Re: [microsound] Re: us citizens... (OT)

[Bill Ashline <ashline@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:08:18 -0800, Richard Zvonar <zvonar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> One reason people with strong political feelings participate in
> political discussions on nominally non-political lists is in order to
> get a particular "take" on a situation or philosophical polarity. To
> take the discussion from this microsound community to (for example) a
> Rush Limbaugh list or a Noam Chomsky list would be to have a
> different discussion. In other words, those who wish to discuss
> politics here do so because they want to discuss them here, not just
> because they want to discuss politics.

Exactly Richard.  Politics is one of the dimensions of our reality. 
As is sexuality, race, food, work, travel, and of course, music. 
People don't compartmentalize these categories in their brains and
join discussion boards to engage each of them separately.  They all
exist simultaneously within the person.  A number of people say that
the discussion of politics leads toward greater friction on email
lists and elsewhere.  the refusal to allow such discussion also leads
toward friction.  It turns people into "topic-policemen."  One once
again faces the admonition of the state rather than the support of a
community.  The fact of the matter is that the current politics of the
US affects everybody on an almost daily basis.  It affects one's
feeling of freedom in expression.  It affects one's creativity.  To
tell someone to take their politics off-list during seriously
troubling times is to tell them to take their life off-list.  It's to
effectively be off-list all the time.

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 05:38:23 +0000 (UTC), Phil Thomson
<philthom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> That said, someone on another list posted to the effect that the three
> most taboo topics on any mailing list are 1) politics 2) religion and 3)
> whether religion and/or politics should be discussed on a particular
> mailing list.

These are also the most invoked taboo categories for engaging in
discussion with Americans as reported in general textbooks that are
used to teach about American culture to people from other societies. 
Except for the third one.  Effectively, such books say that one should
never discuss politics, religion, or how much money one makes with
Americans that one does not know well.  So when Americans tell you to
shut up about politics on discussion boards, what they are really
doing is enforcing their own cultural mores on everyone else,
including themselves and their compatriots, and are completely unaware
of it.  And the irony of it all is that if there is one society in
serious need of a very honest, deep, sincere, and probing discussion
of politics right now, it's the people of the US.  America is a
society (and I include myself here) which is gripped with a huge
political psychosis right now that it refuses to address in a
responsible and proactive way, and the demand for silence about it on
an email list is just one more symptom of the bigger problem.

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