Eugene Robkin (erobkin@uwc.edu)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 12:46:17 -0600
As a long time lurker and occasional intruder on this list I have to throw
out (or is it up) the following.
Unless you are within the body odor sphere of someone else you are only
getting part of the communication. Words alone account for no more than a
third of normal communications with people you do not know personally. The
rest is facial expression, body language, voice tone, and pheromones.
Telephone and written communications with someone you know well is one
thing and email with virtual friends (actual strangers) is another. Unless
you deliberately remove as much emotional content as possible from what you
write and resolve to ignore as much as possible from what you read, this
email mode of discourse will always periodically explode. The feedback
systems are all incomplete and without dampers and therefore unstable.
I've followed the flare ups on this and other lists. Much to my regret,
I've started two flame wars by accident and I know exactly how it's done.
So let me be clear here. Katharine did not insult or attack Judy and Judy
did not insult or attack Katharine since intent is not present. What is
present is the verbal patterns that these two usually use with their
families, friends and neighbors and a misinterpretation thereof by everyone
else.
All you've got is words with emotional loadings without the feedback
systems that tell you how to actually interpret the emotional content and
humans are really good at misinterpreting emotional content.
What you all have seen is the result of not getting the complete message
but only the words. I repeat, you only got the words and not the entire
emotional context and the personality clues that tell you what the actual
message is. Think about the common cliche used over and over again in
foreign policy and political discourse. "We sent a message", "They did not
get the message", etc. That means the words or actions by themselves did
not convey the message which had to be extrapolated from the entire history
and context. Think about what it means when you say of someone "I get
along with them because I know where they are coming from" or "They know
where I am coming from" which means you share history and context.
All of the private messages that say "A is right and B is wrong" only
exacerbate the fundamental problem of instability of email messaging. We
are all on the same tightrope and without conscious cooperation we will all
fall off.
I thought Katharine's postings about color stuff were very clear and I
really hate to think that the faulty nature of email communications would
trigger her withdrawl from this list. I have learned a lot from both Judy
and Katharine and I really would like that to continue.
I would like to return to the list membership as of Monday and sweep the
events of Tuesday into the bit bucket.
Thank you all.
Eugene Robkin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Nov 06 1999 - 10:06:44