Ontology--who needs it? Ontology is terror and enslavement. Why give up the
ahistorical freedom of anonymity unless need be? Do that many people in this
list really need to be known by what they do otherwise, or would they better by
known by what they do here?

What's in a name--the wish for ontology, the hope for interpretation, the end of
freedom? What's in a name--historical presence, authority, power?

On gender and the ontological question: Does anyone have a gender on the
internet? Does anyone have a being on the internet unless they create it? Why
should anyone accept any quality assigned to them on the internet unless they
have created those qualities or agreed to them? Of what use is gender on a
film-philosophy discussion list? Does one need a gender or sexual preference to
discuss sexuality? Does one need a gender or sexual preference to bake cookies?

On political correctness: Ontology and history are strange brew indeed.
Qualities are not in themselves racist, sexist,  . . .  .  These terms have
historical pre-conditions which relate them to a particular form of historical
being (historically defined ontologies). Such associations are required for
people to make politically correct judgments, yet they are--at the same
time--the very associations that the politically correct would claim to be
evidence of racism, sexism, . . .  .  Yet why introduce ontology unless need be?
To confuse the terms of political correctness with enlightened behavior is no
more than assent to the structure of interpretation defined by political
correctness itself.

On Nietzschean courtesy:  Terms like "polite" and "civilly" or not terms for
civilizing the other but terms by which masters-of-themselves extend courtesy to
each other. By "courtesy" I am not referring to a chivalric creed, but to the
behavior masters-of-themselves must afford each other--as Nietzsche describes
it--in order to have some form of congress.

Nietzsche on history: Try _On the Use and Disadvantages of History for Life_.
Here Nietzsche attacks Hegel, but more so, he attacks Hegelians and their use of
Hegel as a justification for their political philosophy. The structure Nietzsche
offers for history is artistic: history is either antiquarian, monumental, or
critical.

Must everything end with bad Nietzsche:__The Rope_?

JMC