Sunday, the 11th of April, 2008
My Name quotes the UK Daily Mail:
[...]
The Christian Institute has now started legal proceedings
against Google on the grounds that it is infringing the
Equality Act 2006 by discriminating against Christian groups.
It is seeking damages, costs and the permission to publish its
advertisement.
I said:
This strikes me as a damning indictment of the Equality Act 2006.
Not to mention a damning indictment of the Christian Institute.
There is no excuse for *any* group, with any agenda, to try and force
someone else to aid or abet or accept its advertising agenda. This
act
and this action are anti-liberty from the get-go, and it is a
crying shame that it is happening in the UK where liberty of
conscience Rights were discovered in the first place.
Marty:
It's not clear to me that pu****ng an absurd concept
towards its extreme in an effort to abolish it is
*always* wrong. For a bit more on this, see the
"Reverse Morality?" thread over on www.meh-sc.org.
I said:
You would claim that the Christian Institute's agenda here
is not to, say, abolish abortion, or to, say, advertise
that political end, or to, say, force the business Google to
accept its adverts but rather to point the absurdity of the
Equality Act 2006 itself, and thereby to get that law repealed?
Marty:
No, I would claim that it's not clear to me that what
you posted about the ChristianInstitute is necessarily
a damning indictment of it. I went out of my way to
avoid agreeing or disagreeing, merely pointing out one
possible alternative interpretation.
You are still being as clear as mud, here, Marty. I tried to
sketch out for you the one instance I can come close to
thinking of in which the Christian Institute's motives might be
argued to be excused---that is, that they are exercising an
*evil* law in order to point that law's absurdity and get that
law repealed (and I do mean the anti-free-speech law and I do
not mean the law as it pertains to abortion). I personally
still find such action wholly condemnable, but I'm willing to
argue the point, if there is anything that can be said on
the other side.
The situation strikes much like a suicide bomber, whether
that be a Muslim extremist or an anti-abortion extremist bombing
a clinic. Using the law (built on the state's Gewaltmonopol, and
hence, using a policeman's) is a terrible thing, always. Even if
we are talking about something as innocuous as erecting an equestrian
statue to a revered military hero in a park. That is why one must
always avoid legislating laws if at all possible, and why the
standard for legislating laws against some human behaviour
is almost transfinitely higher than the standard for moral
condemnation of that activity. So, what the Christian Institute
is doing is invoking that state monopoly on deadly force, and
for an end which ostensibly robs Google of its Absolute Right to
Free Speech/Free Press. Maybe you can think of some scenario better
than the one I sketched in which the Christian Institute might
be justified. To me it looks like, once again and business as
usual, Christians are wearing the black hats here.
I said:
I guess if that is true, then it is like *my threat* that,
if we get to legislate laws banning speech or writing or films
or music or public displays "that offend people" or *because*
they offend, I can come up with a creative set of things which
offend me. Starting with the new football stadium under
construction in Indianapolis. That's the first to go. I've got
it on the list ("he's got it on the list")...
Marty:
Well, I think it's a fine thing for you to come up
with a creative set of peeves.
So, if some nonsensical people pass laws against the f-word expressed
in public, I get to, say, ban every cross displayed from every
Christian church. Sure. The point being *no one* gets to be free
from being offended.
I said:
I don't know, Marty. It seems to me that it is simply morally
wrong for me to try and shut down somebody else's speech because
it offends me. Or to force them to speak what I want them to say.
And this strikes me as especially heinous if there is a policeman's
gun (the law) attached to the business end of that enforcement.
Marty:
Trust me, I do know how you think and feel about it.
OK, then we have, as I believe I quoted (and, I think, with
rather a perfect trimming of context) from "My Name"'s post,
a situation where this Christian Institute in the land of Boadicea
is acting so as to suppress liberty. We have, as I I believe
I expressed it, a damning indictment of this Christian Institute.
Unless you have some other information, or even speculation
that somehow turns the information we do have on its head.
Or, perhaps you think and feel differently, in which case you
are certainly not being clear at expressing any such differences.
In short, I think:
(1) Acting so as to suppress freedom of speech by use of
force, and especially the deadly force upon which legislated
law is based, is heinously immoral. Immoral=it ought not
be done.
(2) The Christian Institute in the UK is using the force a
very evil law in the UK to try and rape Google of Google's
free speech.
(3) Therefore the Christian Institute is acting immorally.
I'm afraid that so far I can't figure out whether your objection,
Marty, is with (1), (2), or (3). Notice that abortion comes nowhere
into the picture. It matters zero whether the Christian Institute is
robbing Google of free speech for what CI considers a higher purpose.
Marty:
There, Mark Tindall isn't welcome to indiscriminately
cyberpoop on everything, making it a much nicer place
than here (unfortunate but true).
I said:
Once again, this way overstates Mark Tindall's im****tance.
Marty:
Not at all.
Yes, you get this wrong, and exactly in the way that John Rice
got it wrong: You use a metaphor for cyberspace that treats
cyberspace as though it were physical space, with smells
and piles of doggie doo to step in. The metaphors you resort
to all delete the special difference that makes cyberspace utterly
and completely distinct from physical space.
Marty:
To the same extent that someone dumping
a pickup truck of old sofa or household garbage at
the end of your driveway (but not blocking it) wouldn't
really affect you without your approval, Tindall's spew
is much the same.
No, that is exactly to speak falsely of Tindall, Marty. A
pickup truck or an old sofa at the end of my driveway is
a physical thing. It may not be in my way driving my car
in and out of my driveway, but it is in my sightlines, and
presumably on either my property or public property (the
road or the easement). The person who dumped the truck
there has done me (or, say, the county) a *physical* wrong,
objectively measurable, and money and time and physical
effort will be required to remove that old sofa or pickup truck.
Tindall's dumpings create new cyberspace as they are made.
There is no "my driveway" in cyberspace. There's as much driveway
or property as you want to write and post and therefore create.
The space is practically infinitely expandable. That is its
nature. So, any metaphor or analogy from real space, such as
my neighbor's body odor, or his drunken breath, or his obnoxiously
loud music, or his foul language, or his unsightly trash heaps
at the end of his driveway, are totally in error *because* they
miss (or, at this point, tell a lie about) the fundamentally
different nature of cyberspace. The truth about cyberspace is
simply that every single thing that has been written in meh-sc.org
could perfectly well have been posted to the usenet newsgroup. There
is absolutely nothing Mark could have done to alter it. He could
have posted 100 of his spew-postings in response to each and every
post and his posts would have remained irrelevant and unread.
It is *only* the psychology of the beholder which takes any
of Mark's spewings and turns them by analogy into "like
poop" or "like bad breath" or "like loud obnoxious music".
In other words, *you* are the one, Marty, who makes Mark's
postings into cyberpoop. I probably tend towards the squeamish with
respect to all scatological reference. So, the point is it isn't
an analogy or a metaphor *I* would have even thought of by my
unaided self. I'm not sure it's an analogy I like even having
in my head. But *I* am also the one who does that---makes
Mark's postings into cyberpoop, by my agreeing with you, insofar as
I do agree with you.
Marty:
It's not on a stretch of sidewalk of
his own making,
Yes it is. That's where you are simply wholly and completely
wrong. The newsgroup is as large as the number and length
of postings. The sidewalk is as big as the posters
make it. And with an unmoderated group *anyone* can post
*anything*. Mark has observed many boundaries with his postings.
Some of those boundaries which he observes *I* have
transgressed (for example, the f-word). Anyone, at any
moment, could post *** stories or ****ographic pictures or
islamic extremist exhortations or even (god forbid!) chat about
TV shows. There is no censor. And that was always part of the deal
you signed onto when you first posted to or read usenet.
Moreover, it is a good and excellent thing that it is that
way, and that Mark Tindall can post and post his brainless
and stupid and pointless and irrelevant and incoherent and
repetitive posts, and the newsgroup can go on in spite of that.
Because, well, people know better than to waste time reading
his stuff. He is free to post all he likes, and we are free
not to read him. Freedom goes both ways.
Marty:
it's on the public sidewalk and it's
right in front of where I like to walk, more or less
daily.
Absolutely not. You have zero owner****p of that sidewalk.
The public has zero owner****p of it. It isn't a public
sidewalk at all, in fact. You never actually *walk* on
any post of Mark's. His posts are his. You read them or no
at your leisure and your choice. Your posts are
yours. If I add a post in response to one of yours, it doesn't
change what you have written. It adds a new stretch to cyberspace
that is utterly and totally distinct from yours.
Marty:
That I'm free to ignore it, and you'd be free
to live among heaps of someone else's refuse isn't the
issue--The issue is that it affects people.
But the effect is utterly distinct. We are discussing
exactly free speech/free press, Marty. And this argument
is exactly the argument John Milton deals with in Areopagitica.
The refuse is a physical impingement. There is no free will
in me which can alter the fact of the physical impingement.
Somebody's immoral or just plain stupid writing, such as Mark
Tindall's, is *not ever* a physical impingement. It is a
psychological impingement where I, the reader, have total control
(and total moral responsibility) as to whether I read it,
how I interpret what I read, and how I respond to that.
Mark's writings are simply additions to the imaginary infinite
library of the writings of all human beings. Once I
perceive it that way, I see zero use for anyone filtering
that library before it gets to me.
Marty:
Theoretically it need not, but it in fact does.
No, in fact there is no cyberpoop at all, except insofar as
Marty Carts chooses to think of Tindall's postings as such.
If you want to disclaim the responsibility for making that
interpretation and that judgment, it would be no different
to me than the common responsibility-disclaiming state of mankind.
I would still consider, you, Marty, responsible for the
"cyberpoop" interpretation of Tindall's writings. And I would
refer you to the Eagles song, "Get Over It", for correction
of that moral tic which seems to like to turn something
that is your choice and wholly psychological into by analogy
some sort of deterministic impingement on yourself. In my
case, I take responsibility and am responsible for how I
read Tindall.
Marty:
It affects you, too.
In the sense that others have moved away from this
space and have stopped building it and have chosen
a worse space in which to write in, yes, of course it
affects me. But, I think it perfectly obvious that I
remain ready and willing and able to carry on conversations
and to develop arguments to great lengths and depths (and
ramifying branches in all directions for possible further
discussion) whenever there is some one here to argue with.
Marty:
Tindall's hell of his own making is something I wish he
didn't deserve (in more than one way). And conceivably
he doesn't. With his wife no longer sup****ting him
there's noone to steer him straight.
Huh? Do we have any information at all about Tindall's wife other than
that he used to post under a username which said "Mark and Bev Tindall"?
Marty:
Anyway, and again, I said nothing of the sort.
I'm not sure to what you are referring here. This seems to
be written as part of your response to:
Marty:
There, Mark Tindall isn't welcome to indiscriminately
cyberpoop on everything, making it a much nicer place
than here (unfortunate but true).
I:
Once again, this way overstates Mark Tindall's im****tance.
So, I'm confused as to what it is you didn't say of the sort.
"Cyberpoop" is your usage. I repeat: It way overstates Tindall's
im****tance. Or the im****tance of his posts.
Marty:
Tindall certainly does have cyberdiahria.
No, I'm not accepting this metaphor any further. And
the spelling would be "cyberdiarrhea".
Marty:
And it certainly is
nicer in an equivalent environment where his infastidious
net-bowel habits aren't in evidence than here, where they
are.
Nope, I prefer freedom.
Marty:
You cannot dispute either of these without being
silly.
Sorry, but I do dispute both of them. As I said, scatology is
probably more icky to me than a lot of things. There's a kind
of continental European humor associated with poop that mostly
just turns me off. That I don't find funny. Anyway, I'm happy
to condemn Mark Tindall as immoral in his posting behaviour,
as stupid in his lack of logical coherence and rational
thought, as ignorant in his posting's lack of any concrete
content that isn't cut-and-pasted from somebody else, and so
on. I don't see that any of that adds up to either "cyberpoop"
or "cyberdiarrhea" (which are actually rather two metaphors
that are somewhat at odds with one another). And, I note that
meh-sc.org is simply not very active. In part, I think, that's *because*
of its "niceness". Here, one could harvest 1 in a 100 posts of
Tindall, and start an argument. Or, as in the case or this
post, I harvested something that cross-posted to this group from
elsewhere. I think in order to have good argumentative discussion,
you need a devil's advocate. You need someone to take the opposing
side. And you get that naturally on usenet, and you don't get that
naturally on a moderated website. That's the wonderful thing, in
my opinion, about usenet---how very diverse we are, and how you
can post the most innocuous, unobjectionable opinion about anything
and you are guaranteed to find someone contradicting you about it.
I know darn well I simply write differently, and more guardedly,
and basically worse, when I write to meh-sc.org. There I tend to
steer away from where I suspect the boundaries might be. And I consider
Brandon's moderation to be about as good as moderation could ever
be. So, there, when I face writing, in my opinion, I think it is
an altogether more impoverished environment than here, Tindall and
all.
Marty:
Your jihad against him suggests he has more
im****tance than merely ignoring him.
Whoa, Nellie! I have never said that ignoring him
was a good idea. I have no intention of personally
ignoring him. Mind you, I also have no intention of
putting in much time reading him or any such, but I
have always considered the best course of action for
me was to respond occasionally to this or that that he
has written. *You* are the one, Marty, who considers his
stuff "cyberpoop". So, you ignore him if that is what you
have decided to do.
I only claim that ignoring him is and always was
perfectly easy and possible to do, even without killfiling
him, which makes ignoring him even easier. I know
that it's easy for a fact, because, in a Faustian bargain
with John Rice in order to try the experiment and save the newsgroup,
I agreed in secret to not respond to Tindall for a year, and, well, that
was pretty easy for me to do. Tindall *is* easy to ignore.
And even now, when I have no plan to avoid responding to him,
he's easier to ignore, since he seems to be spinning out into more
and more unfunny irrelevance and incoherence. I used to
be able to find something to respond to in, oh, maybe one
in every 5 posts or so. Now, it's probably 1 in 100. And
chances are becoming good I'll never actually read the 1.
But, anyway, *I* think there has always been excellent discussion
about education and about homeschooling and about the public schools and
about 30-student-age-segregated-classroom-schooling
lurking in Tindall's postings. Tindall is a True Believer
in Educationism. And Educationism is a dragon I feel personally
called upon to slay. The problem of course is that Tindall is
a total idiot and unworthy personally of any effort spent arguing
with. He doesn't argue. He doesn't know how to connect thought A to
thought B, even after having the relevant tabs and slots pointed
out to him. But I can still use the occasional post of
Tindall's simply as a platform for going after that
dragon---the whole idea that "Education" is a subject area
with an expertise that pertains to it and with its own techne
and all.
Marty:
I don't mean to
suggest your feline-like recreational batting of his
mousy mentality is out of place, but it sometimes appears
to be more im****tant than merely fun for you, and that's
out of place.
The grammar post I just did was certainly feline-like recreational
batting. That's the 1 in a hundred response to something Tindall
written, just to keep him thinking that I haven't gone
away, and keep him in the realization that there are people
out there who know more about pretty much anything he's likely
to post on than he does.
Again, the dragon of Educationism *is* im****tant to me.
It is a pity that it has found such an incompetent spokesperson
in Mark Tindall, but there *are* less incompetent spokespersons,
and I intend to keep my sword at the ready for use. So I intend to
simply *use* Tindall. Whenever he randomly says something that
gives me a spur to write, I'll write. It's a pity that so
many others have gone away to what they perceive as a "nicer"
environment, but the "niceness" there is precisely why I
tend to check in every now and then, but find usually nothing
to respond to.
In any event, from my actual behaviour, it should be manifest
that I am quite happy to respond to any grist I can find.
Marty:
My apologies in advance to the extent
that I'm reading you wrong.
I don't see any evidence that you are reading me wrong. I
don't think I have anything like a jihad against Tindall,
but I certainly have one against Educationism, and Tindall
tends to introduce that subject.
There really is excellent discussion to be had on that subject
someday with someone. Does a teacher need to be knowledgeable,
and, if so, of what? Is there any evidence that teachers know
math, history, science, music, art, foreign languages,
philosophy, grammar, at school levels of such subjects better
than do parents? Is there any evidence that teacher certification
evinces any qualification whatsoever?
Mike Morris
(msmorris@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
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