[MD] DMB and Me

[Matt Kundert]

DMB said:
Would it really kill you to attempt a sincere and intellectually 
responsible consideration of the case I've presented?

Matt:
No, it would be far more time-consuming than I can allow.  
Think about it: you've asked me why I reject Quality.  
That's analogous to McCarthy's, "When did you stop being a 
Communist?"

I mean, part of the problem is that your 
case--to my eyes--looks like shit.  That's my honest 
opinion.  I think you have severe rhetorical problems in 
your writing, and it effects your point and your philosophy.  
If you were in a writing class and I was teaching, I would 
work long and hard with you on your rough draft to make 
it better.

God, that sounds so extraordinarily condescending, but the 
fact of the matter is that any person who reads any other 
has to deal practically with these issues--and to have to 
wade through the bullshit (what I called evocations of 
"emotional disturbances") and _then_ try and figure out 
what your point is, and _then_ try and figure out something 
cogent to say--it's just too much time, and this is just way 
too optional.

You think it is really simple, that your point is so simple, but 
your belief in its simplicity and your clarity is blocking 
you--as a pragmatic point about writing--from evolving as 
an articulating philosopher.  At least, in your monologue to 
me.

I don't think I'm a beautiful, clear, obvious writer who 
doesn't have
to work hard at writing, and I've tried to 
avoid saying my honest
opinion for a long, long time, in the 
hopes that your's is a phase and will pass.  In the hopes 
that you and I might become mutually-reinforcing members 
of a community of discourse.  But as time goes by, it seems 
less and less likely.  And in the end, what I've avoided 
saying explicitly but which perhaps will make it more clear 
what I'm trying to tell you is that I avoid you because I do 
not think you are worth my time.  

Shit, people who have fled the sterility of the MD--in large 
cases, I think, marked by the presence of certain 
personalities here--have long been telling me, "Why are 
you wasting your time on DMB?"  But they were gone, gone 
because they figured out how to move on with their life, 
made the choice that what was here wasn't beneficial to 
them any longer, but I remained, a glutton for punishment 
apparently.  

We spend our entire lives trying to understand 
our friends and lovers, the people around us.  And you ask 
for my time.  You have not displayed to me that you are 
worth the time for me to spend at trying to get to the 
bottom of what you are saying, because to my eyes it 
doesn't appear to go very deep, isn't terribly interesting 
to me, and so will not help me in my life or my work.  The 
appearance of depth, the appearance of understanding, 
the appearance of sophistication, all of these things in, e.g., 
Pirsig have the marks of actually being worth digging around 
in.  But in you, all these appearances appear mere, they 
have all the marks of posturing and length-in-lieu-of-depth.

People can disagree with my estimation.  People can 
estimate me in the same way.  We make those estimations 
and choices--those estimations and choices make up who 
we are, and we couldn't avoid them if we tried: it's what it 
means to be a static pattern of value.  But I try and 
respect people who make different choices than me.

Depth, insight, sophistication, and all those other things 
that attract us to a mind isn't what often keeps us around 
other minds, though--like Pirsig and Heidegger said, it's 
"care."  I care about some of the people around here, in 
what they think, even though I know that they and I are 
not as deep, insightful, or interesting as the people we 
sometimes talk about.  But I care about them.  But you're 
such a bastard, why the fuck should I care about you?

And lack of care is, properly understood through Pirsigian, 
Heideggerian, and Buddhist lenses, is a kind of death.  So 
maybe you're right after all.  And maybe that's my ticket 
to enlightenment.

Matt


> 
> Every single time, Matt. You're making the same basic mistake over and over. I can see how you're doing it. I can see how it's very easy to do. Pros do it. But apparently, in your mind, being corrected is the second worst thing that could ever happen. And the worst thing is being corrected here by me about Rorty.
> 
> That's just never gonna happen is it? At this point, even if you did suddenly see it, you'd never give me the satisfaction of admitting that. At this point, you'd die first, huh?
 		 	   		  
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