This post is a follow up to one
here where I said "(and this is probably personal which I will come back to in another post another day)." This then is the other post and other day
I have need to understand. I thirst for it. I always have done so from being a child to today and I hope it will never change to the day I die. From childhood to today I can not look at a mechanical mechanism and not want to open it up and see how part a pushes part b that in turn drives part C. I remember as a young child being taught Newtons laws of motion. I remember to this day the 'experiments' we did with little carts on wheels being pulled by weights, dragging strips of paper through 'ticker tape' devices that marked little dots on the paper strips and differing intervals. I remember the sheer wonder and amazement as 'pieces of the puzzle' started falling into place in my head and as understanding of these laws formed in my head. I remember being in awe of the 'fundamental truth' that seemed to have been revealed to me and that I was able to understand. Just as I remember some years later my despondency on discovering Einstein's theory of relativity when it became apparent to me that actually Newtons 'laws' on motion were no such thing, that actually they were really Newtons best approximation as to how the world behaves that work well at certain scales but not at others. I remember actually feeling like I had been lied to and duped, cheated and actively deceived by my teachers. I also remember feeling a kind of existential angst as I came to realise that actually not all things were ultimately 'understandable' from 'universals truths' despite any amount of effort or brilliance. That actually one could spend one's entire life in the pursuit of trying to understand something and still not arrive at any kind of 'universal truth'. This was exactly the same time I 'got into' and enthused by 'computers and computing' and the two things are directly connected. For me, here was an entire 'realm' that was definitive, binary and thus ultimately understandable. Whatever the behaviour of a computer, no matter how baffling, how complex and regardless of if I personally had the ability to do so, every and any behaviour was ultimately knowable and understandable and eventually reduced down to a 0 or 1 in a given register. This to me then became the 'antidote' to and haven against the angst I felt at coming to realise the real world was not like this, that there were things, many things, maybe even most of the most important things, that were just not knowable or understandable and would not be so in my lifetime or possibly ever.
I have been using on-line forums for just about as long as such things have existed. I have a personal interest in them in general terms in theory and in practice. In the question 'can changing the ways by which people can interact, lead to different results of that interaction'. In fact I have in the past even written an article for the
Telegraph that touches on this subject specifically in terms of 'forum communities' based around being a customer of a given company. My views of forums and specifically on the question of can changing how we are able to interact change the results of that interaction, have indeed evolved considerably over time but my point is I have had a long term interest in forums. From my earliest experiences of using forums the phenomenon of ending up 'clashing' with a given poster, of seemingly being unable to either understand what they were saying and why or be able to get across what I was trying to say and why became apparent to me. I developed a simple way of trying to deal with this , which was to make efforts to meet such people in person , face to face, if possible, in the hope that doing so could and would if not end the 'clashes' on the forum at least would reduce the 'heat' and increase the 'light'. Over the years I have had maybe 5 such meetings with people under these circumstances. 4 of those were I would say successful. I gained a better understanding of the other person and they of me and subsequent clashes on the forum did have less 'heat' and more 'light' on both sides as a result. The exception was when I met up with an individual, who openly boasted to me, proud of the fact, that there was no on-line thread or discussion that they could not 'drag down' such that any understanding of anything by anyone could be gained from it. I was speechless at the time and am still dumbstruck to this day with this idea. The idea that someone could actual want to be in a discussion with the objective of not just making their position impossible to be understood, but also anyone else's as well and to be boastful of an ability to do this, was and is so fundamentally and diametrically opposed to the core of who I am as a person.
For me one of the most basic mechanisms to understanding, if not the single most useful mechanism, is via discussion, debate and argument. The very process of trying to explain and elucidate a given position to another person drives my own understanding of that position as much as trying to understand their position in turn does. I actually hate not understanding, I want to understand am driven by trying to do so. So for example me reply and questions to acp2010
here were genuine attempts to try and understand what he is saying, for currently I do not understand that and I want to understand it and still have a sense of frustration that I have not been able to so far. There is no doubt that my understanding of many GC's position on Cyprus has increased massively from years of discussion, debate and argument on forums like this one. Just as my understanding of my
own position has evolved and changed and clarified and increased likewise directly as a result of such discussion.
This is why to me the idea of using such discussion with an intent and objective of trying to undermine and destroy understanding rather than increase and refine it is an anathema to me. This is why I think GiG's behaviour here, as far as it is, or I perceive it to be, motivated by active attempts to create more 'heat' and decrease 'light' generically 'drives me crazy' so much more so than it seemingly does other people.
