re: Flame Wars

Shel, Re:

> I am quite puzzled by this statement.  In what way did Mark not behave in
> real life as he does on e-mail?  I've met him a few times, and have found
> him to be true to his descriptions (AND convictions).  At the risk of
> starting yet another off-topic rant, please elaborate on this.

Of course, I cannot compare his behaviour in real life as a whole with his way
to express himself on the list.  For that, I know him way too little from
personal confrontation.  Being together in a bar for about an hour and talking
to each other for less than ten minutes in front of a wall of background noise
simply isn't enough to get a good picture of an otherwise unknown person.

What I was talking about only concerned his behaviour with respect to me and
the debate we had both in private e-mail and in this silly thread here on the
list.  In this special case, I think I have enough evidence to defend the
statement I made about Mark.  I will elaborate a little without starting a rant
again.

Mark and I disagreed in private e-mail concerning some religious topic, and
Mark repeated his position again in a more provocative and agressive way.  At
that point, our discussion had reached the status of a repeated exchange of the
same arguments over and over again, and I had already declared my wilingness to
end it without definite result.  To the above-mentioned provocation, however, I
replied with the words `I take this as an insult' and explained why.  Mark's
only answer to this was `You shouldn't, though', whereas later on in the same
letter he wrote `But we should be meeting in a few days (hopefully), and I'd
rather it be friendly. OK?'

On the same day, July 15, he repeated the same contradiction between personal
attack and peace offer in two different open letters to me when he wrote `You
should read my posts with more attention to what's written' (which seemed
strange to me since I had carefully read every word of his and answered to
every thought whereas he had often neglected whole passages of my posts only to
insert some new distracting topics) and `I do hope you won't be angry with me
when we meet in NYC.'

At that point, I already got the impression that Mark was afraid of his own
courage as he was about to meet a stranger he had insulted and was only aware
of that stranger's feelings without knowing what his possible reactions might
be.  This seemed a little ridiculous to me, maybe even cowardly.  IMHO, he
should rather have written `Let's finish this discussion in NYC' than what he
actually wrote.

I wasn't angry with him at all, only with what he had written (yes, I make a
clear difference between people and their actions), and apart from being
somehow annoyed because I had spent way too much of my time on a fruitless
discussion, I was looking forward to our meeting in NYC with some amusement.
But when Mark's first words at the Molly Wee were `Please don't kill me' I
couldn't feel anything but pity for a man who knows that he might have gone too
far without being able to admit it.

Our talk at the Molly Wee touched only minor features of the discussion we had
had before, and conversation was somehow hampered by the fact that I had
problems to understand individual voices in the bar noise.  I think it was a
friendly talk all in all.  I would have liked to continue our discussion during
the less noisy after-show meeting, but unfortunately both of us didn't have any
time when the concert was over.

When Mark came back home, he answered my last public note to him (the one he
hadn't received anymore before his departure to NYC) in a not very friendly
style which was his right since I hadn't been that friendly in my own writing.
But then he began again to include totally weird assumptions (`I guess it
really, really bothers you that I'm not a huge fan of Xtianity') in his
arguments and to spread allusions to the Christian fundamentalism he assumes I
am propagating (in fact I am very liberal, and Mark should have known it)
throughout most of his other public notes that were not directed to me.  This
was again at least a serious kind of teasing, if not close to an insult.

So, what should my conclusion be?  Doesn't all of this look like describing a
man with a big mouth who doesn't dare to defend his position in personal
confrontation?  I don't mind if someone attacks me personally, I always know
how to defend myself.  But doing so continually only to interrupt it for the
moment of personal meeting with words along the lines of `Aren't we friends,
after all?' simply doesn't seem like adult and courageous behaviour to me.
This was what I described in the statement you quoted.

I am quite sure that almost every other lister would have dared to fight things
out with me in NYC if we had had a similar argument like this.  Not necessarily
with fists (which really would be a little brutal in a simple discussion like
this), but hopefully at least with words.

Cheers,

Bernd