I'm going to extract a few posts from the tarpit that strike me as illustrating the theme of this thread and try to arrange them in a more coherent fashion for the sake of a more focused discussion than I'm guessing they will ever get there, with everyone choking on all those feathers flying about.
Jonny (IMG:
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Art Of The DithyrambQUOTE(Moulton @ Thu 1st November 2007, 7:56am)
Speaking of
skepticism and
inverse skepticism, (not to be confused with
echoes of narcissism and
inverse narcissism), methinks it's time to craft an essay on Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder (PDSD).
Of all the stressful dramas one can be pitched into, it occurs to me that the Middle School staple of ridicule and narcissistic wounding associated with being the star of a classic Hero-Goat Drama is hard to beat. This is especially so if one lacks the musical talent to compose and perform a sufficiently cathartic post-apocalyptic dithyramb.
Perhaps we should hold therapeutic workshops in the
Art of the Dithyramb.
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Thu 1st November 2007, 9:04am)
Mr. Dythers, he rambled and rambled and rambled on (IMG:
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Dagwood? He kept luckin on ways to keep on truckin (IMG:
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Bumblin instead of routing every bee-hive and bush (IMG:
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Till one fine day the burning bush dropped the Bimb (IMG:
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QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Mon 5th November 2007, 12:36am)
After 3 or 4 readings I'm still not exactly sure what Moulton is saying about the Bumps And Bruises Of Self-Esteem (BABOSE), but what it brings to mind in a free associative sort of way is a theme that links up, curiously enough, with the dynamics of fascism. I suppose I'm thinking of the wounds to class or collective pride that issue in many of history's most devasting wars. That element of wounded pride is no doubt a human universal, but I think I detect a specific isotope of this element that is tantamount to the "tribal face" or maybe the "tribal in yer face" of the Wikipediot character.
Eppur Si Muove : Neutralism, Objectivism, PluralismQUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 2:20am)
Each of us knows what person¹ and person² and person³ and so on thinks about this, that, and the other think, at least if it's on a subject that we care enough to read the comments on. There is no We The People in this Forum to say what They think about this, that, and the other think. So you have to rest content with saying what You think about each think that comes along.
Tragedy Of The Tarpit (TOTT)QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 5:51am)
Harrumph! Uffda! Zounds!I woke up at 5AM this morning, only to discover it was actually 4AM, and so I had an extra hour to kill, listening to my least favorite overnight music genre on WBUR, and thinking about an essay I was planning to write, once my morning cuppa cawfee kicked in.
The essay idea was sparked by the confluence of three or four instances of a generic recurring problem, of which this thread reveals an unexpected additional instance.
There is a phenomenon known as
The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons that arises now and then in an inadequately regulated system.
In the Tragedy of the Commons, there appears some kind of
unsustainable practice which, if perpetuated and increased in frequency of occurrence, threatens to corrode, deplete, usurp, corrupt, and consume the system or its core resources.
The other instances of this phenomenon that I had on my mind as I arose in the predawn darkness this morning were carbon emissions from increased burning of fossil fuels, naked short-selling in the securities markets, and excessive politicking among Wikipedians.
In the latter case, and now here on Wikipedia Review, the insidious practice of
narcissistic wounding has emerged as possibly the most ominous generative factor in the dynamic that Garret Hardin characterized in
The Tragedy of the Commons. It's a corrosive cancer on most human systems, which tend to be susceptible to a spiral descent into the recursion of reciprocal narcissistic wounding.
I would prefer to see a throttling back of the practice of narcissistic wounding throughout our culture, as I consider it an
irresponsible practice that is likely to subject almost any human system to becoming ensnared in the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Echoes Of Narcissism (EON)QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 8:58am)
Like-minded souls have wanted narcissistic wounding to abate since the dawn of civilization.
Perhaps the oldest and most insidious example of narcissistic wounding is the practice of scapegoating (shaming and blaming) which the Sumerians and Babylonians introduced into the culture some 4000 years ago. Moses and Aaron sought to supplant that corrosive practice when they devised the
original alternative scape-goat ritual. The Passion Story of the New Testament was the second major historical attempt at resolving this persistent and unbecoming practice of demonizing, stigmatizing, and scapegoating the most convenient blameworthy character at unwashed hand.
These are modern times, and those biblical-era solutions have largely fallen by the wayside.
Today, we are obliged to adopt more creative ways to
therapize the
acedia of dissing and pissing.
Me, I'm partial to recovering from rejection with
music or
parody.
Scape-BeesQUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 3:24pm)
The bee-knighted idea that a hive can resolve a dispute by e-lecting a bee to e-ject from the hive is why we are here.
It's a bee-brained idea.
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sun 4th November 2007, 3:30pm)
Wikipedia gets away with ejecting outliers on both ends of the normal distribution because on the one side, no one loves a crackpot, and on the other side, no one loves an iconoclast.
Which, I suppose, is why Wikipedia shoots itself in the foot when it comes to contemplating potentially beneficial innovations.
Wikipedia tends to regress to the mediocre.
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Sun 4th November 2007, 7:54pm)
A serious investigation of this question — if there is such a thing as a serious thread in the TP&FB — would have to branch out as follows:
- Do all of the subspaces of interest to us support unimodal population densities? To put it picaresquely — Who would these fardels bear, Camel-Wise, and do you really think there is nothing but Dromedaries in all this wondrous wide world of ours?
- Not bluddy likely, but some humps are clearly a One not a Many. How goes it with those?
- Does every rider of the 1-humped camel chop off its head and its tail over time, leading to a narrow-minded mediocracy?
- Or do some riders burn their camels in the middle, turning both ends against the middle until nothing but a polarized caravan remains?
This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: