhetoric over dialectic, good
> over truth, and any number of other slogans I ascribe to).
> It's another thing to say that there are no explicit rules that
> can be constructed later to make sense of what seemed
> right to do at the time.  That would be an eschewment of
> static latching, of justification.  It's not that Horse hasn't
> judiciously supplied these--Horse knows how to be a
> wonderful administrator and moderator.  I'm just having a
> hard time finding not only what is exactly going on, but a
> sense of the rationale being a good one.
>
> At the end of the day, the fact of the matter remains that,
> in terms of the MD-community and what kind of membership
> I have--which seems to me only measurable by
> participation--I must only have a half-membership.  I'm not
> nearly involved as I once was, and it only makes sense that
> the "moral, pragmatic force" of my voice on issues pertaining
> to how the community should shape itself go down
> accordingly.  It's even worse for Mati, who shows up after
> a long absence.  Because of the nature of this community,
> we vote with our feet (as the American idiom has it), and
> because Mati's feet haven't been here for so long, it makes
> perfect sense to largely ignore his opinion because at the
> end of the day the community needs to shape itself for the
> people active in the community.  But to the extent that the
> community wants to take into it's collective account the
> "possible" community that it wants to court, it might listen
> to Mati's opinion (Mati, of course, is not exactly an "outsider,"
> but I hope my point is clear enough).  And likewise for
> me--Horse needs to balance keeping the people actually here
> happy and shaping the community so that it remains open to
> the invisible, possible future members.  I'm a rarer and rarer
> voice, so the need to "please" me, listen and take into
> account my opinions on matters that shape the community,
> matters less than it may have in the past.
>
> I want the best for the MD, because I have many memories
> tied into it, but I cannot promise my active participation, so
> I understand if the community doesn't care much about
> what I think would be best for it.  But I do tend to think
> that the lines of reasoning I've laid out are sound ones to
> think about in the making of these kinds of decisions, even
> if this particular community is not the vested interest it
> once was for me.
>
> Matt
>
>> For me this wasn't the time for even handed tolerance - yes "even" Ian
>> can say that. Bo has had several metric tonnes of tolerance over the
>> last 8 to 10 years. Horse was drawing a line.
>>
>> The only "moral" issue here is Bo's ignorance of the "Bo SOL" issue is
>> clogging up the entire MD bandwidth. The issue that many of us do
>> ignore him for long periods - until he starts perverting new
>> correspondents with his "my story is the Pirsig story" rhetoric.
>>
>> Give it a break Bo.
>>
>> Ian
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