Putting my best foot forward

[Rosebud]

My own personal feeling is no one needs a mulligan. Faking it is actually an expression of who one is, isn't it. Changing ones mind and acting one way and finding out you would prefer to act in another way later is actually expressing who one is isn't it.

I hope RB keeps posting here. Obviously she can get a thread and discussion going. However, she has been around long enough that if she happens to hurt my feelings, I have no problem worrying about hers.

Sorry I hurt your feelings. I don't need you to worry about mine. I do need people to communicate with me. Dang.... I really have to run. Sigh....

[MindfulCoug]

Okay, Babs obviously wants me gone. Anyone else?

Dont mind her. Its what red hair do to people.

[Donuthole]

[Babs]

Okay, Babs obviously wants me gone. Anyone else?

No. I want you to go start a new thread and stop embarrassing yourself in this one. There are lots of people still rooting for you, but ultimately it's your call.

[jay santos]

Let's have a vote right here for cattiest female in this thread. I vote Babs.

[Babs]

Let's have a vote right here for cattiest female in this thread. I vote Babs.

It's batty. I'm the battiest female.

[Rosebud]

No. I want you to go start a new thread and stop embarrassing yourself in this one. There are lots of people still rooting for you, but ultimately it's your call.

No. Thanks for being embarrassed for me, but I'm doing okay. I'm trying to get to the bottom of whatever it is I don't understand here and leaving the thread will leave me confused. Why are you worried about me if I'm not worried about myself? There are just way too many inconsistancies here for me to ignore. AA is welcome to tell me what he thinks if he is so inclined. I don't need you to protect me.

[Babs]

No. Thanks for being embarrassed for me, but I'm doing okay. I'm trying to get to the bottom of whatever it is I don't understand here and leaving the thread will leave me confused. Why are you worried about me if I'm not worried about myself?

Hubris, probably. But if you're happy with the thread, then who am I to argue. As Kansas used to sing, carry on...

[RobinFinderson]

No. I want you to go start a new thread and stop embarrassing yourself in this one. There are lots of people still rooting for you, but ultimately it's your call.

This always comes across as such a Mean Girls thing to say.

When I talk to my students about their design work, I never tell them that their work is embarrassing them. IMO, useful criticism follows this pattern:

1. Figure out the designer's intent.
2. Discuss whether or not the design reflects the intent.
3. Talk about ways the design might be refined to better reflect the intent.
4. Talk about ways the intent might be refined to better reflect society's needs.

Worst case here, RB's intentions and rhetoric are out of sync. One thing I don't doubt about RB -- she likes the board and wants it to be better.

[Babs]

This always comes across as such a Mean Girls thing to say.

funny. I sent somebody a boardmail earlier asking if we should cast Lindsay Lohan in the role of babs. Shame about that house arrest thing.

Anyway, I was sincere earlier when I said I hope we see more of the genuine rb, but I will respect her wishes that I comment on the matter no more.

[pellegrino]

I sighed because I was frustrated that instead of telling me why his response to this is so out of character he wanted to discuss literature. Something seems extreme and out of place and I can't figure out what it is.

I've learned a lot from literature and I hope to learn a lot more. Unfortunately, my literary canon is different from the average American's canon. It isn't often that I can inject examples from my canon into conversations here, simply because the lack of translations make it too cumbersome to discuss. Pirandello is a different story though. All of his works have been translated into English and he is well known in Anglophone theater circles. Perhaps I should have prefaced the link with something like "This reminds me of Luigi Pirandello, who I wrote my MA thesis on, and this play offers some really interesting insights into the concept of different personae." But instead, I rushed and then after you misread my intent, I did not feel like taking an hour to write a mini paper to explain exactly how it related. So, to ease your troubled mind I've taken the time tonight to do just that, at least as well as I can in 30 minutes.

. . . But I can't really figure out if there's a difference between putting on false faces for each other here and putting on false faces for people we meet in the real world.

I guess the truth is that we almost never interact without putting on a persona of some sort. That's kind of depressing. But if we're all almost always putting on personae, what's the point of interacting?

This is not one of my most scientific moments....

This is the part that got me thinking about Pirandello. The concept of personalities which he calls a mask, is essential in Pirandello's poetics. We all wear masks, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. Person/persona/personality all have their root in the Latin persona(m), which originally was used to refer to the masks actors wore. It's likely that the Latin word comes from the Etruscan phersu, which means mask. What we call identity really just one of many masks we wear. These masks are made up of distinct elements, more or less in relation to each other, which can break down and reassemble into new forms, so as to result in a new personality. Even though this new personality exists outside of our normal consciousness it has a life and consciousness of its own. Sometimes it obscures our normal consciousness, other times it coexists with it. It's as though two people live and act at once, each for their own account in the same individual. With these distinct elements we can compose and construct within ourselves other identities, other beings with their own consciusness and intelligence. To quote Tilgher in his critique of One, No one and One Hundred Thousand we are "One: because each person believes to be a unique individual with particular characteristics; One hundred thousand because the man behind the mask has as many personalities as there are people who judge us; None, because, paradoxically, if the man has 100,000 personalities then he really does not have any, in the ongoing flux he is unable to find his true self."

The reason why I said that perhaps Pirandello's thoughts may not help with your musings is because for him, the only way to recover our true self is through madness, which is the central theme in many works (Henry IV included). Pirandello even put a recipe for madness; always tell the truth, the naked (key term for him) and raw and edgy truth, disregarding the concerns and manners of hypocrisy and social conventions. Such behavior will soon lead to isolation and, in the eyes of others, madness. I don't think that is the result we're looking for here.

So there's the mini paper I didn't want to write earlier today and I'm afraid it's badly written at that as I've done a poor job of discussing an the complexities of Pirandello's poetics. Perhaps my reverence for Pirandello prevented me from doing a hack job such as this earlier and in retrospect maybe it is here that you think I have been out of character as usually I wouldn't hesitate to offer some half assed response. I encourage you (and anyone else) to read the play and hopefully its relationship to your post will become more clear. When you finish we can discuss it in more detail. For those who don't like to have time to read there is a wonderful cinematic version of the play directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. As a fair warning, if you're relying on subtitles for the dialogue it will be difficult to follow and you'll miss some of the nuances and complexities.

[YOhio]

Let's have a vote right here for cattiest female in this thread. I vote Babs.

I vote UteStar. So catty.

[tooblue]

I've learned a lot from literature and I hope to learn a lot more. Unfortunately, my literary canon is different from the average American's canon. It isn't often that I can inject examples from my canon into conversations here, simply because the lack of translations make it too cumbersome to discuss. Pirandello is a different story though. All of his works have been translated into English and he is well known in Anglophone theater circles. Perhaps I should have prefaced the link with something like "This reminds me of Luigi Pirandello, who I wrote my MA thesis on, and this play offers some really interesting insights into the concept of different personae." But instead, I rushed and then after you misread my intent, I did not feel like taking an hour to write a mini paper to explain exactly how it related. So, to ease your troubled mind I've taken the time tonight to do just that, at least as well as I can in 30 minutes.



This is the part that got me thinking about Pirandello. The concept of personalities which he calls a mask, is essential in Pirandello's poetics. We all wear masks, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. Person/persona/personality all have their root in the Latin persona(m), which originally was used to refer to the masks actors wore. It's likely that the Latin word comes from the Etruscan phersu, which means mask. What we call identity really just one of many masks we wear. These masks are made up of distinct elements, more or less in relation to each other, which can break down and reassemble into new forms, so as to result in a new personality. Even though this new personality exists outside of our normal consciousness it has a life and consciousness of its own. Sometimes it obscures our normal consciousness, other times it coexists with it. It's as though two people live and act at once, each for their own account in the same individual. With these distinct elements we can compose and construct within ourselves other identities, other beings with their own consciusness and intelligence. To quote Tilgher in his critique of One, No one and One Hundred Thousand we are "One: because each person believes to be a unique individual with particular characteristics; One hundred thousand because the man behind the mask has as many personalities as there are people who judge us; None, because, paradoxically, if the man has 100,000 personalities then he really does not have any, in the ongoing flux he is unable to find his true self."

The reason why I said that perhaps Pirandello's thoughts may not help with your musings is because for him, the only way to recover our true self is through madness, which is the central theme in many works (Henry IV included). Pirandello even put a recipe for madness; always tell the truth, the naked (key term for him) and raw and edgy truth, disregarding the concerns and manners of hypocrisy and social conventions. Such behavior will soon lead to isolation and, in the eyes of others, madness. I don't think that is the result we're looking for here.

So there's the mini paper I didn't want to write earlier today and I'm afraid it's badly written at that as I've done a poor job of discussing an the complexities of Pirandello's poetics. Perhaps my reverence for Pirandello prevented me from doing a hack job such as this earlier and in retrospect maybe it is here that you think I have been out of character as usually I wouldn't hesitate to offer some half assed response. I encourage you (and anyone else) to read the play and hopefully its relationship to your post will become more clear. When you finish we can discuss it in more detail. For those who don't like to have time to read there is a wonderful cinematic version of the play directed by Marco Bellocchio and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale. As a fair warning, if you're relying on subtitles for the dialogue it will be difficult to follow and you'll miss some of the nuances and complexities.

There's something comforting about this post. I couldn't quite put my finger on it and then I recognized the tone. I live in an area that boasts the largest Italian population to be found outside of Italy. My current Bishop was born in Italy and raised in Canada. Two bishops before him is another man who was born in Italy and raised in South Africa. Our Gospel Doctrine teacher was born in Italy and immigrated to Canada when he was seven. The barbers I used to go to when I had hair were four Italian brothers and they would yell at one another in Italian about sports. We buy our bread, fresh, each week from an Italian bakery. One of my favorite companions on my mission is Italian.

Interesting. And if this is a sample of bad writing in comparison to what I've been working on, I'm in trouble

[Rosebud]

I'm not sure that RB fully knows what she is doing here. Maybe she should ask for a mulligan. As a community, I think we ought to be generous to those requesting mulligans. It seems like the kind, forgiving and humble thing to do. It is the kind of community that I hope we are becoming.

I can't ask for a mulligan, Robin. People could be kind and PC give me one, but then they'd never get to know the real me or how I really feel about what goes on here. From a CUF cultural perspective, asking for a mulligan would also be the PC thing for me to do, but that isn't where I am. I don't want anyone else to treat me kindly just for the sake of doing the right thing and I don't want to pretend that I'm someone I'm not just to follow social CUF customs. I'm different than you all and I'm very bothered about the way things go down around here. There's a time to conform and there's a time to stand up and say what I think. I knew what I was doing when I went into this. I’m sorry. I didn’t feel at peace here before this thread and I won’t be happy unless I see it through.

In my mind people will choose to be my friend and accept me for who I am or they will choose to despise me and hold grudges. Those who want to try to understand me will do so, those who want to be angry will be angry, those who want to care will care, those who want to get together and try to bully me will get together and try to bully me. I don't want to change myself to cater to others, nor do I want them to change themselves to cater to me. I want to see if it is possible for people to work together.

To experiment with social interaction for the purpose of figuring things out for one's self, that seems like the thing that all self-aware and conscientious people are doing all of the time. To experiment with the social interaction for the purpose of teaching others lessons, essentially treating others as lab subjects, that is trollish.

You're right on and I agree that there's a need to clarify the distinction.

I've been reluctant to post in this thread, in part because I really like Rosebud, and in part because I still don't understand her intentions here. At first I thought she was being totally sincere, albeit a bit theatrical, in changing her position about joining the SE. Then, when confronted about the style of her announcement, she seemed to back off of the sincere part, and she couched her approach in quasi-scientific terms. Even though the reality is that we have all been literally experimenting with social interaction since our births (and the history of this board, with its litany of completely unnecessary fights, and the speed at which some of us rush to take offense, and the grudges that are held and born like testimonies, are all evidence that for many of us, we need to continue to experiment, because we still haven't figured it out), the idea that anyone is experimenting with the lives of others comes across as genuine trolling.

It's just that people are always messing with others' lives on CUF. People run stings, try to bully each other off the board, debate the social futures of their friends, etc. There's enough evidence to prove that just in this thread. What I did here seems mild in comparison to what has been done to me and to so many others in the past.

The troll issue is bothersome to me here. When I first posted on this board, someone directly accused me of being a troll and left me with a link. The funny thing is that it was the first time I had ever even seen the word. I followed the link, realized I didn't know what the person meant, and decided to ignore the comment because it was outside of the discussion. A couple months later someone told me that one of the reasons everyone thought I was a man was because I didn't address the issue. I hate being castigated for something that is so common.

I guess I'm also having a hard time feeling guilty for setting up a troll that was calculated to bring fury directly onto me. I purposely put myself in the grinder over this issue because I’m unhappy about it and I'm not the kind of person who likes to put other individuals in a tough spot over something I’m personally bothered about. I'm socially aware enough to know what I was doing. If people want to ethically argue that trolls are wrong because they're hurtful, I think it would be worth taking a couple of seconds to consider that I intentionally set up a troll to hurt myself. It took a few posts to really get it rolling. I'm sorry to those who thought I was talking down to them. I didn't have the SE community in mind when I was posting. I was thinking about the lurkers and the new posters.

I’m really behind in a lot of my real-world work. I have so much more to say and I wish that I had the time to address pellegrino’s post because I think it’s pertinent to this thread and my development on CUF. I’d also like to address the topic of agendas when I have time. But… oh well.

[byu71]

Nothing you have done makes me dislike you. There are things I don't like around here either. I haven't started a campaign against them yet, but I might. My top priority would be to limit the number of words someone can put in a post.