Re: <nettime> incoming! digest [valentine (x2), cantsin]

["Brandon D. Valentine" <brandon@dvalentine.com>]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 08:18:58PM +0100, david garcia wrote:
>
> > My suggestion: Donate blood, not rhetoric.
> 
> Brandon's final suggestion treats us to yet another Bush like binary,
> another false dichotomy like theory vs practice. For us or against us!
> Blood or rhetoric. humanitarian relief or fury. Well lets donate both! they
> are not mutually exclusive.

You forsake semantics to dwell on syntax.  Let me assure you my diction
was not chosen to indicate exclusivity.  Rather my linguistic aim was
deliberate mimicry of my ideological opposition's penchant for false
dichotomy.  Here are a few:

Make love, not war.
Food, not bombs.

These things too are not mutually exclusive.

Now, syntax aside, we examine the merit of the suggestion.  We work
under pretext of the given that time is scarce, which I assume any
entrant into a debate to understand as natural fact.[0]  Both tasks,
humanitarian relief effort and public debate of substance[1], if done to
any appreciable degree require substantial commitments of this scarce
resource, time.  If one treats these endeavors as anything other than
mutually exclusive it follows that either one of three conditions
result:

1) Relief effort and debate are performed with an equal commitment of
time.
2) Relief effort becomes subordinate to debate.
3) Debate becomes subordinate to relief effort.

One must consider whether these endeavors scale linearly or whether the
relationship between time invested and return on investment is along a
curve.  I suspect that in both cases a curve is more likely.  How severe
is that curve?  Can result (1) produce useful relief effort or debate of
substance[1]?  If not, then one endeavor must be subordinated to the
other.  That decision becomes a decidedly subjective moral judgement in
which I already given you my preference:

Donate blood, not rhetoric.

You are welcome to your own interpretation of the merits of either
course of action.

[0] - The prevalence of postmodern subjectivism does nothing to validate
its practictioners penchant for slothful induction and I neither condone
nor entertain subjective reinterpretation of the objective.
[1] - That is public debate which serves to inform, not misinform,
public debate which adheres to dialectic rigor in honest attempt to
secure the best answer, not the most ideologically satisfying one.

Brandon D. Valentine
-- 
brandon@dvalentine.com                                 http://www.geekpunk.net
Pseudo-Random Googlism:  valentine is more than cards and candy hearts
                         illustration by michael o'neill mcgrath

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