Re: [-empyre-] Size matters?

["Eryk Salvaggio" <eryk@maine.rr.com>]

Mathieu,

Empyre is a strangely peaceful list, I have attributed that to it being
moderated, feminist, and Australian; also, I think the niche of this list-
focus on one person per month- tends to reduce the desire to "compete" and
increase the desire to ask questions.

In other scenarios, though, the fail safe mechanism you speak of isn't as
reliable. Very smart people subconsciously agree to these rules, and without
paying attention, I don't think many people would notice that combat is
taking place. There isn't necessarily anything "wrong" with this kind of
exchange. Intellectual competition, and the resulting process of external
falsification, has gotten us this far, for better or for worse. We mistake
it for a conversational flow because it is very ingrained, but if we ever
talked to people at a party the way we talk to them on mailing lists,
there'd be a great many more awkward silences, not necessarily fist fights.
It doesn't always have to end in an all out flame war (unless I'm involved);
what happens is that discussion simply gets curbed, ideas get shot down and
the subject changes.

But for the development and growth of ideas, we might want something
different, and one of those things could be found in the concept of a "more
feminine" web (or mailing list). I'll avoid womb and incubation metaphors,
but they're there. For artists in particular, the process of falsification
isn't only unnecessary, but frequently detrimental.

-eryk.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Mathieu O'Neil" <oneil@homemail.com.au>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Size matters?


>
> On 12/08/2004, at 5:47 AM, Eryk Salvaggio wrote:
> >
> >
> > Indeed. I can't but help to feel the same way about mailing lists,
> > where
> > nothing much ever gets done, and where otherwise very brilliant
> > individuals
> > "catch each other" in forms of word-game jujitsu and that's what
> > constitutes
> > a "good point" or "argument." For anyone who considers me guilty, I
> > agree,
> > and that is part of why I hate, hate, hate, mailing lists. I am
> > bitter! Far
> > from the golden utopia that was promised to me by the Next Five Minutes
> > conferences ("A global art needs a global meeting place! Global
> > Activism
> > needs Global Discussion!") what we have, really, is an anonymized forum
> > where general insecurity about one's masculinity asserts itself even
> > stronger because of what we are supposed to be doing, the
> > communication of
> > ideas: Very girly stuff, so we turn it into war.
> >
> > I left the mailing lists and now I wear pink shoes. If that isn't a
> > thesis
> > proof then I don't know what is.
> >
> > -eryk
> >
>
>
> I would venture that lists (like most forms of social activity) involve
> motivations that are both self-serving (point-scoring,
> having-the-last-wording, showing-offing etc) and altruistic
> (communicating, sharing, linking, bonding etc). While some lists may
> reflect "general insecurity about one's masculinity", I don't see the
> current discussion on empyre (for example) as an example of "war". It
> seems to me that a very efficient fail-safe mechanism is in place:
> anyone who demonstrated unreasonable "aggressivity" - in the form of
> point-scoring, having-the-last-wording, showing-offing etc - would
> automatically invalidate what they are saying in the eyes of the
> others, so the possible impulse in that direction is balanced by the
> desire to remain in the community. Perhaps this is because lists have
> grown up, or (if we espouse the view that males can't help being
> aggressive) because there is a strong female presence on empyre (the
> alternative is that any form of written intellectual exchange is
> inherently aggressive and that we should all shut up - I don't know
> about wearing pink shoes, though.)
>
> Mathieu
>
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