Subject: Re: Cello Rising From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 31 Jan 2004 12:21:36 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <2004-031-301-KL2065E@naggum.no> * Kenny Tilton | [...] that was about responding with an equally assinine remark. This seems to be the favorite childish way to respond these days, but nobody appears to worry that they may be mistaken in their assessment of what they set out to equal and that they compare very different things for equality. It is well-known that people regard their own actions and the effect they have on others very differently than they regard other people's actions and their effect on themselves. Only under highly specialized conditions are we able to respond exactly in kind. Most of the time, however, we make mistakes on a scale that explains the escalation of the hostilities on the Net. The injustice we suffer is not just worse than the injustice we inflict on others, the same injustice feels more than twice as unjust when suffered as when inflicted. When people who do not reflect on their revengeful feelings set out to do onto other what others have done onto third parties, they are not just insane to begin with, as everyone quietly realizes, they inflict much more harm on purpose than even the harm they thought they saw and want to exact retribution for. The reason this «respond in kind» thing can never actually work except in the mind of the person doing it, is that there can never actually /be/ a response in kind. Every response is the responsibility of the person who produces it. You may have noticed that one of the most bizarrely disturbed people here thinks that he did not write what he in fact wrote, someone else wrote it. This is symptomatic of the kind of problems that people who believe they respond in kind suffer from, since they are no longer responsible for their own actions, someone else did something that they merely repeat, and therefore they believe they are not responsible for the choice and act of repetition. This is remarkably invalid reasoning and remarkably immature. «I'm only doing what you did. What's your problem?» illustrates that the person who performs the mimicking does not understand that he is usually, probably always, mistaken about what other people did, but since he has absolved himself of responsibility for his actions like the immature child he is, he will not be able to accept criticism of any kind for this incredibly immature mirror game, because everything anybody says about his stupid stunt is automatically deflected back to the person they have mimicked, and the kind of people who engage in this kind of behavior always rejoice in the criticism that they get, because in their mind, the only guilty person is the person they have copied and the mirror games effectively prevents them from thinking about what they are doing at all. The solution is deceptively simple: Always do your best. There can never be anyone to blame for your own behavior, so don't insult the intelligence of your audience by attempting to pull such a thing off. If you think someone made an asinine remark, DO NOT ACT LIKE THEM. And I'm only saying this because I believe you can think about it, quite unlike the other immature runt we have running around here mimicking people and failing to accept responsibility for himself. -- Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway 2004-031 Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.