h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>..but hey, it's just a post. <<

Exactly!
It gives us freedom.
And freedom of expression.

It's safe, and in experienced hands mostly harmless,
and yet with the capacity to engage real thought and
real emotional responses.

It is, as has been claimed above, just a tool.
But it was with tools that we have learned how
to exterminate all the large predatory cats and
make medicines for our sick. We have become tool-
makers because it is proven to be a good survival
strategy.

What shall we do with this tool now that we are
finally getting comfortable with it? Roast some
dogs? Brand a few slaves? Fight fire with fire?

I use it mainly just to keep my hands warm. They
say, warm hands - warm heart. But it could
be used for so much more. Oh BTW, don't buy any
FB stock when it goes public. It's a burning treasure
ship with a hold full of powder. Don't go aboard.

~jwf~

I think the camp fire as a partial analogy is interesting...the way humans would look into it and 'project' different pictures and thoughts.

Aye Effers, there's some of that too. Ideas, hopes... what a vain lot we are! Better than TV.

Vain?

Power of the imagination...I think that's rather wonderful.

I did say partial analogy though. Words *can* be a lot more precise than pictures in flickering flames.

>>With some discriminating choices we can avoid anything
that offends or frightens us and keep our view fixed on
the things we like and enjoy.

And yet some go looking for fights with shouty eejits. How do we account for this phenomenon?

Thinking about teh interwebs in Squiggle's terms - I don't really recognise this cyberworld of wish fulfilment. It's a mixed bag. Certainly I aim to visit the places that I prefer to visit and read the things that I wish to read - just like in Real Life. But as in Real Life too - I have to wade through a lot of crap on the way.

"Sense of control" can extend to what we want to have in our environs. I definitely love the fact that my new roof doesn't leak the way the older one did. I can pay my heating bills, so I don't need to dip my fingers in warm water to prevent numbness as I type this.

Let's see, roof over my head, heated house, a car to take me somewhere else if I want or need to go there. And then there's the computer that I'm using to type this post. Plus, I know that the nasty computer viruses that have infected my PC in the past can be banished if I take it to a nearby place that services computers. The bigger worry is that the viruses might have given someone else my login info and the numbers for my accounts. Will someone steal my identity as a result?

>>..yet some go looking for fights with shouty eejits.
How do we account for this phenomenon? <<

It certainly is the lowest common denominator
'mongst cyberfolk.
Haven't we all fallen into it?

In my own experience, it was the usual case of
feeling strongly about someone's wrong-headed
and mis-informed opinion - but once I started
to rage and rave and rant I was overcome with
the sense of power. I surprised myself with my
venomous rage and delighted in the vitriol of
my cutting prose.

Again, the sense of power that a computer terminal
provides. And again, the knowledge of being safe
and able to hurl my feces at my foes knowing they
may fling some back but not punch me in the nose.

There are obviously several here-about who never
seem to grow out of it, but they are easily ignored
and they seldom express themselves clearly beyond
their scowls, howls, grunts. Their arguments seldom
rise above ad hominem insults because they are not
arguing from a reasoned point of view and are merely
indulging in name-calling as if that counted for any-
thing in intelligent discourse.

Thankfully, our little h2g2 corner of cyberspace
is relatively free of these lowest of the low.


~jwf~

>>Thankfully, our little h2g2 corner of cyberspace
is relatively free of these lowest of the low. <<

Ah yes.
There are many conversations that have earned high marx

Let us not forget the dreadful and fanatic.

~jwf~

Dreadful *and* fanatic?

What threads are those?

Loose ones.
The kind that unravel
at the sleeve
and make much tangled webs.

I was in fact making oblique reference
to Mr Dreadful and the young Xanatic,
two who constantly deride my postings
with outraged comments concerning my
education and intelligence and cast
their doubt upon my verisimilitudes.

~jwf~

That is just an indication of your talent for winding them up.

They must respect your talent and intelligence if they think it's worth their while to try to change your mind about things. It's a waste of time to try to talk sense to people who don'tunderstand.

>> It's a waste of time to try to talk sense
to people who don't understand. <<

If that were entirely true I wouldn't bother
to answer direct questions, which I am
morally obliged to do.

For example:
Your recent query about dreadful and fanatic.
It would have been politic of me to simply ignore the
question and leave you not understanding. But I see
no value in doing that. Knowledge and information
are the primary currency of human interaction.

On the other hand, by revealing my true meaning I have
undone any plausible deniability of my opinion that some
kinds of 'dontunderstandishness' are a waste of time.

My non-conformist behaviours, use of the language
and the weigh I spell it, my strident opinions and
my half-baked ideas do attract some hostility
and derision from non-believers.

So, obviously, there must be some satisfaction in responding
to direct inquiries. Perhaps it is not entirely a waste
of time to assist others in their understanding.

Some people of course will not be told.

~jwf~

>>It's a waste of time to try to talk sense to people who don't understand<<

suppose it's debatable whether he's being talked to or talked at

Thanks for explaining, jwf. I think I understand the situation better than I did.

Til deaf us do part...(I'm with you for eternity ~ jwf ~~~~~ neigh worries.....)

"with outraged comments concerning my
education and intelligence"

I have *NEVER* questioned either of those things, and I certainly don't constantly deride your postings. I can probably count the times I have done so on one hand and I have always been polite about it.

What I do question is your apparent credulity on certain subjects and unwillingness to back up any claims you make with actual facts.

And the reason I have 'derided' your postings in the past is because I find them difficult to read. I'm not the only one either.

>> certainly don't constantly deride your postings <<

Your first response to my 'imaginative' suggestion
(that I find my relationship with a computer terminal
a satisfying one, not unlike hovering beside a safe
and cozy camp-fire) was:

>> The internet is a tool. And like any tool only a fool
would think it 'safe'. <<

When I re-iterated my position, pointing out that it was
specifically the man/machine interface that I wanted to
talk about and not the overall socio-political relations
of the whole internet, you said:

>> If people want the internet to be a Brave New World
then that's their lookout and more fool them. <<

and:

>> I don't use the internet to give myself an illusion of
control, and I pity anyone who does. <<

And so, having been called a fool and offered your pity,
I once again asserted this thread was about my personal
feelings toward the warmth and light cast by a computer
screen and the joy I get from imagining it as a warm fire
in a dark cave, you said:

>> What I do question is your apparent credulity on certain
subjects and unwillingness to back up any claims you make
with actual facts. <<

Perhaps you have a prejudice based on other conversations
but in this thread the only facts I claimed were my own
feelings about my own experience. Surely you can see it
would be difficult to cite secondary sources to back up
what I claim to be are my personal feelings.

But you are right to question what you don't understand.
And, as you say, you are not alone.

If you don't mind I think I will now add prejudgment, hostility
and a lack of empathy to your deficiency of imagination which
we have previously established elsewhere.



~jwf~