Seamus OBlimey wrote:JackRiddler wrote:I know why she left, because I suffer from the same syndrome.
Because you think if you show that you think better than most you'll make yourself a target?
Answer by the conventions of threads I must, but in humble-size print to prevent too much derailin' of a Viking Funeral Pyre Thread. (Ctrl+plus-sign to expand in most browsers, or Ctrl+minus-sign to make smaller and guarantee you won't have to read the following.)
Sorry, Seamus, I shouldn't have inserted that here. Your interpretation is in a way flattering, or perhaps makes us both members of a special-secret club of better thinkers, but it's not what I meant. Rather, the comment came to me and was shared with you spontaneously, immediately after I had, elsewhere, written two pages to contest someone's perhaps chance phrasing, someone's mere six or ten words that I found misrepresented a matter that was important, although neither the six or ten words nor my response were, necessarily, in the big or little picture. This exact thing was not happening merely for the first or even hundredth time. (In the process, I did get a lot of thoughts down about a subject in general.) Quite beyond the merits of this activity as a use of time, or the insignificance of the resulting post in the "big picture," or the nobility or baseness of the motives that started me off in the first place, as I hit "Submit" I realized that, once I'd started even thinking about doing that post, the drive to finish it, to be perfectionist about argument and language, to be circumspect and aware of complexities and countervailing factors, to be both right and fair (the latter in part because it makes you even more right), was, short of an outside force that would have physically ripped me from my seat, compulsive and pretty-nigh unreversable no matter how ill or well advised this particular extended use of my time was in that moment. And then I thought how I'd seen this same quality in many of c2w?'s texts. I also thought, not for the first or hundredth time, how the ability for instant response and dialogue on seeming nigh-every text (or the illusion of it, since usually it is illusory for many reasons) regardless of what or from whom, not to mention the ability to access text, in many cases written just moments ago, from all over and everyone in large volumes, was a recent development. Although my impulse to engage in immediate and usually contentious dialogue with often randomly encountered text long preceded the advent of Internet, its advent and my own enthusiasm or weakness allow my impulse too much venting room, or so I think. So this is -- maybe, just guessing without being in her head or pretending to, but just guessing from all I have ever seen of her, meaning her texts -- why she left. But for all I know she's not seeking calm and enlightenment in solitude without distraction, but instead decided to switch her time to a discussion board on blood sports. (That last part is merely in the way of acknowledging that, of course, I do not know.)
Spoiler: Or if you want it punch and judy -- how crass, bring my fainting chair! -- I'm an Internet addict and I figure she is too.
