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  • From: dwayne <dwayne@pobox.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Walled Communities
  • Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 03:29:42 +1000

Toby Hemenway wrote:

> Glad to see you're delurking, Dwayne,

Not only delurking but sending mail to the wrong address!

woo!

That was *supposed* to go to Mikael, I'd have been a wee tad more
diplomatic were it going to the list. Whoops.

Oh well.

Weird, and now this email goes only to the list.
Hmmmm, some people must have reply-tos set, I assumed replies goes to
the sender, not the list. Oops.

> but, as Loren pointed out [thanks!], if you read my statement
> with a little care,

Errr, I did, actually.

> you'll notice it is qualified and specific
> ("often," "notable exceptions," "sometimes") and could only be
> taken to refer to a particular subset of the people without
> money--it's not even remotely a generalization.

Um. Yeah, it is. I fail to see how "with notable exceptions" makes it
NOT a generalisation. If you'd said "quite a few people without money"
etc, it would not have been a generalisation, but saying "with
exceptions" means it's not a *sweeping* generalisation, but it's still a
generalisation.

> I was aware that without the qualifiers if would be
> inaccurate and unkind.

I see it as that even with the qualifiers. The qualifiers just give you
some wriggle room in case someone like me gets narky, but it still seems
to me that if we took your words as gospel, should I meet someone with
no money, I'd assume, in general, they were fairly useless. My
experience has been quite the opposite.

> If you read all the words it probably won't frighten or annoy you.

Dude, that statement there really pisses me off, actually.

Why assume I did not read all of your words?
I'd suggest you drop this tack, it's rather rude.

> My statement comes from personal experience with what
> it takes to make a successful community.

Sure, but it's still a generalisation.

> Money is one of many useful filters for finding
> community members. I rarely meet people with some money
> and no skills (even my trust-fund friends have some
> skills); unfortunately, I frequently meet people with
> no money, and neither skills nor fire in the belly.

Whereas my experience has been exactly the opposite.

> And of course there are many people without money but
> with skills and ambition. Like you and Miekal and many
> on this list, I earn below poverty level but have a
> couple skills.

Oh I have very little ambition, actually, if I *did* have ambition I'd
have not let my partner crash my business and I'd be a billionaire, but
sod it, it's just money. I'd rather live an enjoyable and educational
life than be "successful"

I guess that's still ambition, in a way, but I'm not conventionally
ambitious.

> I think you'll find that most people on this list are
> very reasonable, and if you read something that seems
> offensive or outrageous, you've probably misunderstood
> it.

Sure, or they are misinformed, ignorant, or biased in some way. There's
lots of ways to take things. I tend to prefer finding out what they are
on about though, instead of assuming they are being deliberately
offensive.


Dwayne
--
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