(urth) Pike's ghost

[James Wynn]

>>> António Pedro Marques wrote:
>>> Why do you believe enlightenment came to Patera Silk in the ball court?
>>
>> Because the text says so.
>
> If the text says so and everyone can go look and everyone is supposed 
> to have read it once, isn't it a bit tiresome to have to repeat at 
> each turn what the text says?

You know, ironically, I thought I answered that question in the text 
that followed. But I'll approach it in more detail.
Answer: Because this is literature, and words can have more than one 
meaning. And because events carefully described can have different 
significance based on interpretation (thus we have Detective novels). 
And because, that's the field when you are discussing Wolfe.
But (here's the beauty) you are /not/ required to engage anyone for whom 
you believe conversation is pointless. Embrace your freedom. But if you 
engage, it is always pointless if you approach it with the presumption 
that it is someone else's job to prove you wrong.

> If everything everyone does has unspeakable motivations,
> why point out that this or that action have unspeakable motivations?

That's like saying that because we are all sinners, discussion of good 
behavior is pointless. It's like saying that anyone who condemns 
behavior is "self-righteous", anyone who earns a decent salary is "greedy".

>
>>>> They argue from authority based
>>>> on what they consider is "most likely true" or "the consensus". This
>>>> liberates them from having to explain WHY what they believe is 
>>>> "most likely
>>>> true". They have generously yielded to THEMSELVES the default 
>>>> position.
>>>>
>>>> [...]What I'm
>>>> really annoyed by is /smugness/. It makes me want to take the opposite
>>>> position just to see how it plays out. I think the smug aren't really
>>>> thinking because they have afforded themselves the right not to.
>>>
>>> And what in your view constitutes smugness?
>>
>> I think I just described it.
>
> If so, one could argue that smugness is in the eye of the beholder.

Of course you can argue that. Most of us hail from free countries.
But being smug doesn't require that you are wrong. It only means that 
you are not applying to your own theories the rigor to which you are 
with great adamance  disputing others. It is a hypocrisy in which the 
hypocrite has satisfied himself that his hypocrisy is "authentic". It's 
like a tyrant who believes everything he does is just because God put 
him there. The "smug" has constructed a palace of mirrors that all show 
/only/ himself and always in the perfect light.