Год назад, о постмодернизме

[posic]

В комментах к https://posic.livejournal.com/1663573.html

Comments

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

It was fun playing devil's advocate. And I was drunk as hell. Feels like 10 years ago not a year ago though.

[posic.livejournal.com]

I understood that you were playing devil's advocate, of course (cf. "a person of your current persuasion"). But it did not occur to me that you might be drunk...

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

Of course, "transracial trans-tri-gender-fluid non-binary people" was a huge giveaway. And yes, I was drunk. I don't do this sober anymore. I also remember that you did not unscreen my last response, I thought that you would ban me and that it would have been very satisfying to be banned for actual trolling. Because I am mostly banned for reasoning these days, which in postmodernist discourse is trolling of course. And trolling is the only way to have a productive conversation and redistribute power.

[posic.livejournal.com]

I never had any intention of banning you, of course. I did not even unfriend you (as you may have noticed). At least I certainly believe that I never did.

I did not unscreen your last response because the conversation had reached a point when I thought it was appropriate to demonstrate what I consider an important kind of move against a postmodernist opponent (against other kinds of opponents, too, but particularly against a postmodernist): ending the conversation. I do it when I feel that the opponent's last comment does not add any new substance to the discussion, but instead intends to drown my points in a flood of trivial verbiage. When I get this feeling of a deliberate erosion of content by a flow of words without substance, I stop.

Another aspect of it, of course, was to illustrate the main point discussed in the conversation: that I do not expect to win the encounter by purely discoursive means. There's going to be a vote to stop the debate and make the decision at some point, and preferably rather before than after the postmodernist opponent starts to prevail by using his powers of thoughtless "discourse". Then it depends on who has the voting rights, of course. In my journal, it is me.

When discussing on an opponent's or third party territory, there would be other probable stopping points (e.g., when somebody insults me, I would probably stop and leave immediately).

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

You did not unfriend me indeed.

In similar situations I usually choose to end the conversation by not responding to the opponent's last comment rather than by hiding their response because it might give them the illusion of some sort of victory or that their comment was important enough for me to hide it from the audience which might have been following the conversation and feed their martyr's halo.

[posic.livejournal.com]

One correction: as you remained on my friends list throughout, your comments were (and are) not prescreened. They did not need to be unscreened manually before they appeared in my journal in the open view. So it was not that "I did not unscreen" your last response. It arrived unscreened, and then I screened it. That was the final move.

Now I'm unscreening it back, in case anybody is interested -- https://posic.livejournal.com/1666165.html?thread=5586549#t5586549

I generally operate from the presumption that the opponent is qualified. Certainly I presumed you to be a qualified opponent. A qualified opponent does not need to be told what constitutes his victory and what doesn't. He knows it himself. So denying anybody the illusion of victory over me is not my goal. Denying them the actual victory is.

Otherwise they can go on falsely believing that they won their encounter against me for the rest of their lives. I have no problem with that. As a practical matter, this may cause me some problems (and probably sometimes does), as these poor creatures begin to disrespect me and spread this disrespect around. But I am content with that.

I am happy if my handling of the encounter improves the strategic position of my side of the war (and the enemy having an illusion of victory is not bad from this point of view; but more importantly, my journal page should make a meaningful impression on a casual reader). Also, if intelligent people eventually realize that my approach made sense; and if perhaps they learn some potentially useful technique. That's all I want to achieve.

[prorsus.livejournal.com]

Перечитала и как будто не я писала. Какая я все-таки тролль и сука когда пьяная. Хорошо что это бывает так редко.