NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/talk/philosop/misc/3025

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-15 | 5.7 KB

Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:3025 rec.arts.books:22737 alt.politics.homosexuality:8144
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Path: sparky!uunet!caen!nic.umass.edu!news.amherst.edu!jmfuchs
From: [e-mail] (JESSE MICHAEL FUCHS)
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductivenes
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Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 08:58:45 GMT
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[e-mail] wrote:
> In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
> (Michael Zeleny) says:
> >
> >
> >No, Mr H, this is not the "cunt nearby" argument.  The "cunt nearby"
> >argument is the fallacious claim that it is all right for a man to have
> >sex with anything, as long as he is you, or else there is a foul-mouthed
> >blowhard imbecile like yourself around, who certifies the activity as
> >genuinely progressive, in light of the Whig interpretation of history.
> >
> >HB:
> >>Utterly, utterly, utterly stupid [etc.]
> >
> >Is something bothering you?  Then repeat this mantra: "There are no
> >absolutes of any sort; consequently there is no such thing as truth,
> >justice, or beauty; most importantly, there is no such thing as human
> >nature.  Therefore, none of my favorite proclivities could conceivably
> >be motivated by my resentful abomination of truth, justice, and beauty;
> >nor could they constitute a perversion of my true nature.  I am a
> >paragon of harmony, integrity, and composure.  It is my sincere wish
> >that the rest of the world would recognize my peerless merits, and come
> >to think and act in the same way I do."
> >
>
> I am so sorry. I thought that Zeleny was motivated merely by his
> bigotry and stupidity. I was wrong. Apparently, he's got a real
> projective mental disorder. Please note in the passages above that
> he calls someone other than himself a foul-mouthed blowhard
> imbecile. Well, I don't know about the foul-mouthed part; he
> has had no experience of my mouth nor of any of its productions,
> nor have I any of his, lord LORD may it long remain so. But blowhard
> imbecile? This seems quite an apt epithet for Zeleny himself!
> Clearly a blowhard; just read aay two or three sentences that
> he's excreted on the net. And would a non-imbecile assert the
> totally idiotic stuff that he seems to relish? I leave it to the
> readership to decide who is a blowhard imbecile and who is not.
    Neither of you, to me are blowhard imbeciles. You are neither, and
Zeleny is certainly not an imbecile - just someone with a very silly argument
based on what I believe is a faulty premise who gets a little too touchy when
people try to poke holes through it. It's an interesting (although, as I have
been attempted to show for the last week, paper-thin wrong) argument, and if
given by soemone who did not engage in such random, bilious invective as
Zeleny, would probably strike me as a flawed but fairly interesting argument.
>
> But where the through-the-lookinglass ambiance gets really *spooky*
> is where he seems to imply that someone other than himself has
> set himself up to judge the correctness of various sexual acts.
> Gee, wasn't it Zeleny that did that? I never made any claim of
> morality, immorality, or anything else for any sex act whatever.
> Zeleny, as I recall, claims that certain acts between loving,
> consenting people are *immoral*. That was him, not me.
> He apparently throws the Whig interpretation of history into
> the mix as a way of showing that he remembers what I've said
> on other occasions and can extract something therefrom that
> will mystify the people reading this now, but maybe impress
> them as erudite. *yawn*
    Zeleny just needs to prove to people that he is smart. We all do,
but I think it's usually not taken to such amazing extremes.
>
> He further seems to propose that it is *I* who think myself
> oh-so-extra-special; is this plausible? Or is it not Zeleny
> projecting his own narcissistic auto-eroticism onto someone
> else? Who is it who begs the whole of the usenet community
> to watch him beat off? Me? Or Zeleny? In fact, Zeleny's
> behavior reminds me very much of a line in a play that I saw
> a couple of years ago, at the Loeb in Cambridge, in fact,
> where one character calls another character's literary
> production "bad faith jacking off". That's Zeleny. Bad faith
> jacking off.
    Personally, I find reading his arguments and responding to them to be
a guilty pleasure, comparable to eating Cheez Whiz while watching 90210. If
he was truly interested in expanding and exploring his arguments, it may be
worthwhile to respond to him. As it is, I have a sneaking suspicion that if
Zelany were to somehow wander onto the "alt.video.games.classic" newsgroup,
he would manage to start a gigantic, pointless flamewar over what qualifies as
"classic" in ten minutes flat.

>
> >As a disciple of Stirner, you ought to be happy with this credo.
>
> God he's a jerk. "Disciple of Stirner"...yeesh. Discipleship
> may be something that Zeleny indulges in, in his silly little
> Platonic other-world; some of the rest of us are a little more
> able to think for ourselves. This is actually just another
> "whig interpretation of history" remark, and quite unimpressive.
    Yup. Like all of us, he likes hearing himself talk - just, once again,
to a slightly larger extreme than anyone else I've had the pleasure of running
into.
>
> H.
>
> Herschel Browne
> "The" American University
                                -Skippy