Re: On random and garatuitous attacks

cjampala@dayton.net
Thu, 28 Mar 1996 18:56:49 -0500 (EST)

This post by Ramakrishna is I believe his fourth on this subject
in the last three weeks. I am distressed that my friend Ramakrishna is
distressed enough to write repeatedly about his distress. However, I think
that his constant distress is putting a damper on an otherwise informative
and lively debate. (You don't think this debate has been informative? Just
think about it. Two days ago, most of us don't know anything about pOtukooci
saambaSiva Rao and vaaDrEvu china veerabhadruDu. Today, they are practically
household names in this group!).

I am not impressed by Ramakrishna's complaints about lack of
civility in this group. I think criticism of cherished icons and
irreverence is being confused with lack of civility. However, I belong to
the school that says that progress hardly occurs when you don't take a
critical look at your icons.

By my standards (which obviously are very different from
Ramakrishna's standards), the instances of lack of civility in this
furious pace of exchanges that we had over the past month occurred in
less than 1% of the posts. In many of those instances, there was gentle
(and occasionally not so gentle) castigation that followed resulting in
a correction for the most part. On the other hand, there have been a
large number of irreverent (but not irrelevant) posts that seemed to have
raised a lot of hackles. But what are hackles for if not for being raised?

As I have said repeatedly (almost with the same frequency of
Ramakrishna's distress posts, it seems) I am having a good time on
TELUSA these days. I exhort Ramakrishna to relax, take a deep breath, and
start having fun! It is OK to criticize Srisri and sinaare, and say that you
think yaddanapooDi writes trash - you don't even have to invoke muLLapooDi
here. On the other hand, I have to agree with you that it seems hardly
worthwhile to discuss whatever pOtukooci saambasiva raavu has to say
about anything ;-)

Regards. --- Chowdary Jampala