Re: TECH: re'enai and the emotion classifiers (long)

[Art Protin <protin@USL.COM>]

[ while I concede that this exchange does have many of the
attributes of a flame war and should probably be discontinued,
I still find some things I want to express and suspect that
they might be different enough from what has been said so far
to justify saying them now]

Rather than quote individual lines from lojbab's latest post
and argue about little details, I will recount a story that I
think has an analogy, and then try to express that analogy
and with it my outrageous position.

Two college classmates told of an unfortune teacher in their
high school.  This teacher was politically between an anarchist
and a libertarian.  The teacher allowed some of his perspective
to flavor his presentations to the class.  The students brought
home some of that flavor to their parents.  The parents, being
"intellectually challenged", immediately "recognized" this
non-mainline position as "communist" and had the teacher dismissed.

I believe that community my classmates came from had two buckets
that everything political came in, either it was "American" or
not.  In the forties, non-American was called "Nazi", and in the
fifties and sixies, non-American was called "Communist".  This
limited vocabulary of the "intellectually challenged" (read as
"educationally/intellectually HANDICAPPED") was never seen as
a reason to allow myself or other thinking people around me
to corrupt the meanings of our much richer vocabulary.

I don't doubt that the intellectually challenged in this country
have a similar two buckets for god-beliefs, either you accept the
Judeo-Christian God or you are an atheist.  THIS SHOULD HAVE LITTLE
BEARING ON THE DESIGN OF LOJBAN.  The "intellectually challenged"
in this country do not even try to make good use of English, I
expect that they will have no interest in lojban (as it is obviously
a "foreign language").  I expect if lojban were to become the dominent
language anywhere, such people living there would debase and
underutilize lojban.  I have no interest in cheating them of that
role by precorrupting lojban by incorporating their handicap in the
language.  I am unwilling to give up total control of the English
language to them, I even begrudge them their rightful vote on the
usage of English, and I will not willingly accept incorporation of
their limitations in a design process, that they cannot understand,
of a language in which they have negative interest.

[That was pretty outrageous, now, wasn't it?  Hopefully this
presentation of my (warped) views was sufficiently complete that
I will not feel any need to further clarify it.  It seems to be
sufficiently close to first principles.  As to the "correctness"
of this view, you are all welcome to email to me directly all
supporting (few I expect) comments as well as those opposing it
(FLAMES).  While I may have sounded angry (and definitely
argumentative), all the hostility that I expressed is directed
at ideas that I oppose and, to a much lesser extent, toward
the nameless, faceless masses that embody those ideas.  I like
lojbab and lojban.  I only argue about these issues because I
care about lojban and I only argue with lojbab because I like
and respect him enough to be candid.)

    thank you all (for you patience)
    Arthur Protin


Arthur Protin <protin@usl.com>
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and
are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.