obfuscate p2 what you do when you use words like obfuscate 041206 ... oldephebe not neccessarily unless you sorround it with pointless modifiers why should the burden of a subjective metric like appraisel fall only upon the speaker? How is he supposed to gage the vocabulary of the hearer? what if the speaker in question is accustomed to using a certain verbiage and having that verbiage understood? on what basis or authority do you make that statement? could you give us an example? could you flesh out the basis of your opposition? ... 041206 ... p2 oh yes verbiage is a good one too obfuscate to make obscure verbiage a profusion of words usually of little or obscure content as for authority i have none no more than you as for opinions i have many and probably no more than you i don't object to the use of the word i simply like that to most people the word aptly describes itself like twsitedly_pleasing 041206 ... oldephebe alright very well put ... 041206 ... oldephebe but then verbiage does not have to have a neccessarily pejorative connotation i mean, scholarly or legal or medical or technical or simply a vocabulary one is accustomed to using among his peers that is an honest affirmation of himself, are the medium by wich a specialized set and sub-set of information/discipline are discussed and applied, but i don't want to split hairs, i already have mind you - maybe i should say i'll stop splitting hairs and dropping distinctions... ... 041206 ... p2 i think i missed your point yes it does not necessarily have to have a negative connotation however my definition was a direct quote from the first listed definition from webster.com therefore although it is not necessarily so it is commonly accepted as such i have to wonder though who your peers are that your oration is magnificent while your spelling lacking it must be a largely multiloquous group 041206 ... oE true my spelling sucks, and even my punctuation at times..always has, a flaw i'll concede. i usually use spell check or Word, but i get lazy and in the moment i just hurl these lines upon the screen. If you were genuinely complimenting me then thankyou, if you're taking a shot, well..it's unfortunate that we equate disagreement with personal affront and then respond out of that. don't worry about it. I mean argument is the only way we can affirm ourselves, our beings, disagreement is just a path to recieving the gift of the other. our opinions may never intersect but i guess i just have lofty expectations. i mean aspire to a venue wherein people are secure enough to argue, YES argue and affiem themselves w/o these petty little digs w/o trying to stun someone into silence with the tedious clamor of disingenuous malice ridden statements. i'm sure i don't need to clarify the whole concept of a vocabulary shared by a sub-set of poeple who have the same training, same cultural experiences and same communication styles... or i'm just not inclined to. ... 041206 ... oE what does multi-? mean? i won't even try and spell it. 041206 ... dafremen What if disagreement among strangers only serves to enhance strangeness? What if the rift that grows daily between us is further served and feeds upon our petty squabbles? I sat down one day, to calculate the odds. What are the odds that disagreeing with people will bring us closer somehow? Certainly it's possible, but does it pan out in the majority of cases? 1 out of 10 times? 1 out of 100 times? How often does the voicing of dissention result in our coming together? If the desired end result is the bolstering of our ego and the disseminating of a personal opinion to those that would agree, even then, doesn't picking a differing opinion out of the crowd and confronting it tend to hurt us in the achievement of our goal? Disagreement lends itself not just to "this is right" but also "that is wrong." Division's battle cry emanates from those words. I can hear it now, like a bugle call echoing off the hills...Taa Daa Daa dAAAA! "You are WRONG!" And the mighty bull elephant seals charge, some more agressively, others with more cunning. The circle of spectators opens wide, some join in, others jeer and call out the name of their champion. The division grows between the various sides of the conflict. There is no closure here. There is no point to this. We aren't exploring anything except the depths of our vanity, the extent of our ability to pick apart one another's thoughts and opinions. Many leave the circle, fearful that the blood of the contest will fall on them, they are sickened by the thought. How often? How many times will disagreement and argument lead to your point of view being heard? How often if you had simply stated what it is you thought, without comparison to the opposite point of view? And what if the end result desired is NOT the feeding of ego and the dissemination of its self-certain propoganda? What if what your heart truly desires is acceptance and unity? What then? How often will disagreement achieve your result then? More often than not or not very often? 1 out of 10 times? 1 out of 100? Rumi, a Sufi poet and mystic was approached one day by a critic of his. The man accused Rumi of being a hypocrite. "The Jews claim that Jesus was NOT the Son of God, and you tell them that they are right." "Then the Christians come claiming that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God and you tell THEM that they are right." "How can you live with your hypocrisy?It should be obvious to even a fool that they both can't be right." To this Rumi responded with just two words: "You're right." Rumi knew then, what logic dictates we SHOULD know now, but fail to recognize..it isn't our opinion that matters, it isn't our perspective that matters, it isn't our ability to point out oh-so-cleverly how the other guy is wrong that matters. What matters is that we do not add to the conflict that surrounds us daily, creating the sadness that many of us claim makes this human world a miserable, messed up place to be born. The conflict cannot disappear for as long as we add to it in the name of dissention, disagreement and "proving our case." And so, in the end, if argument is what you cherish, if disagreement serves as the most useful tool you know of in the repertoire of human interaction, then I can only wish you well, and hope that you beat the odds, achieving unity through disagreement. After all, you're obviously right. 041206 ... p2 oE that was meant neither as a compliment nor as a shot simply as a observation and a true question multiloquous means loquacious aka talkative it was an honest question as to what your peers (i.e., friends) are like as i am sure that in a verbal discussion with you and your brethren that i would have that drowning feeling i get whenever i start a project i under estimated however when i picture this same group i do not picture them making many spelling mistakes in an email discussion about the ramifications of 16th century metallurgy in modern architecture in el salvador this brought me to the conclusion that yours must be a primarily oratorical bunch hence the multiloquous remark oh, back to the point which was "what was your point?" the connotation need not be there but has been accepted as there under its most common definition so while you may have first brought up "verbiage" and may have meant a different definition i clearly stated which definition i was referring to daffy you are also right 041206 ... dafremen : ) 041206 ... phebe what was my point? i dunno..acedemically or what? i'm not linear this week unless i want to indulge myself in quixotic rhapsodies about how argument affirms the Human. er..argument affirms our very existence. some folks i jabber with, hey I have to scramble to keep up. And p2 i really doubt you'd have a problem keeping up with ANYBODY, i've read a good deal of your posts and i'm always impressed with the elegance, depth and breadth of your knowledge base and your powers of problem solving. I should probably read the entirety of what you and daf shared. ... 041207 ... oldephebe dafremen - brilliant as usual But what if we take the negative, or pejorative connotation away from the concept of "argumentation"? What if we can find a way to differentiate with our advesary or other or interlocutor w/o being threatening or being percieved as the threat. The Gift. The Gift of my human experience to the other. The Gift of his experience and perception, the gift of his story to me. How can that be a bad thing? Can I ever say anything w/o sounding like a blowhard? ME:A crotchety old man gripping the oak dais with one hand as his cane falls to the floor, while shaking a positively parkinsonian fist ruefully in the air. I stand before the other as he stands before me, each of us views the prospect of listening to the other, I mean really listening and not just pensively waiting to launch our own blistering salvos into the others ear, like entering the undiscovered country of a dense foreboding forest. I say to free those of us who are not so confident, to free those among us who have been conditioned to antagonize when challenged, or when shown the Gift of the other in a forthright manner - I say this:We will forge a key, an indestructable key made up of the noblest aspects of ourselves, made up out of the the brightly burning seed of eternity. Our individuality! Our spark! We must learn to stand with our shoulders square and eyes clear and jaw unclenched and arms out stretched to give the gift of ourselves to the other and recieve his/her gift to us. See? If we peel the dense ferns back, we can see how high the sun sits in an unblemished sky. We don't need to cringe, or hide behind psychic prisons we allowed others to build over our true glittering beautiful selves any longer. We're already in the shelter of our own experience and authority. We need not feel threatened by the other. Perhaps the gift of hs/her experience and individuality will provide a greater shelter against the anti-human collossus that strides the world. ... But I so get what you and p2 were sharing. Very well put. ... 041207 ... dafremen They will know what you know in their own time. Learn what you have learned when they are readied and steadied by the hand of destiny to receive that lesson. And if it be by your words that they receive this Gift, then so be it. If not, move on and plant your seeds elsewhere. That is not argument, that is not disagreement, which you speak of and yearn after phebe. It is example, it is oratory and it is tutelage. You cannot disagree with him that earnestly seeks to listen and learn from you anymore than you can defeat him whose firm desire it is to see that you triumph. 041207 ... oldephebe Well I guess we just see things differently. That's cool. Respectfully, I disagree. You've HAVE given me some things to think about, I hadn't quite looked at the issue from your unique perspective. I will ruminate over your words and let them sift down and maybe some of them will sink into the soft soil of my heart. ... 041208 what's it to you? who go blather from