Glen -
I am a Mozilla/Tbird Man myself but am used to many people clinging to
very oldschool text-only (or worse?) mail tools. I also don't have any
trouble sorting the complexity of comment/response/inlining/inclusion in
my head for the most part, but that is how my head works... I think that
is excruciating unto impossible for some.
I do acknowledge/agree-to your description of the experience of "to
want" vs "to be wanting"... I personally mostly *want* what I want but
I also know the feeling of *to be wanting*. It isn't a simple question
of expression... it is a deeper experience of association/dissociation
and intention IMO.
Your example of the co-worker distancing himself from the
responsibilty/agency of "breaking" something is a red herring in this
case (I think)... it may be related, but not directly?
I agree that there is a distancing/abstraction from the itch as you put
it, but at least in my own case, expressing it as "I am wanting" rather
than "I want" is intentional and an attempt to be more responsible or
precise about what I mean.
I suppose, a difference between "I want" and "I am wanting" involves
actionability. If I tell you "I want" something, you should be put on
notice that I am likely to take action to pursue acquiring/achieving the
subject of that wanting. But if I say "I am wanting", you can take some
solace (or not) in knowing that I have not internalized that "wanting"
into any formulated action. In the language of the 10 commandments, it
is the subtle distinction between finding your house or wife
attractive/compelling/desireable and actually finding myself making
plans to move in and shag her first chance I get. Yahweh didn't have
PowerPoint and a numerically controlled stone chisel to put in these
subtleties with sub-bullet points? Or were those tablets clay,
suggesting a 3d deposition printer instead?
In the case at hand (Nick's want or wanting), I would say he is not
asking anyone specifically to take action, to find or create the toolset
he is seeking, he is just speculating out loud and probably *hoping*
such things already exist or perhaps someone else actually *wants* the
toolset enough to create it.
Have I split the dead horse hair enough yet? I am wanting to know (but
don't feel compelled to tell me)!
<gurgle>
- Steve
On 10/28/16 4:45 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks
at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of
threads, right? If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^) It
helps a lot.
I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't
believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.
It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine,
Thunderbird on another)... It's free and open source, which means
anyone can have it if they want it. I also think I remember Eudora
having a nice tree-based threaded view. Pretty much any usenet reader
has it. So, I'm confused why others wouldn't use such tools.
Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your
thoughts different from "Nick wants"?
I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick
wants... meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands
the implications of what he wants. I'm not sure about the
grammatical or semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over
"wants") but it is interesting to me that you can call it out so
clearly. Unfortunately I am probably conflating or convolving my
own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to
be his own lack of clarity...
For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same
phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want...
or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of
confidence in what you are asking/suggesting. Our patron St.
Stephen of Guerin, I am *much* more likely to use "he is wanting"....
perhaps Renee's "I am wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same
ambiguity of detail? If she were more precise in her own mind about
what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?
That's intriguing, as is Marcus'. I have noticed (and have the guts
to point out for some reason) that lots of people express their
thoughts with an external locus of control. My favorite example was
when I noticed the CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken. I
asked my partner: What happened to the CO^2? He said "It broke."
>8^) I asked for more clarity and he responded something like: "I was
<doingsomethingorother> and it fell over and broke." So, I asserted:
"Do you mean that you broke it?" And he relented and said "Yes."
Perhaps there is something of that in both your and Marcus' response.
It's a kind of removal/abstraction/distancing from any intimate
knowledge or clarity surrounding the itch ... left wanting some
scratching.
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