David Sless begs us to lighten up . . . Sigh . . . I know, this thread is now depressing me and feels undignified, and it is tempting simply to walk away from it. But isn't the point of debate to press on to a conclusion that brings clarity? It's one of those damned if I do, damned if I don't scenarios.

Well, I've decided to press on, with as much dignity as I can muster. But I am going to try and eventually leave the specific issue of GK and Humantific behind, because there seem to me to be general points at issue here that are of much wider relevance. Nevertheless, in moving to the general, I find I am going to have to start at least, with the particularities of Ken's last post addressed collectively to myself and Rosan. As before, I don't want to get tangled up in defending Rosan's positions, so I will respond only to those parts of Ken's post that were directly addressed to me.

As before, I have selectively quoted from Ken's post.

Ken, I am glad we are now clear that I was discussing the language of GKs post. But of course, I was regarding that language as having meaningful content, not only in its overt message, but also in its structure. The 'structural message' I found particularly disturbing.

I agree with you also, that Rosan's posts could perhaps be read as making inferences about Humantific which I was not personally prepared to make. 

My objection to your characterisation of her arguments as 'silly', has I am afraid, to stand. I just don't think it's an appropriate way to address a colleague in academic debate, no matter how flawed and foolish you personally may find their ideas. I object to it for one of the key reasons I objected to GKs original post: with respect, it strikes me as rude. 

All I can do is let my plea stand. 

As I said before, I don't want to get involved in defending Rosan's positions, but in justifying your use of the word 'silly' to characterise them, you have directed some points at me, which I want to respond to:

You wrote:

> In paragraph eight of my post yesterday, I referred to Lifton's eight mechanisms of thought control and coercive language. Had you been trained as a psychiatrist or psychologist, or had you taken common courses with psychologists and psychiatrists in training for your doctoral work as I did, you would know that one must identify a reasonable and related series of symptoms to make a diagnosis.

Even without the benefits of a psychological/psychiatric training, or even a Phd, I am nevertheless aware that such diagnoses are constructs, and often contested and shifting ones at that, even within the disciplines that originate them. They are not a simple litmus test. That is why I was careful to offer and explain my own definitions of what I characterised as 'cultic'. There is a whole world of possibility for debate in those words 'reasonable' and 'related'.

You state:

> Lifton's work on cults does not apply to Humantific.

That may or may not be the case, but given the above, I feel that even in a 'quick reply' it is an assertion that should at least be prefaced with: 'in my opinion . . . ' Again, all I can do is plead. 

> In using a  word such as "silly" with respect to Rosan's repetition of your post, I am saying, "Friends, If anyone reasonably wanted me to analyze Humantific with respect to Lifton's work on cults, I could do so. A careful reading of Lifton demonstrates that writing such an analysis would be mashing potatoes with a sledgehammer. One does that kind of analysis in class for undergraduates to show point by point what works and what doesn't. An analysis of this kind doesn't make sense on a list where most subscribers can read Lifton responsibly and draw the same conclusion." So now I've articulated my argument, and I hope it explains why I called Rosan's post silly rather than simply describing it as a flawed argument. 

I do not necessarily disagree with you about the inapplicability of Lifton's criteria. I am not currently, in a position to offer an opinion. You imply however, that only 'irresponsible' readers would disagree with you, and that you would only condescend to explain your reasoning to an undergraduate class as an exercise, inferring clearly that only the inexperienced or incompetent could disagree with you.

I am afraid I don't see that as 'articulating an argument', even in an abbreviated form. (It is also an awful lot of subtext to condense into the word 'silly'.)

I don't regard Lifton as the final arbiter of what cult like behaviour is, but even accepting him as such for the moment, I have already pointed out that, to me at any rate, certain features of GK's language in his post appeared to me to have affinities to three of Lifton's criteria, and invited others to judge for themselves. If one entertains the possibility that GK's language could be read as having these qualities, it is surely a reasonable hypothesis that one might, if one looked, find the same characteristics in other material by him, and possibly others of Lifton's criteria too? Such an inference may, clearly, be found on testing to be wrong, but is surely not, as a hypothesis, 'silly'? Personally, I'd like to feel that I was being left some room to make my own mind up, and not patronised as irresponsible, ignorant or incompetent for entertaining, however briefly, any doubt on the matter.


Note, that I say nothing about the quality of Rosan's argument in this, or about the substantive nature of any claims she may have made. I respond only to the points you put directly to me.


I promised at the beginning to try and move this on to some wider issues. There are two I would like  to make:

1. There is a way of writing which allows the possibility of disagreement. This does not mean that one has to sacrifice conviction, plain speaking or even bluntness on occasion. I do believe, and teach, that it is the way to write if you want to further discussion rather than close it down. My objections throughout this thread have been to forms of language and argument that inhibit free critical thought.

2. We live in an age of scholarship in which, I believe, it is no longer legitimate to argue by bashing each other over the head with hammers made of absolute objective truth, except perhaps in a few corners of physical science and mathematics. Even there, if a fact may be undisputed as a representation of the world, it will still more often than not, and perhaps always be, at it's root, a metaphor. And even in the case of apparently hard facts, much of the 'truth' will depend on the presentaion, packaging and context. 

Yes, I am certainly a therefore, postmodernist, but I am not among those who feel that a nihilistic relativism is the only outcome of the 'linguistic turn'. Perhaps because I am a designer and a maker, I still feel that there is a real relationship between ideas, experience and that mysterious thing called 'the real world'. But it is not a simple relationship. It is expressed and negotiated through the collection of meanings human beings give to phenomena, and those meanings do not reside in some collection of adamantine platonic solids, to be used as handy weapons in debate, but as Saussure showed, in the 'social fact' - in groups of human beings and their relationships to one another. That inescapably makes meaning political, and it is the reason why language is not merely potentially dangerous, its importance goes far beyond that. It is the very stuff of power relationships.

I hope on this list, postmoderns or not, we can agree that the most desirable are those forms of language which allow us to create a consensual reality that is inclusive, while also allowing us to hew closest to an honest relationship to the phenomena as we encounter them - reality, if you will - because we still believe, in an echo of the Enlightenment, that that is the most inclusive construct of all.

<epigrammatic mode off>


I hope that makes clear, why I have felt it necessary to pursue what might seem a petty series of disputes. I hope that, having together lit up the ground between us, we can 'lighten up' in David's sense :-)


Andrew J King