RoR: Forum

Phil,

When I first started paying attention to Solo late last year, it had a very good, very rare, and very fragile thing going ...

If it was fragile, then it was not endurable. Why not? And how do make that which is fragile enduring without changing it? So many beautiful things we enjoy in life are fleeting. To try to capture them to make them last usually destroys them - or worse - us for trying to make the impossible happen. This is not an argument against improvement. It is an argument against utopianism that would freeze in place what should never be frozen out of fear we may lose what must, by its nature, move on.

Andy

Post 21

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 8:58am

...the continued cycle of growing - and learning from what grew...

Post 22

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 10:07am

===========
This place breathes with the hurly-burly of ordinary people doing things both vile and grand.
===========

This gem deserved to be said/seen a third time, and for more than charm. Hell, it should hang as a plaque, over our doorway!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: SOLHQ is humankind's holy grail. But MacIntyre (in 1997) said it first, so I defer to his words on this final political solution for man -- which, by the way, also ties in beautifully with this quote of Andy's (caps added):

===========
What we have instead in contemporary society are on the one hand a set of small-scale academic publics -- scientific, historical, literary -- within which the rational discourse of enquiry is carried on more or less IN ACCORDANCE WITH KANT'S IDEALS, publics however whose discourse has NO PRACTICAL EFFECT on the conduct of political life, and on the other, those areas of public life in which politically effective decisions are taken and policies implemented, areas from whose discourse for the most part SYSTEMATIC, RATIONAL ENQUIRY IS EXCLUDED, and in which decisions and policies emerge from a strange melange of arguments, debating points and the influence of money and other forms of established power.

WHAT IS LACKING in modern political societies is any type of institutional ARENA IN WHICH PLAIN PERSONS -- neither engaged in academic pursuits nor professionals of the political life -- are able to engage in SYSTEMATIC REASONED DEBATE, designed to arrive at a RATIONALLY WELL-FOUNDED common mind on HOW TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF POLITICS TO THE CLAIMS OF RIVAL AND ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF LIFE, each with its own conception of the virtues and of the common good.
===========

To recap then, the ingredients for mankind's success in dealing with political reality are:

1. an arena (such as SOLO)
2. where plain persons (not pork-seeking pigs)
3. are able to engage each other
4. in systematically cache'd (on the SOLO server)
5. reasoned debate
6. about how politics are, at rock bottom, are a social application of proper ethics

I'll eat crow: If anybody can show me any place, anywhere on earth, that satisfies these 6 criteria -- better than SOLOHQ!

Nobody does it better.

Ed

Post 23

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 10:15am

I personally have a bias.

I have met many extraordinary people on Solo doing many wonderful, rational, passionate and constructive things.

Many fine minds and hearts.

About the vile things, I deal with one-by-one as they bother me and then I think about them no more.

Michael

Post 24

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 11:00am

Andrew, you're doing an excellent job.

Post 25

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 11:01am

You consider yourself an ordinary person, Ed? Humility is NOT a virtue.

Post 26

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 11:41am

Robert, by not existing as one of the archetypal parasites starring in this ongoing theatrical -- Defering Duck or Pork-seeking Pig -- I'm AM A PLAIN PERSON (though I may have been called just "plain" genius!).

;-)

In the context of THIS "final political solution" -- I'm on the "plain persons" side, not the Disney character side. That distinction is worth something, Robert.

See far, soar high.

Eagle-eye Ed

Post 27

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 1:06pm

Phil,

Good god, man�what are you doing?

Your being awarded Boring Old Fart of the Month was your last warning to cut it out. I actually sanctioned your post because I really didn�t perceive any cut against Andrew, and I share with you a great disappointment that the people you mentioned are gone�for no good reasons at all, and not because they had no good reasons.

Those open to your message have absorbed it already. You have to give it up now, or go.

Jon

Post 28

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 1:43pm

Phil,

As far as I've ever seen, you can only get away with the "why can't we all get along/peacemaker/call for civility/remember when" post maybe once. Maybe.
In chess, it would be discussed as an outmoded and ultimately pointless gambit.

Its efficacy has long been in question. I remember it attempted on BBS's in the green screen days, and even back then it only had limited impact. And, the negative consequences were usually much more grievous than getting a BOF of the month award; as sad as that is for you or any of us who ever have it bestowed upon us, it is at least a thrust without a twist at the end. There are different models of pillories.

I still don't know what got into me the one time I tried it. . I try not to dwell on my sins, or the sins of others, because there is no goodness in it, but I really should've just smacked my thumb with a ballpeen hammer instead- it would've been a better thing.

Later, I tried the simple "stick to the ideas" thing, which for some reason I felt was way cooler. Ack.

This is why moderation is always available: because it is the true and only last resort. SOLO is privately operated, and appears to be a benevolent monarchy.

Benevolent, meaning, the worst most of us ever have to fear is a BOF award, and I would find that, uh, more than sufficient, thanks. Better than the woodchipper.

(Edited by Rich Engle on 9/24, 1:45pm)

(Edited by Rich Engle on 9/24, 1:47pm)

Post 29

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 1:47pm

Plain genius, Ed? Now that I can understand... you have my sympathies...
(Edited by robert malcom on 9/24, 1:48pm)

Post 30

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 10:58am

Linz, I honestly admire your courage.
I hope it is not the same type of courage like the sailor who in order to kill the mouse sinks the boat!
I have a lot of experience about battles, you seems to be ether insane, or a true hero!
Time will tell, I wish for the latter.
Best Ciro D'Agostino.

(Edited by Ciro D'Agostino on 9/24, 3:43pm)

Post 31

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 4:24pm

Lance�you wrote:

Andrew, you're doing an excellent job.

Which is more than can be said for your hair-dresser! :-)

Post 32

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 6:28pm

There have been a lot of off-target replies to my post #1 ranging from the claim I was criticizing the current editor or denying the existence of any good recent articles to insults or attacks on my motivations to the idea that no one has the right to criticize something unless he is a paying customer or an active writer to the idea that my writing articles would resolve my complaints to the idea that suggesting there is a serious problem denies the hard work done by the principals ( or suggests that they are entirely to blame). Or that I didn't choose the right thread to say it in.

The fact that I am not trying to beat down every one of these ideas and engage in endless debate on what to me are obvious points does not constitute assent. I just don't want to invest even more unproductive time.

Phil

Post 33

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 9:56pm

Phil: This is not an old ladies' club. Jeez. If you are going to post something then defend it, damn it! And I'm on your side on this one re post 1 except it IS on the wrong thread. It's not nice to imply people are too dumb to talk to by not talking to them.

--Brant

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 9/25, 8:31am)

Post 34

Saturday, September 24, 2005 - 10:32pm

I do want to say that as a recent author, I never thought that Phil was taking a jab at the present writers. My beef was at his jab at Andrew. If I had thought that it was about quality of published articles, or if he did mean that, then I would have taken/take offense(even knowing my own literary ineptitude). I saw his complaint as being one critical of the quantity of good new articles submitted. We have lost some writers. I'm not defending all of them in saying that, as a matter of fact, given the way a couple of them left I say 'good riddance'. A few others I would like to see again, but that is not the gist of this. The point is, I want to ask him if his criticism was directed at the quantity(or lack thereof), or the quality. I took it to be the former.

Of course, Michael in a role deserving of an archivist, has pointed out that we're not really lacking that much in quantity.

(Edited by Jody Allen Gomez on 9/24, 10:35pm)

Post 35

Sunday, September 25, 2005 - 4:50am

Andrew: I just want to add my thanks for the magnificent job you're doing as editor. You are indeed a true gem!

And Michael: That list you produced is a terrific retort to the tiresome prophets of doom who blight this forum from time to time. In just one post, you've sent the vultures packing!

Post 36

Sunday, September 25, 2005 - 8:46am

Spot on, Derek!

Andrew, I also think that you are doing a superb job (I've been impressed with you from the git-go).

Michael, you knocked 'em dead. Good on you.

Ed

Post 37

Sunday, September 25, 2005 - 2:55pm

Also Andrew I concur... Excellent job, I need to make sure I say that because it seems like I'm always at your throat and I don't want you to think I don't appreciate the great job you do here as editor.

---Landon

Post 38

Monday, September 26, 2005 - 12:54am

Lance�you wrote:

Andrew, you're doing an excellent job.

Which is more than can be said for your hair-dresser! :-)

:-) It truly is the Age of Envy.

Post 39

Monday, September 26, 2005 - 10:07am