Posted by fayeroe on July 25, 2010, at 13:11:50
In reply to Re: the system here » sigismund, posted by chujoe on July 25, 2010, at 5:51:44
> Sig, I've talked about it before in other threads on this board, but in brief what I mean by "philosophically empty" is that "civility" at Psychobabble is enforced by a form of coercion that cloaks itself in the language of personal responsibility while denying the possibility of responsibility by enforcing what is really a language code, not an ethics. This system is, also, inherently arbitrary. Finally, limiting discussion of controversial issues to "I statements" that describe one's feelings rather than on'e knowledge (knowledge being infinitely and superficially relative) means that argument in any real sense is impossible.
Chujoe, the Politics board was allowed to flourish and grow for a few years. No one paid us any attention and we had these fantastic conversations every day. I can't tell you how the beginning of the end came about without being uncivil but my take on it was that it was discovered that we were actually talking about ideas instead of feelings. Suddenly the PBCs started flying left and right.
Gradually the lifeblood was squeezed out of it and it became a place where you could not express a thought if it was the slightest bit negative towards a policy, a war, national spending, any other country..you get the idea.
The Politics board was a wonderful ride for a few years. We loved it dearly, like you would love a really smart kid.
The board got loaded onto the "civility" bandwagon and it dried us up.We had gone for ages without a PBC.
I do remember the one time that it did get very "uncivil" on the board. It came about due to the presence of someone who had very extreme ideas about separation of state and religion. Now watch someone go into archives to try and prove we were awful. I'll probably get censored for what I just typed. I'm sitting here trying to word this without a PBC and that is what I hate!!
I think you would have enjoyed the "coffee shop" atmosphere on the board. The ideas would flow and we could keep something going for hours at a time.
poster:fayeroe
thread:951844
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20100714/msgs/955848.html