roachboy

well, let's see.

otto: interesting turn in the thread. thanks for pushing this away from where i was pretty sure it was initially headed and mea culpa if that assumption as to where the thread was heading was wrong.

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it seems though that we're still dancing around.

one of the most basic conflicts that happens across discussions is over the terms within which arguments will happen. this because it is simply often the case that the most basic elements of arguments from opposing political viewpoints are mutually exclusive.
so much of the wrestling is about which terms, which logic, which information.
i think this gets misinterpreted as a desire to "win" an argument--when it's more often about "how do you get from a to b?" followed by "explain this please" one way or another.


if this was understood for what it is, i think things would go much more smoothly here.

on the other hand, to be honest i think about discussions here as little chess games. whether i am interested or not in the discussion usually has to do with whether i think the little chess match is interesting or not. so maybe there is a dimension of wanting to win behind that. there is definitely an interest in setting and springing traps, as there is in any chess match. i modulate the style of posts to function as better traps. sometimes they work, sometimes they dont. but they're kind of fun to build.

my complaint really about some of the comrades who post from more conservative positions is basically that they will not set back from their political logic and play with it. it's like playing chess with someone who plays but only understands one level of the game. thing is that i actually think that most of the comrades who post from conservative positions are intelligent and interesting people (otherwise i wouldnt bother, trust me) so it's frustrating. but it is always the case that there is the game and the meta-game: whether you are aware of it or not, the meta-game shapes the game. from this viewpoint, political choices are strategy choices and that's it.

so i would prefer, basically, that politics debates be understood as a serious game. serious in that there are some rules concerning the relation of arguments to information, there are better and worse interpretations and that any interpretation can and should be defendable. a game in that it is ultimately playing. again, for me there is a remove between my personal political committments and what makes sense to me to do here---i might be interested in revolution, for example, but it aint happening by way of a messageboard--this is not and cannot be the center of my political life. so it's playing more--circulating ideas, generating takes on a shifting informational context, seeing if they work, seeing what others make of that context, testing them out.

so to say the obvious, different styles are different strategies.

maybe this is a proposal for a way to take what we collectively do here that'd maybe open things up a bit---if we treat it more as a kind of chess game involving words. to formalize the game too much would narrow the range of objectives in playing---leaving it as a metaphor means that endgame is not necessarily the point. tussles can take place anywhere on the board and can be ends in themselves. and everyone can find themselves pinned at one point or another, with no good moves available---which is fine. the world does not end. no-one is diminished by it. it's just something to think about maybe, why it happened.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite