[Ipg-smz] On Stallman
Tom Henderson
thenderson at extremelabs.com
Wed Sep 18 15:23:56 UTC 2019
Fellow Guilders,
I go way back in Linux. Long ago, the Linux Business Expo was part of
COMDEX, and I was one of many functionaries in the greater spheres of
COMDEX program development. Lots of interesting characters evolved Linux
for a variety of motivations.
Stallman was the anti-Microsoft. The pillar of free. I'm not a licensed
medical/health/psych practitioner in any jurisdiction, but Stallman had
brains, perhaps some autisim, and thought things through. He cared not
one whit about his personal appearance or scent. Clue #1.
He had boundaries in the philosophy of Free. They were well-developed
and thought through. Much of his hard work in finishing the utilities
that make the operating system we know as Linux were at his hands, or
one step-away.
His lip flatulence was notorious, as is/was/were many in the early
free/open source movement. Many of them had a gripe with the sheer
mendacity of Microsoft and its minions. SJV-N believes Microsoft has
changed. I'm not sure if I share that believe, but as an researcher, I
continue to observe.
Stallman is a member of a wider body of men that think within their own
context. It's difficult to shift outside of that personal context for
them. I'm not excusing their behavior, just observing it.
Nor am I forgiving it, and history shouldn't, either. The object that
we'll look backwards upon 100yrs from now, should have that stain
mentioned, not just the bullet-point of: founder of "free" as a
construction and architectural concept. He was also: a dick.
Can he help being a dick? I'll leave that to others. Too many men follow
their hormones rather than something evolved in the pre-frontal cortex.
Is being a dick part of autism? Does it being autism make it forgivable?
No, is my answer-- it's a quality that doesn't offset the fetid scent.
Every day I deal with my autistic brother's shenanigans. He is built,
how he's built.; in the 1960s it was rare to even get a diagnosis and
few knew what to do with autistim diagnoses. He's trainable. Graduated
high school. But moving outside of his own context is nigh impossible.
Change comes after daunting repetition. Only then. Trust me: only then.
My late mother had him queued in a very Pavlovian way, and was
successful, but my brother doesn't live with me. I've developed a
support network for him. At a family event, he will blurt the most
insane stuff, not understanding how a poop joke might not go over well
with his aging aunt. Clueless. There are many clueless in the world.
Their population doesn't forgive the cluelessness, just makes us work
harder at inculcating manners. Like most of us, he wants to be loved.
And so, atop the object that we might describe about others, their
incredible accomplishments but their amazing lip flatulence and even
more morbid felonies: some were built to not recognize the emotive
response of other humans. It's just the way things are.
There are many "Aspie" and autistic people somehow in my immediate
circle of people, or perhaps, one step away. Here in the university town
where I live, it's like the aforementioned Mensa meeting, where people
came to study, and unable to live in the real world, became academics,
or failing that, became "townies" with IQs in excess of 145 joining
their peers. They never succeed in any recognizable way, but they fit
into a rag-tag bunch of intellectual misfits which in turn, becomes a
subculture of snorters. Nothing inherently wrong with snorters. And a
common denominator of humanity is: Misfit, if of differing cultures and
acumen.
To address therefore Dana's "everyone is eventually forgiven" comment,
my answer is no, that's not quite correct. Like most things, it's more
complicated than that. Some will want to understand the complexity,
while others just want to ascribe to The Winning Team or soundbite.
Tom
--
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc
More information about the Ipg-smz
mailing list