One of the things I have been observing in this whole affair is the connundrum of interpreting words on a screen, and I think it bears remembering just how difficult communication is without physical presence, without body language, a smile or a grin, a wink, a shrug of the shoulder, a deliberately bland visage, etc etc.
Throughout the blogs and here on various threads there have been many comments about davem's intentions, from davem himself and from others, about how he did not mean to engage in personal insult or attack when he used sarcasm and invective. The problem here, of course, is like that of any literary text: recovering an author's intention. And from our discussion of Tolkien we all are aware of how difficult that is. Even authors, our discussions have shown, cannot always with clear authority and vision recall intentions. And their intentions can change. (I'm speaking of Tolkien now.)
For me, for instance, I found this paragraph from the Community Statement very troubling:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by CS
We further feel that, upon reflection, that those responsible for the banishment have decided to try and cover up this issue, making various excuses, none of which presented have seemed plausible to us, as already noted..
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I saw, and I still see when I read this, a statement that those responsible were being deceitful. That is how I interpret "cover up" and "making excuses". Now, perhaps the writers did not intend to convey this idea of deceit. I would hope they didn't. It is entirely possible. Yet that is what these words suggest to me. And what I could not understand was how quickly the trust in the mods and Admins evaporated so that such an implication could be made. I had to shake my head and wonder what happened to trust, why did things get so angry so quickly, why did no one stop to wonder what might have been on the minds of the mods and the Admin and give them some benefit of doubt? Those are the things that ran through my mind. See-- because of this one paragraph--that statement did not make me think the way I suspect the signees wanted me to think. I was not moved to question the decision to ban davem, but to wonder what had happened to our communal trust.
But my point is not to ask this now, and not to put the writers and signees on the defensive. I wish simply to suggest that we all remember how difficult it is to interpret words on the Internet.
We come from many different cultures and the English we use is, for most purposes, a "Global English." Gone are the days when Britannia ruled the World; our maps are no longer coloured in pink for the Empire. ( A colonial's JOKE) Each culture has manners unique to that culture and what we need to strive for is a recognition that, when we write, we write not just out of our own little corner of the world, but for the world. Many cultures, especially non-Western ones, place--at least in my experience as a teacher of ESL--a higher expectation of courtesy and politeness and public decorum in their communication than my North American compatriots. And it isn't just culture that influences our interpretation, but our age and generation, our own personal experience, our own habits of reading. And unlike spoken language, written language does not fade away, but can be returned to, read over and over, an act which can even increase the depth of feeling and misunderstanding. Rants, once spoken, dissipate in the air and turn into memory, but rants written remain, to be reexperienced.
I know that from now on I will step back from every post which strikes any 'spider senses' and I will ask of my own posts if I, as a writer, have really controlled my meaning as much as I should. None of us are perfect writers, of course, not even Tolkien or other great authors, but we can all take responsibility for trying as hard as possible to ensure that our intentions are fully represented in our posts.
Now, I do hope Fordim will be pleased with how I wangled a canonicity question into all of this.
