>Yow! What howls of outrage! Jesus, some of you on this list are as humorless
>and self-righteous as the standard caricatures of the Bookish Brainiac.
why thanks so much -- no one has ever managed to direct this particular schoolyard cliche jibe at me before. i must congratulate you.
they were not quite howls of outrage DP, they were pretty annoyed replies to your exceeding juvenile response to my earlier post. you asked me 'what the fuck i was talking about' (forgive me if that's not an exact quote, i wouldn't want to lose a single nuance), and i answered. i suspect my mistake lies in imagining that you were actually asking a question.
>I
>simply proclaim the joy and pride I take in the physical labor I perform (in
>concert with my mental and creative activities), and in return I get
>hammered with all sorts of defensive posts.
no i don't feel defensive about your superior dismissal of others based on highly dubious claims to embrace 'labor' as a virtue. i feel angry about it. this is in part, yes, because i feel personally named by it, but i am interested in criticising you rather than defending myself. i would however want to defend the desire of others (i have loved) to escape the suffering imposed by the labor you want to embrace, endorse, extol. i mourn the fact that they, unlike me, did not escape.
you enjoy your work? great, so do i. but far too many people who manually 'labor' do not find it to be a source of great creative joy in their lives. far too many people, DP.
so i take it personally yes, but at a more abstract level -- though you seem to only have a personal voice -- i think it is dangerous for people interested in improving the reward, respect and opportunities available to people not privileged by the work they do within our social systems to resort to this dodgy romantic vision of work, workers, the working-class, manual labor and so on. speaking with people who know their jobs (if they have them) are not well rewarded, respected, or desired by many people -- if they are not (as they often are) simply damaging to their lives -- as if this was not the case will only make 'us' look like liars, idiots, or else patronising and deluded.
>Are you all that insecure with
>your places in life?
no -- but i think you are.
>I could care less if every one of you was spoon-fed to
>the age of 21. I merely made my observations in response to other posts. I
>did so with humor and high spirit.
i confess i had no idea it was meant to be funny. we could take a poll, but i probably wouldn't be convinced. the American sense of humor is occasionally beyond me entirely (though indeed Election 2000 was one of the best routines I've seen in a while -- there were even several moments of high irony and perhaps it could be a real turning point; next thing I know Saturday Night Live will be funny).
>Calm down. I'm not trying to prove
>anything, and neither should you.
why the hell not? -- apparently unlike you, i think this matters.
>Please go back to chattering about what it
>means to be "white," and discuss what "hot topics" will animate the Lenin
>conference. I'm done with this.
congratulations again, that's possibly the least convincing exit from a topic of debate i've seen in a year. i would ask you what on earth is wrong with discussing either of these topics, and why they are not significant, but i surmise that this dismissal is not really something you care about either. you're apparently been humorous and high-spirited.
catherine