"Helping" babble and ergo babbler threads

Geez, what did I say about short posts in the other thread.

Babblers are fragmented. Personal attacks wouldn't be thinly veiled if they were permitted. It appears that Babble has rules of conduct that babblers find it quite easy to circumvent. And Babblers don't like some other babblers based on what they think they know about them based on their postings. I'll be the first to admit some babblers postings consistently irk me.

So tell us what "helping" actually is, remind?

remind wrote:

Sense of perception actually jrootham, not necessarily "intent", as catchfire once said to me, perception and impact is what matters, NOT intent, so much.

 

Suppose some could perceive it as "helping", but then must of us know what "helping" actually is.

Can you please explain what you mean by this? You present it as fact, and I would like to know what you perceive the facts to be.

Also, I'd like to state that my threads are not about some awesome attempt to 'help babble'.  It's to stop myself and others from being attacked.  I freely admit my motives are selfish.

remind wrote:

"helpers" usually put themselves above those they are "helping".

 

For example, in mental health we recognize that "Helping" usually leads to disempowerment of the person we are "helping" rather than empowerment that comes from assisting them to "help" themselves. Or letting them help themselves to achieve what it is they want to achieve.

My intent is not to help, it's to defend myself when others decide to engage in personal attacks...and my focus is on trying to avoid engaging in the same kinds of personal attacks. 

I feel that you are making some very strong assumptions here about intentions.  You are welcome to those assumptions.  However, your perception is not my reality.

Again, I ask why you phrased the OP in a purely negative 'either/or/both' fashion.  Are there other options you'd be open to?

Seriously people? Is this thread necessary? I'm pretty sure Yiwah has taken enough the last day or two (the other thread was quite painful).

Can't we just stop with this and get back to discussing bee sex?

One does wonder why it was started. Maybe the individual who started it could tell us why she did.

I hope you got the results and impact you intended.

remind wrote:

personally, I did not think the glass house thread was necessary, but if it was necessary, and the ad naseum other one, so too is this one.

I'm curious as to why you aren't answering direct questions.  If you've decided that you will only talk around me, and not to me, that too would be nice to know.  So let me try again:

1) Do you think people are being personally attacked by [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/rabble-reactions/hostile-assumptions-or-just... [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/rabble-reactions/glass-houses-etc]threads[/url]?

2) Why did you frame your OP in a purely negative 'this bad thing, that bad thing or both bad things' manner?

3) Why did you start this thread?

I think number three is really the question at the heart of the matter.  I'm asking you directly rather than insinuating I know the reason.  I am doing this because I feel that insinuations and talking around people is a very passive aggressive thing to do and that is how I view the way you have posted here.  I don't know what motivates it, and hopefully my perception is incorrect.

Remind wrote:

Had no intent am merely indicating results and impact.....
Caissa does not believe this to be true. All conscious behaviour has intent.

I love those rare Friday evenings with no obligations, a clear agenda, and a scorching sun.  I'm thinking patio with umbrella at the local trough, sub-zero tap ale, and where they don't even mind a little aroma from the odd spliff.  It's time I believe...been one heckuva week.

OK, to start with.  How were you impacted by it?

You know, some people claim that talking about sexism/racism/etc make sexism/racism worse.

I'm seeing a parallel here.

Wait...are you 'alien' that Caissa keeps referring to channeling?

I thought s/he meant like...channeling aliens, and thought the singular use was odd...

alien wrote:

I have no idea what "chanelling" means in what context.

I thought [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/migration-po... meant[/url] channeling ALIENS

Are the fires close Remind? Or is the smoke traveling that far?

remind, I understand what you're saying. I just haven't figured out how to deal with it, because obviously people are uncomfortable with getting too personal, which in a way is a nice thing.

Someone -- "boxman" or something like that? -- back in that first thread used an expression that I thought was interesting. He said the whole thread was a "performative contradiction," I think, and although I hadn't run into that expression before, I grasped it right away. I had just been thinking about Karl Rove and strategists like that -- you know, rule #1: accuse your adversary of your own worst sin.

It's very hard to talk about process when the process thread is actually the result of a specific confrontation between/among specific individuals and yet that specific confrontation is never named, nor are the individuals, which is what I believe those other two threads were, or started out to be. I always thought that Israel was the elephant in the room, and RP finally had the guts to say so, very late in the first thread. Cue had the guts to identify himself as one of the targets of the OP, which I knew he was, and then he said no more. Other targets can take care of themselves. But in sublimating a specific and serious disagreement with specific individuals by arguing in the abstract that some babblers are passive-aggressive (rather than that they've identified a problem with your arguments), the OP in that first thread seemed to me essence of passive-aggression, and a most troubling way of trying to discredit opponents.

I have absolutely no doubt, however, that if I had pulled up examples of exactly the kind of behaviours I referred to in that thread, that not only would that have been (rightfully) seen as a full-on attack, it would have been deemed as inappropriate and shut down.

So what do you want?  I explained already why I felt that naming names was inappropriate and unhelpful. 

And as was amply demonstrated in that thread, I am far from the only person who sees these behaviours as problematic.  So making the entire discussion about MY specific interactions would also be pointless.

But now I am being accused of being passive-agressive...someone called that in the other thread, I'm impressed.

By the way, the position is that people are being aggressive, not passive-aggressive, by accusing others of having hidden bad motives.

Passive-aggressiveness is refusing to answer direct requests for clarification, posting oblique never-explained-comments (the performance contradiction post is an excellent example of this) and other 'fly-by' comments.  It's a great way to get someone's two-cents in, without ever having to actually deal with a problem head-on or take accountability for the insinuations made.

I'll note that I am not the one refusing to answer questions asked of me, by the way.

alien wrote:

 

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/introductions/alien-outer-space

lol...awesome!  Nice to 'meet' you  :D

Yiwah wrote:

And as was amply demonstrated in that thread, I am far from the only person who sees these behaviours as problematic.  So making the entire discussion about MY specific interactions would also be pointless.

...

Passive-aggressiveness is refusing to answer direct requests for clarification, posting oblique never-explained-comments (the performance contradiction post is an excellent example of this) and other 'fly-by' comments.  It's a great way to get someone's two-cents in, without ever having to actually deal with a problem head-on or take accountability for the insinuations made.

I'll note that I am not the one refusing to answer questions asked of me, by the way.

Oh, but Yiwah -- you are.

This is not a problem of "behaviours." It is a problem about specific strategies of discussion of a specific topic (Israel) on a specific discussion forum (babble) with fairly well-defined politics. That is the problem, and whenever you have been confronted head-on on that topic, you have ducked and diverted into abstractions and psychological mystifications. RP made that point last night, and you ducked him so fast he probably didn't even notice because he's a nice guy.

I'm mostly a nice guy, except I don't like head-games being practised on people I admire, like Cue and Unionist. And I srsly do not think, Yiwah, that you've had any trouble at all getting your two cents in.

skdadl wrote:

 

Oh, but Yiwah -- you are.

This is not a problem of "behaviours." It is a problem about specific strategies of discussion of a specific topic (Israel) on a specific discussion forum (babble) with fairly well-defined politics. That is the problem, and whenever you have been confronted head-on on that topic, you have ducked and diverted into abstractions and psychological mystifications. RP made that point last night, and you ducked him so fast he probably didn't even notice because he's a nice guy.

I'm mostly a nice guy, except I don't like head-games being practised on people I admire, like Cue and Unionist. And I srsly do not think, Yiwah, that you've had any trouble at all getting your two cents in.

*sigh*

What is it you want to ask me then?  I can't even begin to answer your question, as I have no idea what it is.

And as for you supporting certain posters, that's all well and good.  But I have stated many times why I think their behaviours are abusive.  You clearly do not agree.  Perhaps you believe those behaviours are justified.  I can't do anything about that except talk about it.

And no.  Sorry, I disagree with this statement: "It is a problem about specific strategies of discussion of a specific topic (Israel) on a specific discussion forum (babble) with fairly well-defined politics". I am not the only person on this forum who has been accussed of having bad motives, and those accusations have not all been about Israel.  That alone is proof enough that this indeed about behaviours, and is a much wider problem than the specific situation I (apparently continue) to face.

So please, ask your question once and for all.

KenS wrote:

I would add, and have already said, that I dont think its mostly or first of all what specific people do. That there just happen to be people that are more obvious. [And POSSIBLY might be contributing more than their share to the problems.]

I agree.  I've seen what has been directed at me, and I have seen a few other instances of what has been directed at others...but I'm not present enough to have seen it all.  Yet other posters have brought their own experiences forth, meaning that no, this is not all just about me, or just one or two people.