Actual Freedom ~ Commonly Raised Objections

RICHARD: They do not experience the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive; a purity welling-up in all directions from the vast, immeasurable stillness of the infinitude of this universe.

RESPONDENT: A blast of hot air. Wow. Tell me, how does this inflated rhetoric apply when you brush your teeth in the a.m. and p.m.?

RICHARD: It is a pleasure and a delight to ‘brush my teeth’, or do anything else, for that matter, in ‘the a.m. and p.m.’. The experience of the ‘perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ endows everything one does with an infinite perfection ... even sitting doing nothing at all is a marvellous felicity.

*

RESPONDENT: If you want me to experience your experience, you need to paint that picture a bit clearer. It’s like saying, ‘the sunset is pretty’. You may have had an orgasmic experience watching the sunset, but for me to ‘get it’ as well, you need to employ the entire range of rhetorical devices: from assonance to zeugma.

RICHARD: You say ‘you need to employ the entire range of rhetorical devices’. Really? I hardly dare to use rhetoric on this list ... are you the same person who told me off on:

1. 20 August: [quote] ‘how does this inflated rhetoric apply’ .
2. 20 August: [quote] ‘A blast of hot air’ .
3. 22 August: [quote] ‘They are full of high rhetoric’ .
4. 22 August: [quote] ‘Don’t fluff me to death’ .
5. 22 August: [quote] ‘Don’t noun me to death’ .
6. 26 August: [quote] ‘Tell me, without using all those high-sounding nouns’ .

As for ‘assonance’, I consider that: ‘the perpetual purity of this moment of being alive’ and: ‘innocence prevails only where time has no duration’ is quite euphonic ... to the point of being mellifluent, do you not think? And when I examine my writing for ‘zeugma’, I see that is very sylleptic indeed, thank you very much.

RESPONDENT: This stream of words that I read which I see as having an artistic value second to none – I am impressed!

RICHARD: I am pleased that it impresses you ... but of what use is it to be impressed by eloquence if the impressing does not make one sit up and think, eh? After all, you are on record as stating that you are not on this list to learn anything ... and it would appear that you are true to your word.

RESPONDENT: Yet, in its very verbosity, and impenetrable cohesion and monologueness, leaves me with the feeling that meeting this Richard in the actual reality of his idyllic seaside village would be a bit like being fucked by an actual steam train?

RICHARD: Only if you were an ‘Awakened Teacher’ who was actively propagating those ‘Tried and True’ psittacisms called ‘Teachings’ that perpetuate all the wars and rapes and murders and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and sadness and loneliness and grief and depression and suicide for ever and a day. You would indubitably be stopped short in your tracks ... those well-worn tracks leading from illusion to delusion. Eastern mystical philosophy is an extremely complex and complicated metaphysics that does nothing to eliminate identity – both ‘I’ as ego and ‘me’ as soul – and in fact, if one were to apply his eastern-derived religious and spiritual system, one’s self would be endorsed, enhanced, glorified and rewarded for staying in existence. If it were not for all the mayhem and misery, it would be entertainingly amusing ... for the self does not exist in actuality. All this monstrous behaviour is about something fictitious. The self – and the Self – are only psychological and psychic entities ... phantasms in mundane reality and in a super-charged Reality. It is all much ado about nothing. However, it is no laughing matter ... it is far too serious when appalling suffering is concerned. It behoves one to put aside the selfish ego-driven and soul-ridden will to survive and look again at what exactly is occurring. One will no longer be entranced by the bewitching promises proffered so alluringly by these self-appointed guardians of virtue and morality ... all self-serving, mind you. It is a must that one establish one’s integrity and set about ridding oneself of any psychological and psychic entity whatsoever.

For there is nothing harmless about this divinity – this is a very self-centred and self-seeking approach to life on earth – something that all metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s Immortality is unambiguously selfish ... peace-on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined soul after physical death. So much for their humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and humaneness. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to perpetuate oneself for ever and a day. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Leaders fall foul of this existential dilemma. They pay lip-service to the notion of self-sacrifice – weeping crocodile tears at noble martyrdom – whilst selfishly pursuing the Eternal After-Life. The root cause of all the ills of humankind can be sheeted home to this single, basic fact: the overriding importance of the survival of ‘self’. All this gets played out in the human psyche ... and not in this actual world. For those rare few who succeed, their reward for narcissism is bliss, ecstasy, euphoria, love, compassion, beauty, truth and a few other glittering baubles ... which also only have an existence in the human psyche. But they do not get a ‘blithesome actuality’, for they are driven to ‘save the world’ and to ‘set mankind free’. Nor do they get an actual freedom from the Human Condition ... and certainly not peace-on-earth.

RESPONDENT: Could you comment at length please?

RICHARD: Indeed I could – I have over half-million words at my command – but as this E-Mail forum is restricted to 9 KB per mail we will have to settle for this for now. Is there anything in particular that you would like to discuss? For the way is clear to do so, now that we have got all of that mandatory verbal sparring (as per standard Internet protocol) out of the way. Shall we stop trying to score points of each other and attend to the subject at hand?

To wit: How to enter into a genuinely blithesome actuality?

RESPONDENT: Your language here is a little convoluted. Could you re-phrase it? Do you mean that ‘concepts’ were the whole purpose of the meeting, or they were not ... or something else entirely.

RICHARD: Your impression about ‘concepts’ is incorrect, whereas your impression about ‘many, many words’ is correct. Words are vital as our means of communicating our understanding to one another. It is marvellous that we are able to be discussing these matters of great momentousness ... and momentous not only the individual, but for all of the humans that are living on this verdant planet. It is an amazing thing that not only are we humans able to be here experiencing this business of being alive ... on top of that we can think about and reflect upon what is entailed in words. In addition to this ability, we can communicate our discoveries to one another – comparing notes as it were – and further our understanding with this communal input. One does not have to rely only upon one’s own findings; it is possible, as one man famous in history put it, to reach beyond the current knowledge by standing upon the shoulders of those that went before. It is silly to disregard the results of other person’s enterprising essays into the ‘mystery of life’ – unless it is obviously bombast and blather – for one would have to invent the wheel all over again (however, it is only too possible to accept as set in concrete the accumulated ‘wisdom of the ages’ and remain stultified ... enfeebled by the insufferable psittacisms passed on from one generation to the next). Speaking personally, I am very appreciative of all those brave peoples who dared to enter into ‘The Unknown’ ... if it were not for them leaving their written words behind I could not be where I am today.

Please, do not scorn words ... it is what sets us apart from the other sentient beings. It is only through words that peace-on-earth is possible.

*

RESPONDENT: You are teaching me so many new words! Perspicacious! Indeed! Did you already have that particular word in your head, or did you find it in a thesaurus or similar? May I ask? How did you come to be so verbose?

RICHARD: My background is that of a simple country person ... a boy from a farm in the South-West of Australia. I left state school at fifteen and learned to appreciate the English language as I started to question what others had to say about life, the universe and what it is to be a human being. Keeping my head in the sand (linguistically speaking) would have got me nowhere because they obfuscate through their pedagogy and sophistry. Also, people so dearly love to cover up their ineptitude by using words in a slippery manner. No one, it seems, likes to be pinned down to a clear-cut definition ... they like to ‘keep things open’ or ‘be flexible’ or ‘don’t be so fixed’ or ‘things aren’t black and white’ and so on. I happen to like the English language ... one can clearly communicate with another if a little rigour is applied.

However, because people like to hide behind words they have to resort to uttering pithy aphorisms like: ‘The Truth is Ineffable’.

RESPONDENT: This stream of words that I read which I see as having an artistic value second to none – I am impressed!

RICHARD: I am pleased that it impresses you ... but of what use is it to be impressed by eloquence if the impressing does not make one sit up and think, eh? After all, you are on record as stating that you are not on this list to learn anything ... and it would appear that you are true to your word.

RESPONDENT: For my taste, you guys write way too long posts, so I have not read any post completely.

RICHARD: The perpetual purity of this moment of being alive clearly indicates that innocence prevails only where time has no duration.

RESPONDENT: What are all these nonsense you are talking about?

RICHARD: When I read through the exchanges (further above) I see that ‘these nonsense’ could be summed up as ‘the human condition’ and how to eliminate it ... specifically being discussed are the subjects of ‘obsessing’, ‘justice’, ‘fairness’, ‘experiencing this moment’, ‘sorrow’, ‘disappointment’, ‘pain’, ‘pleasure’, ‘separation’, ‘smell’, ‘taste’, ‘tingling’, ‘brilliance’, ‘purity’, ‘comfort’, ‘safety’, ‘hurt’, ‘malice’, ‘images’, ‘enemies’, ‘the actualism method’, ‘clear intent’, ‘more happy’, ‘more harmless’, ‘observation’, ‘pinpointing, understanding, and eliminating’, ‘the cause of malice’, the cause of sorrow’, ‘appropriate action’, ‘appropriate change of action’, ‘deceptive subtleness’, ‘effort’, ‘‘self’-observation’, ‘value’, ‘clear intent’, ‘the whole point of the method’, ‘unravelling’, ‘accrued identity’, ‘simplicity’, ‘the cause of unhappiness’, ‘being happy’, ‘radical’, ‘trappings’, ‘dogma’, ‘an elemental concept’, ‘simple things are (sometimes) hard to understand’, ‘the difficulty of words’, ‘creating complexity’, ‘simple matters’, ‘assimilating data’, ‘digesting data’, ‘conditioning getting in the way’, ‘remembering the intent (to be happy and harmless)’, ‘a simple move’, and ‘being pushed back to intent’.

RESPONDENT: You are so much involved about how to live that you are missing life.

RICHARD: Which ‘life’ are you referring to (life in the human condition or life sans the human condition)?

RESPONDENT: If you were millionaire with your boat should you think how to live?

RICHARD: As there are quite a few millionaires (and billionaires for that matter) with boats it is fairly easy to answer your query by drawing from their experience ... any reports I have read of such people indicate that they are neither more, nor any less, happy and harmless than any non-millionaire with a boat.

RESPONDENT: These subject about living is only for people who are problematic and are trying to find one utopia.

RICHARD: The last time I checked-up on the topic approximately 6.0 billion people found life ‘problematic’ and were seeking ‘one utopia’ (if by those words you mean being generally dissatisfied with life as it currently is and wanting peace in some form or another).

Of course I have not done a door-to-door survey of all 6.0 billion people ... I am estimating this from talking with many and varied peoples from all walks of life (I have both travelled the country and overseas), from watching television, videos, films (whatever media is available), from reading about other people’s experiences in books, journals, magazines, newspapers (and latterly on the internet), for nigh on half a century, and extrapolating from that.

However, if you could provide web pages, books titles, magazine articles, newspaper reports, manuscripts, pamphlets, brochures or whatever that I can access – or other mailing lists that I can subscribe to – wherein people, who do not find life ‘problematic’ and who are not seeking ‘one utopia’ (if by those words you mean being generally dissatisfied with life as it currently is and wanting peace in some form or another), have written about the quality of their life and how that came about I would be most pleased.

I have yet to find someone – anyone – who is totally fulfilled, utterly content, and completely satisfied, each moment again ... I would be chuffed to be able to compare notes, as it were, with somebody else that is free from the human condition.

RESPONDENT: Your website is hilarious!

RICHARD: Good ... seriousness has no footing here.

RESPONDENT: Baits in the front page to entice people to enter.

RICHARD: It is somewhat surprising, however, as to how many miss the import of the very first bait at the top of the home page:

• ‘Actual Freedom: A New and Non-Spiritual Down-to-Earth Freedom’.

RESPONDENT: All your site map shows is what the folders contain.

RICHARD: As it would be a bit of a bummer if they did not I do wonder what you expected ... a cartographic chart showing latitude and longitude complete with compass bearings to where X marks the spot, perhaps?

RESPONDENT: By the way, if you want to be fair you could include one more link called ‘The Sceptics’, preferably in highlighted large fonts! I am sure there is a lot of material among your correspondents that you could separate and put in there so to facilitate ‘the seeker’s’ search.

RICHARD: You may be confusing those who object to be happy and harmless for spiritual reasons with those who are genuinely sceptical that such a thing is possible ... if so, and as maybe 90% (an arbitrary guess) of the co-respondents fall into the former category, your surety that ‘a lot’ of the material in the correspondence archives can be gathered together under a link called ‘The Sceptics’ could very well be based upon reading such correspondence with only one eye open.

RESPONDENT: Your links don’t make sense; some pages only offer two choices of navigation: either click on ‘continue’ or on the browser’s back button.

RICHARD: As this comment is in direct contrast to your previous comment – [quote] ‘I got lost in the labyrinth of many assorted doors’ [endquote] – just how many choices of navigation would you like on each and every page ... and why?

RESPONDENT: The midi melodies are they to delay the pages opening or to make one ‘contemplate’ while waiting?

RICHARD: Neither.

RESPONDENT: Even if one is able to find one’s way around your web what does one find?

RICHARD: Umm ... hilarity, baits, a site map which shows what the folders contain, an absence of a ‘sceptics’ link, some pages with only two choices, midi melodies which for some reason leaves one in doubt as to what midi melodies are for, and a lot of noise, perchance?

RESPONDENT: A lot of noise.

RICHARD: Ahh ... this reminds me of something you said earlier. Vis.:

• [Respondent]: ‘When you make a conscious effort to understand, you are hearing the noise of your own accumulations. It is this noise that prevents understanding’.

If I may rearrange these words to demonstrate something? Vis.:

• [demonstration only]: Where one seeks to understand via the noise of one’s idée fixe all one will see is that noise.

RESPONDENT: 4.0 million words free of charge!

RICHARD: Indeed ... and all with nary a tree being chopped down into the bargain.

RESPONDENT: Hope one day you get any money for that.

RICHARD: Why? I am retired and on a pension and have sufficient to meet my needs until the day I die.

RESPONDENT: You never know! Why don’t you synthetise that intense verbal diarrhoea in a book form and try to sell it?

RICHARD: Given that you said you have been writing on the internet since it started more than 10 years ago here is a ‘word for today’ you may find useful:

• ‘logodiarrhoea: a tendency to talk too much, extreme verbosity; (colloq.): verbal diarrhoea. (Oxford Dictionary).

There is nothing like flaming with style, eh?

RESPONDENT: Why you do so much clamour about your experience which left you without feelings, and your disciples bow down at it?

RICHARD: As I neither make the ‘clamour’ (synonymic to ‘noise’) you see in my words nor have any ‘disciples’ I will leave this to you to mull over.

RESPONDENT: If you are liberated from the human condition and harmlessly-free-happy now, good for you!

RICHARD: If I may point out? I did not do anything – I have been here all along just having a ball – as it was the identity within who made all this possible via altruistic ‘self’-immolation for the benefit of this body and that body and every body.

RESPONDENT: You are above humanity, enjoy it alone!

RICHARD: I am not above ‘humanity’ ... ‘humanity’ vanished when ‘I’/‘me’ became extinct (‘I’ am ‘humanity’ and ‘humanity’ is ‘me’).

RESPONDENT: Or do you need company for a larger enjoyment?

RICHARD: As I thoroughly enjoy my own company any other is simply a bonus on top of that plenitude.

RESPONDENT: Obviously, you know that people are more than eager to get rid of the bad feelings but how are you going to convince them to loose also the ones that give them pleasure?

RICHARD: It is the pure consciousness experience (PCE) which convinces, not me and/or my words ... me and/or my words provide an on-going confirmation that the PCE is an experience common to humans, irregardless of gender, race, or age, and an affirmation that a fellow human being has safely travelled the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition.

RICHARD: (...) Feeling beings do not have a corner on caring.

RESPONDENT: Okay, ‘I’ know that.

RICHARD: It would appear that ‘your’ knowing of that – that feeling beings do not have a corner on caring – is but a theoretical knowing as, despite observing that life in the real-world, where ‘you’ reside, is a serious and sometimes deadly business ‘you’ are more than ready to have that flesh and blood body ‘you’ currently inhabit go fishing in a lagoon (further below), under the guise of such an activity being altruistic, upon ‘your’ demise. Might I suggest it is ‘you’ who wants to simply disappear over the horizon?

RESPONDENT: Ha ... I was trying to understand why the 110th actualist will publish a report ...

RICHARD: Whereas I was speaking of sharing one’s experience by any means ... both further above (now snipped) and further below (not snipped).

RESPONDENT: ... about (his way to) an actual freedom from the human condition (the maze) if he has nothing new to say.

RICHARD: If he or she has nothing new to say then it would not be his or her way, now, would it?

RESPONDENT: An exercise in creativity then?

RICHARD: No ... it is an ‘of course’ action of the benignity and benevolence of this actual world and its actual intimacy. Here (from further below):

• [Richard to Respondent]: ‘.... there is an over-arching benignity and benevolence here in this actual world (...) and an actual intimacy wherein it is an ‘of course’ one freely shares one’s experience by whatever means. [endquote].

RESPONDENT: As it is a DIY method (haietmoba?) and actualism is concerned with experiential, not intellectual (a side product) or affective results, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

RICHARD: Hmm ... like it or not human beings *are* interested in and influenced by what others are doing/how others are living and, again like it or not, the snow-ball effect *is* a most efficacious means of ensuring maximisation of result with a concomitant minimisation of delay.

Another person’s suffering, even for a moment more than need be, is one person too many and one moment too long.

RESPONDENT: Not to mention the post-traumatic issue for me in regard to ‘spreading the word’ even as a chain letter.

RICHARD: What could possibly be traumatic about the ‘doubling effect’ wherein all one person needs to do is pass (whatever) on to two other persons in such a manner that, they too, will each pass on the same, in a like manner, to two more each ... and so on, and so on?

With but twenty-one transactions the same (whatever) has been passed on, provided there be no break in the chain, to over a million people.

*

RESPONDENT: I was wondering if there will be any need for the 9th factualist to write a report about the actual freedom experience.

RICHARD: Given that a ‘factualist’ seems to be a person who conveniently overlooks/ignores the plight of their fellow human beings, who are similarly living a [quote] ‘serious and sometimes deadly’ [endquote] life, then none whatsoever.

RESPONDENT: What use will be for a report if it describes the same experience?

RICHARD: If nothing else it will provide a contrast to the report of an actualist ... a discerning listener would be able to choose, then, which label describes an experient actually comprehending actuality and which label describes a theoretical understander of what such a comprehension might be like.

RESPONDENT: Richard who do you think your kidding?

RICHARD: Obviously not you, eh? But – most importantly of all – not myself ... which is what your query implies. When I wake up of a morning I expect – and get – yet another perfect day. This has been going on for so many years now that I can take it for granted ... the perfection of this moment in eternal time and this place in infinite space is already always here ... now. I never miss out on the enjoyment and delightful appreciation of being here as this flesh and blood body ... what more proof could I wish for than an on-going purity that is ever-fresh and never-failing?

RESPONDENT: Many on this list do not appreciate your lack of concern for others with your long posts that often are only a lesson in ego mania.

RICHARD: And why are they ‘often are only a lesson in ego mania’ ? Is it because anyone talking of achieving peace-on-earth on earth is to be arbitrarily dismissed as being run by an ego ... which means that you do not even have to bother trying?

RESPONDENT: We’ve told you before that your long posts cost us money.

RICHARD: I pay for bandwidth too ... I am subscribed to a few Mailing Lists and I budget for the monthly bill. I am retired and live on a pension and yet I do not complain about Internet costs ... reading other people’s posts and responding in kind is a joy and a delight that I am willing to pay for.

RESPONDENT: Your words are not the holy Grail so use fewer and give us a break.

RICHARD: As I am a thorough-going atheist through and through – and I state unequivocally that there is not the slightest trace of religiosity, spirituality, mysticism or metaphysicality in me whatsoever – I find these kind of comments juvenile. It also shows that you do not actually read what I write with both eyes.

RESPONDENT: If you were truly enlightened and beyond you would consider others and not try to impress them.

RICHARD: Now, how on earth could you possibly know what a person who has gone beyond enlightenment will act like? Have you personal experience of this condition? Yes? No? If no ... then this comment is not worth anything. You are but trumpeting an ideal ... and it is an ideal that is but more of the ‘Tried and True’ anyway.

RESPONDENT: You really have been insulting others intelligence on this list.

RICHARD: Oh? Do you mean the ‘intelligence’ that persuades people to nurse malice and sorrow to their bosom and refuse to examine their feelings? You mean the ‘intelligence’ that attacks thought as being the spanner in the works? That is, the ‘intelligence’ that discounts the only tool that will bring about peace-on-earth?

RICHARD: I am a fellow human being sans identity (which was ‘being’ itself). As such, this flesh and blood body is apperceptively aware ... and the already always existing peace-on-earth is apparent all about. It being so perfect I wish to notify my fellow human beings of its existence ... what they do with this information is their own business.

RESPONDENT: Why would you want to notify other people of its existence?

RICHARD: Because my fellow human beings tell me that they are (a) suffering ... and (b) wanting to know the meaning of life.

RESPONDENT: It would appear that what you are doing is simply tooting your own horn, which is simply an aspect of the ego life.

RICHARD: Seeing that you say it ‘would appear’ to be that way to you, I would therefore ask: do you have some problem with success in eliminating suffering? Do you really like to (a) suffer yourself ... and (b) see your fellow human beings suffering as well? If so, then are you a sado-masochist?

RESPONDENT: You want people to know that you have arrived at the ultimate in order to establish yourself as a leader of sorts.

RICHARD: Are you suggesting that anyone – anyone at all – who makes a discovery about anything at all relating to human life on this planet, which discovery advances human knowledge and improves the quality of human life, should keep that discovery to themselves? Are you advising me to be selfish?

RESPONDENT: I have only seen you make claims about yourself. I have not seen you give advice on how we would achiever a state of total freedom.

RICHARD: I was proceeding famously at the beginning of this thread (the ‘overt/covert’ power-battle between the genders) but you insisted upon rushing to the bottom and asking asinine questions about wives and winning. Twice I endeavoured to persuade you to get back onto the topic (vis a vis your ‘empower women and chaos would result’ philosophy) ... yet you insisted on trying to prove your thesis that one – or both – of my wives won some weird ‘winning the power-battle’ scenario that only existed in your fertilised imagination.

So I obliged you ... yet now you petulantly cry ‘foul’ and futilely accuse me of ‘only making claims about myself’ and not ‘giving advice on how to achieve a condition of actual freedom’, eh?

RESPONDENT: The point of the things you have told us could only be to convince us that you have the answer and we should come to you for it.

RICHARD: But I do not want you (or anybody) ‘coming to me’ – for their own freedom – as I am having too much fun, living my life in the way I see fit, to clutter up my lifestyle with ‘guru-circuit’ peoples, who cannot think for themselves, trooping daily through my front door. The Internet is my chosen means of dissemination for the obvious reason of being interactive and rapid. The electronic copying and distribution capacity of a mailing list service – with it’s multiple feed-back capability – is second to none. Words are words, whether they be thought, spoken, printed or appear as pixels on a screen. Ultimately it is what is being said or written, by the writer or the speaker that lives what is being expressed, that is important ... and facts and actuality then speak for themselves. Anyone who has met me face-to-face only gets verification that there is actually a flesh and blood body that lives what these words say. I am a fellow human being sans identity ... there is no ‘charisma’ nor any ‘energy-field’ here. The affective faculty – the entire psyche itself – is eradicated: I have no ‘energies’ ... no power or powers whatsoever.

There is no ‘good’ and ‘evil’ here in this actual world.

RESPONDENT: There are two kinds of losers in life – one who knows nothing and the other who knows everything.

RICHARD: And how many kinds of winners are there in life ... according to you?

RESPONDENT: While I could be ensconced in a cocoon of complacent ignorance, you could well be terror-driven over the edge.

RICHARD: Look out folks ... here comes the cop-out.

RESPONDENT: I say this because your posts communicate a weirdness that is quite palpable.

RICHARD: If I may point out? What could be more weird than 5.8 billion people living on a planet that is swimming in the perfection of the infinitude of this very tangible universe ... and killing each other for whatever passionate reason that grips them at the time?

RESPONDENT: You are argumentative, not objectively critical.

RICHARD: As I have been writing on the Internet for over a year now, I have honed my talents as a wordsmith with particular verve and vivacity as virtually everyone who wrote to me objected to being happy and harmless. In my first week of having my Web-Page up and running someone wrote in being ‘objectively critical’ of what I had to say. The writer quickly turned it into an ‘objectively critical’ discussion and was ‘objectively critical’ about my statement ‘I have no desire to argue’. So I wrote back: ‘I said that I have no desire to argue ... and I still have no desire to do so. But you seem bent upon having an argument, so I am obliging you. We can stop it at any time you wish and have a meaningful and fruitful discussion ... if you want it. I have no desire to argue for my experience has shown me that argumentation and disputation lead nowhere constructive ... as this current spate of correspondence betwixt you and me is amply demonstrating. But ‘having no desire to do so’ does not mean that I will not. It just means that I would prefer not to. The English language is quite clear and specific, when one gets into the subtleties of it’.

The full exchange can be accessed on my Web Page under ‘Web Page Correspondence No. 3’ and typing < I have no desire to argue > into the search function of your computer.

RESPONDENT: This is a characteristic of emotional instability.

RICHARD: Or so you wish ... then you could exit this thread gathering the shreds of an assumed dignity about your tail as you go. I suppose it would be redundant for me to observe that you have the invidious reputation of being the most argumentative poster to the list? Which means – by your own diagnosis – that you are emotionally unstable. If so ... how can you make an accurate value judgement about another?

RESPONDENT: The other selfless buffs toy with the ‘no me’ game, which you are playing for broke.

RICHARD: Yes indeed ... enter into a discussion with me with an argumentative attitude and the bovine faecal matter really comes into contact with the rapidly whirling blades. However, if you wish for a reasoned dialogue ... here is where you may be able to be what you actually are: perfection personified.

RESPONDENT No. 78: It is sensible not to be wasteful, you suggest otherwise Richard?

RICHARD: As to not be wasteful is to be frugal, and as to suggest otherwise is to advocate frugality, your query might be better addressed to a moralist, an ethicist, or a principlist.

RESPONDENT No. 74: I think the question was clear enough. The reply is evasive. I had to read it twice to actually get the grammar straight.

RESPONDENT: I had the same problem.

RICHARD: It is actually a very simple response ... perhaps if I were to reverse the order of the sentence? Vis.:

• Your query might be better addressed to a moralist, an ethicist, or a principlist, as to not be wasteful is to be frugal, and to suggest otherwise is to advocate frugality.

RESPONDENT: In fact I’ve been watching Richard’s writing deteriorate over the years.

RICHARD: RICHARD: As a professional editor appraised my writing in 1997 as being convoluted, over-ornamental, and consisting of long sentences, I do look askance at your ‘over the years’ wording ... especially so as the records show you first wrote to this mailing list in August 2003:

• [Richard]: ‘I wrote a book of some 95,000 words a while ago and a literary agent came to hear about it and, upon reading a synopsis and a sample chapter, wanted to read it in full prior to taking it to the U. S. to interest a publisher. He then told me that I needed to consult an editor first, as my writing was ‘Hard and Long’. When I asked what he meant, he explained: ‘It is very literary and thus laboured’. As it was his idea to publish, and not mine, I never pursued the matter. Perhaps, being an editor yourself, you might care to throw some light upon what he meant ... more than the inkling I understand ... for I kind of fancy my writing style, of course!
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Well I’d say your writing style is a little convoluted and over-ornamental, but you clearly intend it to be, so I couldn’t really call it a problem unless you wished to be rid of it. However, this literary agent might also have meant that you write long sentences, which seems to be thought very naughty these days, though it doesn’t bother me at all. I am currently editing a book by someone who writes somewhat similarly to you – his style is entertaining except when he is trying so hard to be clever that the sense of what he’s saying gets buried in a pile of witty verbiage. He can’t help it, though, he went to Oxford, where wit is compulsory.

RESPONDENT: I’m no English expert but it’s obvious he is sacrificing clarity and ease of reading for a preference in avoiding sentence structure ... for some stupid reason.

RICHARD: You may find the following to be of interest, then:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I like your writing, but I can understand that many people just can’t be bothered making sense of it. I think that is a pity.
• [Richard]: ‘I think not ... it weeds out the ‘wannabes’ straight away. If these ‘many people’ cannot be bothered making sense of it then they do not wish to be free of the human condition anyway. Thus I do not waste their time ... they can indulge to their heart’s content in the multifarious populist writing styles as epitomised by ‘The Celestine Prophecy’, for example.

RESPONDENT: His sentences are now so long and convoluted as to make them almost impossible to understand without performing tedious, time wasting, mental acrobatics.

RICHARD: As a literary agent assessed my writing in ‘Richard’s Journal’ – written circa 1994-96 – as being ‘hard and long’ I do look askance at your ‘are now’ wording ... especially so as the records show you first wrote to this mailing list 18 months ago.

RESPONDENT: His lack of punctuation belies his pure intent to communicate his (so called) experience of the simplicity of this actual world and only shows his on-going fascination for tweaking unnecessary mental activity.

RICHARD: What I do find fascinating is that you not only keep on reading what I have to communicate but you also continue to waste both your time and your bandwidth writing your un-informed/ill-considered commentaries when it is patently obvious that they have not, are not having, and never will have, any relevance whatsoever.

‘Tis all much ado about nothing.

RESPONDENT: Your writings are full of soooo much ...

RICHARD: The following may be of assistance:

• [Richard]: ‘How you conduct your correspondence is entirely up to you, of course, and all I can do is point out that what you choose to write is what determines the response you receive.
And:
• [Co-Respondent]: ‘How low will you go?
• [Richard]: ‘As low as you wish to go ... it is you who sets the pace.

RESPONDENT: ... and yet the nitty gritty of sticking to the method is all that really matters surely.

RICHARD: If the nitty gritty of sticking to the method was all that really matters to my fellow human being then they would not fritter away a vital opportunity by engaging me in other matters ... matters such as, for example, my utilisation of words not (generally) in use in every day language.

RESPONDENT: And the use of words not in use in every day language is not necessary ...

RICHARD: Pardon me for breathing ... I write using the same words I use in my everyday language.

RESPONDENT: ... and is exclusive though impressive ...

RICHARD: I will draw your attention to the following:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘You go to a great deal of effort to show off intellectual and verbal skills and often scoff at what others say in as clever a manner as you can think up.
• [Richard]: ‘It is no effort at all to write intelligently and skilfully, as I happen to like words and have always enjoyed the wide range this particular language commands, and have no intention of dumbing-down just because someone has an ill-founded objection to such proficiency’.

RESPONDENT: ... and this messes with peace on earth yes?

RICHARD: Not at all ... the already existing peace-on-earth is always just here right now irregardless what words I utilise.

*

RESPONDENT: Do you enjoy your actions being influential and getting approval and bearing fruits?

RICHARD: I will draw your attention to the following:

• [Richard]: ‘My keenness for another’s experience always accords to the following sequence:
1. I am primarily interested for your sake (for the sake of the particular flesh and blood body) as you are a fellow human being.
2. I am secondarily interested for everybody’s sake (for the sake of flesh and blood bodies in general) as another person being actually free increases the possibility of setting a chain-reaction in process.
3. I am lastly interested for my own sake (for then not only am I am no longer arguably a ‘freak of nature’ but I can compare notes, as it were, so as to more reliably separate out what is species specific from that which is idiosyncratic)’.

RESPONDENT: Is this only apparent?

RICHARD: It is not even apparent.

RESPONDENT: Why do you enjoy people finding the site ...

RICHARD: Mainly because it demonstrates (1) that the reach of the internet is truly global and (2) that the decision to go public via the internet (rather than publish the traditional way) was a prudent choice (3) that the skill-acquisition required, the expenditure of leisure-time and the (borrowed) monies spent achieving same have all been worthwhile.

RESPONDENT: ... (and then mostly drifting on as is the way)?

RICHARD: If nothing else those persons are, however dimly, aware there is a third alternative – which means in practice that they may mention it en passant to another (more than a few do) or even come back to it later (some have done so) – or, at the very least, some more words are exchanged which may be (and some have been) of assistance to other readers.

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