Charles Meyer wrote:

>I agree that personal attacks on members of the list are not called  for.
>David does tend to inflame (and  flame) people. I was not aware that he
was >"banished" from  the list but I certainly can understand the reasons
for doing >so and might well have done the same if I were in your position.


Barbara Patterson wrote:

>Each time some members of the list posted a message, it was immediately
>followed by a sarcastic comment by him either on or off list. It was so
bad >that some of his victims have never posted a message since.  I could
never
>understand what happened with him to change him from the person who wrote
>absolutely wonderful, witty things to someone who wrote only angry &
>sarcastic messages.  When he posted his good-bye' message, I was sad &
>angry & relieved.  When I saw that he had not unsubscribed, I deleted
>him.  I could be wrong about the sequence of events at that time, but
>that's how I remember it.

Dear Charles, Barbara and other listmembers,

Having read David Boots didn't leave the list himself, but was banned from
the list, I do feel obliged to comment once again on this. I can't agree to
the opinion of Charley Meyer and would not have done the same (as far as it
is possible to "predict" one's own behavior in a situation that was never
one's reality" and not exactly knowing what was the content of the objected
mails from David).
But after a few days in which I thought much about the reason of my
intuitive
disagreement on this matter, a parralel came into my mind which brought me
clearness and I do hope I can present it in a way that makes some others
understand it too.

I have to go back to my first years as a student, when I first attended to
lectures in psychiatry. Theses lectures took place in the psychiatric ward
of the university hospital. They lasted two hours with one break of 15
minutes. During that break all students assembled round a coffee-machine in
one of the corridors. And being young with no serious responsibilities, we
expressed the lightness of our existence in much talking, joking and
laughter. After reentring the lecture-room, the professor did not go on
with his lecture were he stopped it, but did supply us with some other
education. He said that the corridor and the coffee-machine were not only
for use of the students and asked us to emphathise with other people who
used that same corridor but for quite a different reason. They were
psychiatric patients or family of them, whose excistence was much heavier
than ours.  He made it clear that patients and their relations, during
hospitalisation go through disconcerting experiences and that having
recently had experiences like that, the encounter with such a happy, each
other mutually amusing group, could be disagreeable,like having to run the
gauntlet.

In my own life I have been able to see the truth of this vieuw a few times.
For example, when my parkinson symptoms manifested themselves quite heavily
and the g.p. suspected a tumor and I had to go in a rush to a hospital for
an Echo, I was very irritated by the secretary, who was yoking with her
collegues, and I found it very diconcerting that she, knowing what I came
for, was going on with it.
This might just be the way the PWP feels, who experiences his PD still as a
dramatic tragedy and is not capable to experience it as Don McKinley does.
He feels a mounting irritation when he, looking for recognition of his
dramatic situation, hoping he can make it just a little more bearable by
sharing it, has to plough through a mass of non PD humor mails, while his
condition makes him psychological unfit for the kind of humor that is offered.

I remember that the subject of the conflict that did lead to David being
banned
was in principle the same as it was now: too many non-PD mails. I remmember
too my amazement about the scale of the anger that his critic met. That was
the more amazing, because it had the (temporary) effect that the non-PD
mails diminshed.

I don't want to say by this mail that the humor must be banned. It is
impossible to bring so many people from such different cultures together
without some of them being some of the time mad at some others. What we can
do is to be more tolerant when someone expresses this irritation and try to
see it as a natural part of contact and give support to every member who is
in danger to be a victim because he/she can't handle it.

I have once known a family with parents who were very idealistic members of
a pacifistic political party. The greatest sin that their four children
could commit was to quarrel. To fight was completely unthinkable. It was
surely not a happy family.
So let us not immitate that. Let us take as an example the quarreling
family of the Greek Gods, who ended every quarrel with the well known
Homeric laughter,
and have never in all ages banned someone of them. So I'd vote for inviting
David to come back because missing him is IMHO missing the best humor that
has been on the list.

Ida Kamphuis

--------------------------------------------------------------
Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards,

Ida Kamphuis                            mailto: [log in to unmask]