Quote:
Originally posted by sycamore
I wholeheartedly agree! Jag's literary style represents the "new adults"--the disenchanted and disenfranchised, who cling desperately to that ray of light we call hope.
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Syc? What call does Jag have to be disenchanted? How is he disenfranchised? What "ray of light we call hope" is he clinging to? (Or are you pulling our legs? Crack a smilie if you are, won'tcha? Besides, Jaguar isn't God, it's Ivanova.)
Jeni, my point about spelling, grammar and diction was made in the Jonson quote, and I think it's very apropos. The only presence any of us have had here on The Cellar over the years is our *writing*. Debate, based on critical thought, is our stock-in-trade, our lingua franca. This community isn't a chatroom. *Anyone* can use proper spelling and grammar, it's just that some people fail to make the effort.
There's *pages* in this thread because of hopping back and forth between the two meanings of "exploitation"; the emotionally *un*loaded meaning synonymous with "utilization", and the *very* emotionally loaded political usage.
"...[b]usiness by nautre is immoral, you are merely exploiting demand..." says Jag. Yet if two parties reach a meeting of the minds and exchange value, where's the immorality?
So we say "criticise the immorality and selfishness of business once you need to support yourself", and lo and behold, now he's a businessman too--selling turnkey Linux systems to local businesses, buying his own food, and paying taxes, by his account.
But "i buy my food but i'd argue the guy selling it is making money, more than he needs by selling people food that he bougth for less - how immoral is that?" Um...not at all, by my reckoning; "the guy" has done a value-add, just like Jag and his boxen, which are presumably not sold at cost. But of course, "i never said my business was somehow morally better"...and on and on it goes.
Trying to hold Jag to a connected train of thought, a reasoned, principled position--to find out exactly what it is that he *is* saying--has proved elusive in most of the threads I've read he's been a part of...the moment he's challenged, and on the horns of a dilemma of his own making, the smoke machine turns on and there's nothing left but fog. The fragments of his stream-of-conciousness discourse mostly just don't add up. A half-remebered slogan, a value judgement shot from the hip, and he's off to the next thread.
This isn't the "new adults"; it's hardly art, and I don't come to these discussions in search of "poetry". In fact, what I hear is the same old post-adolescent pose that's been going on for generations. There's very little "new" in it...you could hear it at any Earth Day thirty years ago.
Can't imagine what I was thinking of. Shame on me for picking on the poor kid....oh, sorry, that' s patronizing. When I say it, anyhow. :-)