Actual Freedom – The Actual Freedom Mailing List Correspondence

Continued on from Mailing List ‘B’: No. 40

September 12 1999

RESPONDENT: Well, I’ve spent enough time reading the site to know that my letter will be blocked by Richard’s ego, as No. 4’s was.

RICHARD: Apart from starting your very first post to The Actual Freedom Mailing List with an abject air of resignation, in what way do you predict that your letter will be blocked? And in what way was No. 4’s post blocked? He had specifically stated that he wrote only to share his thoughts, and was not looking for anybody’s answers, so I responded suggesting unambiguously that reciprocity was far, far better than one-way monologues. I would call that ‘opening-up’ a discussion rather than ‘blocking’ ... would you not agree?

RESPONDENT: Or replied to ‘predictably’ with Richard’s usual over excited egotistical arrogance ...

RICHARD: Hmm ... this is the second time that you have used this word ‘ego’ – and now in combination with ‘arrogance’ to boot – and my experience on Mailing Lists has shown that it is usually female correspondents who throw this meaningless contribution to dialogue into the ring. May I ask? What do you hope to achieve with such pointless taxonomy?

RESPONDENT: ... feigned harmlessness, cut and paste laziness and of course those impressive ‘big words’ that make him look like an inconsiderate idiot. Then one of his parrots will come to their guru’s defence using his cloned vocabulary and corrupted aggro attitude.

RICHARD: My, my ... you do go on. Nevertheless, I am only too happy to attend to your worries:

1. You do not know me personally so you have no way of knowing whether my harmlessness is ‘feigned’ or genuine.

2. I do not ‘copy and paste’ out of laziness at all ... it is just that there is only a finite number of ways of saying the same thing differently before one starts duplicating what one has said elsewhere. I basically said all I had to say with 114,000 words in my journal years ago ... and the count is over 2,000,000 words by now. Also, experience has shown that someone may not ‘get it’ the first time around, or the second or third, but will have it sink in on the umpteenth repeat. And there is also the matter of not being able to remember who I have said what to and when and where ... nor knowing whether what I wrote to person ‘A’ was read by person ‘B’ anyway.

3. You are not the first person to have a problem about another’s erudition and scholarship ... yet the English language has upwards of 650,000 words in it. Do you really suggest that I restrict myself to the usual 4,000 to 6,000 that is the extent of the vocabulary of the average person? If so, why? Must all peoples remain semi-illiterate just because peoples like yourself find linguistic expressiveness to be ‘inconsiderate’ towards those lacking the gumption to flex their minds with what you revealingly call ‘impressive big words’?

4. The use of the word ‘parrots’ is like the throwaway ‘egotistical’ line you used above ... easy to say and contributing zilch to investigative dialogue (and ‘parroting’ is a word to describe mindless imitation of another anyway).

5. As I am on record as saying – over and over again – that I am a thorough-going atheist through and through I hardly see why you bother to try and hang the appellation ‘guru’ upon me. But then again, it is so easy to chuck these phrases around, is it not? Much easier than thinking things through for yourself, eh?

6. It is very difficult for anyone to say the same thing whilst not using the words and phrases of one another ... somewhat like your use of ‘ego’, ‘egotistical arrogance’, ‘impressive big words’, ‘inconsiderate idiot’, ‘parrots’, ‘guru’, ‘cloned vocabulary’, ‘aggro attitude’, ‘thick skulls’, ‘alienating’, ‘wanking’ ... but never mind ... you would make a good engineer.

RESPONDENT: Yet after all this ridiculous ‘get out’ my question is; why do none of you have the intelligence to work out why the list only gets 2 letters a day!

RICHARD: Speaking personally, I would have said because it has not been operating very long and is not advertised ... but maybe you could give me the benefit of your acumen?

RESPONDENT: Why does it not dawn on your thick skulls how alienating your exaggerated attitudes are ...

RICHARD: Perhaps you know a way, of publicly broadcasting the fact that each and every person alive today has got it 180 degrees wrong, without alienating anyone? Are you for real?

RESPONDENT: And why on earth is Richard trotting out a may listening-l post?

RICHARD: To drive a point home ... did you get it?

RESPONDENT: To keep something already dead, alive and wanking??

RICHARD: Ahh ... so you did not ‘get it’, I see. Never mind ... stick around and I am sure to copy and paste it sooner rather than later.

RESPONDENT: Tacky tactics man.

RICHARD: Seeing as you know so much about the subject of delicate communication skills, maybe you could suggest some ‘non-tacky tactics’ for me? But then again, maybe your tactics in this post a shining example of how to not alienate people? If so, methinks I will stick to my method.

RESPONDENT: You might have stumbled upon something, Richard.

RICHARD: I can assure you that I did not ‘stumble upon’ an actual freedom – if that is what you mean by ‘something’ – as it took eleven years of diligence, application, patience, perseverance, determination and much internal and external observation, investigation, uncovering and discovering. I know where I am at, where I came from and how I got here.

RESPONDENT: But at the rate your going someone else, with enough intelligence and love for his fellow human beings to learn how to communicate, is going to get the actualism message across because your failing miserably.

RICHARD: Oh? May I ask why you need me to love you?

Continued on from Mailing List ‘B’: No. 40