>>61
You wouldn't happen to be Camel, would you?

I ask because the logic you seem to be applying here would appear to be of a similar order of absurdity to the one she applied in an e-mail she wrote to me a few months ago.

She wrote that, because she considered me to be a friend and a trusted "confidant", she wanted to ask a favour of me, and then went on to explain that the "favour" she wanted me to do her was: never contact her again and never mention her or make any reference to her in any communication with anyone else.

I pointed out to her, of course, that asking a "favour" like that has more than a little about it of "sawing off the branch one is sitting on". "Favours" are things that friends do for friends - or at least that people do for other people that they believe themselves to have SOME sort of relationship with, however lukewarm and nominal. There's a kind of "performative self-contradiction" in declaring to a person in one breath that you don't want ANY kind of relationship to exist between you and that person and then asking them, in the very next breath, to solemnly promise to observe certain restrictions not just on what they say TO you but also on what they say ABOUT you TO others. On what basis, exactly, would such a solemn promise be made? On the basis of the friendship and trust which you've just plainly declared DOESN'T exist between you and the person in question?

You'll understand, I'm sure, why the odd conception of "honour" you appear to be propounding reminds me very strongly of Camel's odd conception of "friendship" and "trust". That is to say, I suspect one would have to be as much of an idiot to fall for your "please be honourable" line as one would have to be in order to fall for Camel's "Alex, for the sake of our friendship I ask you this favour..." line.

As I pointed out to Camel, asking someone to "prove their friendship by benignly and obediently accepting that there is going to be no contact or relation between us of any sort in the future" is - since, from that point on, the "friendship" in question would only have a completely invisible, intangible, "transcendental" existence - actually, in practical terms, just a very roundabout, hypocritical way of saying: "I don't want to be friends with you anymore. I have no more use for you. Fuck off."

I have to ask myself: would the "honour" that would accrue to me through my finally ceasing to be a "disappointment" to you and permanently refraining from posting on this board be a purely "transcendental-invisible" honour analogous to Camel's "transcendental-invisible" trust and friendship? I mean, would there be any way of ACTUALLY TANGIBLY AND PRAGMATICALLY DISTINGUISHING between a situation whereby you and your buddies would have arrived at the position: "Well, so it turns out that Alex WAS a man of honour after all. Respect is owed to him for having meant well by the board - even though he's gone for good" and a situation in which you would have arrived at the position: "Fuckin A! He's gone for good. Who gives a fuck whether he was a man of honour or not. The important thing is we don't have to deal with that fucker."

I have to admit that I strongly suspect that the answer to both these questions is "yes" - that is, that your appeal to my "sense of honour" is really, as was Camel's appeal to my "friendship", just a rather "pretentious" (if you'll excuse the term) way of saying what the (much) less "pretentious" section of the board tend to say in just two brief syllables, the second of which is "off".