Passion to participate here LO19664

DrEskow@aol.com
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 12:56:43 EST

Replying to LO19648 --

Since dialog needs to show both sides of the coin, here are some demurrers
about the need for passion, for heart, and the limits of this medium,
supposedly cold and impersonal as opposed to the warmth of face to face.

1. Passionate fighters lose to those who fight with their heads.

2. Some of us do not want our organizations to be an all consuming
community, providing for all of our emotional as well as occupational
needs. We have families, and churches and music for some of the other
needs.

3. Some of our most coldly clinical and intellectual experiences take
place in face to face environments. Some of our most transforming and
passionate encounters are with poets and philosophers and musicians and
painters whom we never see, indeed are dead as well as distant.

4. Jerome Bruner and others now use the metaphor of "the left hand" when
talking about that part of our nature,rather than "left brain." The more
recent research does not confirm earlier notions of brain geography: one
lobe of the brain controls this, the other that (See, for example, William
Calvin, THE THROWING MADONNA.)

5. Passion often means the end of civil discourse. Flame wars abound on
this medium: it's no trick at all to evoke heat and passion here. We make
little headway in resolving our culture wars--say about abortion--because
it is difficult or impossible to get above or below the passion.

If I have to choose, I prefer light to heat.

I feel passionately about that choice.

Steve Eskow

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