From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Sat May 08 2004 - 09:29:40 MDT
Interesting idea, Erik.
Waltaire
<WW's French cousin>
Erik Aronesty wrote:
> I agree.
>
> You can always rant and rave on alt.politics - as a tension reliever, or to explore an untested meme.
>
> Political discussion is only useful to this group when the intention of the discussion is to expand, demonstrate or clarify parts of the COV memetically engineered religion, or if the discussion attracts participation and enthusiasm among the members.
>
> Perhaps we should have the ability to rate/rank threads and discussions. (0 - makes me want to leave COV, 1 - boring, 2 - has potential, 3 - makes me want to email all my friends and tell them about COV)
>
> Discussions that fall below certain threshold get auto-ignored by everyone who hasn't been participating in them.
>
> That way the participants can keep their juices flowing without disturbing the rest of the voting group.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Calvin Ashmore" <coa@andrew.cmu.edu>
> Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 21:45:19
> To:<virus@lucifer.com>
> Subject: Call for politeness (was: RE: virus: War & Peace / Rethinking Iraq)
>
> Jei wrote:
> <<<
> And so? What about it? I don't fancy doing lots of work
> on history research for the sake of you people on this
> list. "Prove me this, prove me that, now tell me how
> great a country we are, and what all good things we have
> done, and oh by the way, you're an anti-semite for being critical, and you
> must hate america too! You boo boo!"
> - At best, I rate this list is as an amusement. Sometimes there's also some
> good links, but nowadays, it isn't even remotely constructive. Whatever I
> bother to post, I do either for fun, or the fact that I want to break some
> ballooning american ego-bubbles, knowing they will bark back as much as they
> can. - This list was good before the "religion/church" was started. After
> that, duh. - Some kind of american thing, these new age "religions"? How
> about a normal registered club instead?
> >>>
>
> While I'm not a particularly active member of the Virus community, I still
> am a member, and am extremely aggrieved by this post. The *point* of Virus
> is to be a memetically engineered religion, and the community (in its better
> days) tends to digest news and hold philosophical discussions from a
> scientific/memetic perspective.
>
> The idea is to ask questions, view all things from a critical eye, and when
> making assertions, to be fucking prepared to defend them without throwing a
> fucking tantrum.
>
> While you may not like the political viewpoints of Jonathan and Joe, they
> have at least been somewhat *civil* and have been arguing within some range
> of intellectual discussion. Jonathan has been doing a particularly good job
> at this. And as for sources, sometimes they're just fucking inconsistend and
> there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it. Arguing about the
> validity of each other's sources gets pretty old and is remarkably
> ineffectual as far as things go.
>
> While it's all well and good that you see the list as amusement, there are
> others here who take it with a fair degree of seriousness and if you can't
> give us that, and you can't make an argument without reducing to some dogma
> (I don't care whose dogma it is) or throwing a fit, then the least you can
> fucking do is be civil.
>
> You may notice that I have not accused you of anything regarding the
> discussion at hand. I am keeping my political opinions to myself for now
> because contributing to this thread (which has been going on for about two
> years now) is not a productive end. I would however, like to stop opening up
> my mailbox and seeing a bunch of smart-assed sarcastic remarks from you in
> protest of engaging in actual discussion.
>
> I and, I am sure, many others would be very appreciative if you cut it out.
>
> Thank you.
>
> -Calvin
>
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>
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-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love" --Kupferberg-- --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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