Re: virus: The Greeks Would be Geeks

Tadeusz Niwinski (tad@teta.ai)
Fri, 21 Feb 1997 20:03:04 -0800

Reed Konsler wrote:
>You know Tad, you're an interesting guy. But sometimes I swear you are
>intentionally baiting me. Instead of getting all irate I'm going to try to
>be constructive. On a purely emotional level, however, I was quite
>offended by the implication in the post below. If that was your aim then
>you were successful, whatever juvenile satisfaction that may give you.

It was not my aim to offend you. I don't want to hurt you either. Thank
you for your honest response. Emotions are often quite a good source of
self-help information.

Lesson #4 was build around a very deadly virus: "honest effort and
individual accomplishment is worthless" put under a microscope by David R.
Depreciating achievements of other people, who often devote their entire
lives to work on an important idea is one of the methods loosers try to
raise their self-esteem and poison others. It is non-productive and
vicious. It deserves a cold look on how it works, and how to recognize it.

Manipulation 101 Course is intended to be a microscope for various vicious
viruses spreading in discussion groups on the world wide web ("vvv on www").
It seems to draw quite an emotional feedback from people whose words are
used as examples. Please note, that the examples are not personal, no names
are mentioned. This is intentional according to a good rule "praise a
person, criticize a behaviour". There is no need for the people who
recognise their words to defend themselves. It is an invitation to discuss
the problem, and not the person. I suggest to use a useful mantra: "I don't
care who said it" when responding to this thread.

When I look again at the examples -- without further explanations -- (please
pretend it was XYZ who wrote the quotes and look at them again) they seem to
fit my "recipes" quite well. I could have used examples of other people
from this list as well, the problem is still the same.

When I read your explanations, I agree, I might have been to harsh on you.
I am sorry. If you did not mean to depreciate Dawkins achievement by
calling it a "bastard child" -- good for you, if you did -- only you know it.

Talking about Dawkins. On the cover of Aaron Lynch's, 1996, book he says:
"When I get down to writing 'The Selfish Meme', Aaron Lynch's admirable
'Thought Contagion' will undoubtedly be a prime source-book for intriguing
examples and penetrating analyses."

Regards, Tadeusz (Tad) Niwinski from planet TeTa
tad@teta.ai http://www.teta.ai (604) 985-4159