My final point, Hugh
Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.DIALix.oz.au)
Fri, 16 Dec 1994 01:32:31 GMT
Hugh writes to me:
>What a pathetic little creature you are. You know nothing
>about me, my thoughts, my ideals, my philosophy of life.
>You don't even know if I teach! Start at square one,
>you pathetic little jerk, and start asking people for
>information before you open your little brain up to
>speak! Save us all some time and eye strain trying to
>determine who you are going to defame next. I for one
>will now investigate what action I can take against you.
>Have a nice night's sleep.
>
I reply:
Well Hugh, here we finally have posted a grand demonstration of the
difficulty in bridging across different cultural domains and coming
some way toward understanding one another, especially given the style
of address to which you are habituated.
Maybe if you want people to be more open in approaching you in such a
manner you find acceptable, to ask for information as you say, maybe
you could help by being just a tad less hysterical. As you present
yourself to the world as a friendly, agreeable sort of bloke the rest
of us might relax and accept you on that basis.
I wonder how you would go trying to get some fieldwork done over in
Somalia, or some such place? They use AK47s there to get back at the
people who offend them, not messages on a computer screen as you well
know vulnerable to being cut off. Rather, be grateful.
Yes indeed. I know nothing about you at all apart from your actions
against me personally, and against us here in Western Australia. And
apart from the fact that you had yourself advised the group that your
class is monitoring them, I really do not know if you are a teacher
or not.
I don't know you from a bar of soap otherwise, in fact. And similarly,
neither do you know me. Or anything else of what happens away around
here on this side of the planet.
Goes for the rest of them, too.
If you want to, go ahead and have me cut off. I did not subscribe to
this medium to have foreigners attacking me and telling me what to do.
If there are to be no conferences or other discussions on matters of
common interest, then it is not worth a bumper.
You and your ilk, who mistakenly presume to run the world, have made
the thing totally useless.
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