Friday, July 27, 2007
(12:00 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: A Bulgarian Convent
I confess that I am a workaholic. I confess that I'm becoming more and more conscious of my limits. I confess that some nights are basically exercises in staying awake until it's late enough to go to bed.I confess that I linked to a post at AUFS without first considering the possibility that the author would read and respond to my critical post, potentially resulting in a flood of commenters arguing in that author's defense. I confess that the immediate danger seems to have passed, but I think poorly enough of this author's character that I could see him going back and responding -- in a vengeful, narcissistic manner -- to a critical post from a virtually unknown blog on a slow day.
I confess that I got way ahead of myself in a discussion on The Valve recently. I confess that once people patiently explained to me what I was ignorant of, I secretly came to the conclusion that I had been right all along, but my credibility was shot by that point. I confess that someone needs to start a blog where they occasionally try to demonstrate the inherent dangers of analytic philosophy by pointing out that it caused Bertrand Russell to screw up a lot of things in his history of philosophy.
I confess that I'm eventually planning to read through the good old Copleston, in preparation for my exam in philosophy of religion. I confess that I enjoy reading through survey books like that and wish I had more time to do so. In particular, I confess that I want to read Hobsbawm's trilogy on the 19th century. I confess that I've read some of the volumes of Pelikan's history of Christian thought up to three times.
I confess that in general, people in online forums are too quick to take offense. The problem isn't the assholes and the trolls -- they're easy to spot and ignore. The really insidious thing is the people policing etiquette. (And, to be fair, the people who can't ignore the trolls, though that's more understandable. In everyday conversation, you can let an asshole comment pass, but online, ignoring an asshole comment is like letting it stand unchallenged as part of the public record.)
