SummitPost.org

or licence..none...zero.....to use my name to bolster your arguments and/or statements when I die. And I definitely plan on dying. I have witnessed at least two other contributing members of SP being exploited time and again postmortem. So and so would think this....so and so would say that....BS! When I die, stand on your own two feet, make your statements and defend them without leveraging my name into the equation. One member of SP is like a son to me...another is like a sister...both have way too much class to ever consider such a thing, yet probably the only two close enough who could even consider what goes on in my head. So this post is directed to the rest of the peanut gallery at large. When I am dead and gone, don't use my name for leverage. Stand on your own two feet and make/stand by your own arguments/statements.

Keep them honest when the day comes....remember this post! Doing a 13 pitch solo later today, why I am up at 3:am drinking coffee, never know, maybe it is your lucky day.

Dow Williams wrote:Keep them honest when the day comes...

I remember you telling me something like this once in an old pm. Although with a different context.

Anyways, I'll have to honor your request.

How are ya gonna stop us?

But seriously, I admire your passion for climbing, it says a lot about you. Let's just say this right here isn't one of your finer moments . Stay safe though and have fun! That's why you do it after all, right?

mvs wrote:How are ya gonna stop us?

But seriously, I admire your passion for climbing, it says a lot about you. Let's just say this right here isn't one of your finer moments . Stay safe though and have fun! That's why you do it after all, right?

Don't get me wrong....you can talk as much trash as you want about me, alive or dead....whether an anonymous internet forum troll or someone with a real name and presence. No, all I request is that the membership as a whole discontinue the disrespectful practice of dragging deceased members names into petty forum disagreements for the sake of bolstering ones argument or dissatisfaction with the site.

Listen...I have always stated I am not here on SP to make friends. Has it happened? Sure, but only when I have gotten in the field with someone and met them face to face. And these are the few climbing contributors, not active forum participants. I cannot befriend, for the sake of friendship, a troll or some anonymous individual who spends way to much time posting on internet forums. Not by my definition anyway.

There are two starkly different type of SP members with minimal lap over in between. Some are heavy on the contribution side. Once in a blue moon they might start a thread or engage in the forums. For the others, it is more about friendship...they live in the forums...hell we even made a mod for that purpose..someone who does not climb, hike or contribute much, but who for the most part reads every post and thus makes a good monitor.

Most contributors do so for the users of our beta at large, not necessarily for many active members and especially not for most forum participants. The few times I post in the forums, I use my real name, have nothing to hide and absolutely no regard for hurting anyone's feelings. I am honest about that. It is the internet people. If you get me to engage in a subject, i.e. animal welfare, I will lay it out as though I was in person and you confronted me with the same subject on the street.

What you see is what you get with me. Thus why I use my real name, real age, real location. I have nothing to hide and am thus afraid of nothing I have to say. But again, obviously not here to make friends.

I can't say I go out of my way to make enemies...but many are way to sensitive in the new found sterilized politically correct world we live in, particularly in America where many are afraid to debate relgion and politics with friends and strangers alike. Many just can't comprehend that I really don't care what they might or might not think of my views and/or opinions.....most of you are just anonymous internet personas to me....meaningless in my world really. You think my animal rights views are extreme...you have no idea.

I will leave you with this....because I truly believe some of you younger folks really think I am here just to be an ass...what you don't realize is that most all of my correspondence regarding SP is done out of the forums via emails with users like this young man (below) who emailed yesterday....the more you can get out and contribute to the content side of the site....the more you will wean yourself from the importance of the forums.........the internet is castrating some of your social skills. Get out and have conversations regarding religion, politics, sports, etc in the outdoors, face to face, much more meaningful.

Dow-
> Hi, I wanted to introduce myself as a fellow St. George climber- I
> have seen your photos all on Summit Post for years and
> DowClimbing.com, truly impressive. I have used your route beta for a
> ton of routes, and have found a lot of things I need to add to my tick
> list through you- wanted to thank you for posting all of it.
> I'm always looking for climbing partners- tomorrow I'm thinking about
> climbing something moderate and multipitch in Snow Canyon with a
> friend, if you ever need a partner let me know!
>

Thanks for your detailed exposition. I'm sure you are a person of integrity Dow, I just find the way you approach subjects and people here to be off-putting. As we know, internet persona and in person are two different things: I never met you so I just have your internet persona to deal with. You might just ask yourself this: why, as you say, do younger folks think you are "here just to be an ass?" And why do you then need to provide examples of not being an ass. As you already said, you don't care what people think, right?

It's difficult for me to judge you by anything more than what I see of you. Of course I shouldn't do that, but life is short, we only have what we see in front of us to go by. What I see is that you don't treat people with much respect, all in the name of a brutal honesty which is supposed to impress us as a mark of integrity. And that this integrity should trump all other virtues.

If, as you say, real conversations about politics are much more meaningful outdoors face to face with real people, maybe you should just have those conversations there? Why bring it here? Again, I'm just speaking back (as an anonymous member of the "them" who seem to understand you poorly) because you go on for paragraphs about how you don't care about what others think and then go on for a few more paragraphs about how you are much more than your internet persona. The latter is a truism (we all are much more than this)...it's the former than puzzles me.

I would love to have more respect for you, but since you denegrate the ways in which we signal respect as cringing "PC" behavior, I don't have the tools to work with you. It does occur to me that if we'd met without the internet, we'd get along fine. But your view of the internet is that it should be a narrow pipeline for only a subset of "you," the subset that expresses raw, unvarnished opinion with no room for nuance and reflection. It is you who presents yourself as non-human, I think.

Don't take what I say personally. I just see that you are aggrieved, and I think I can help by speaking as one small voice of the mass you are addressing. At the same time I speak only for myself, and recognize the foolishness of speaking up at all!

You are very accurate in that I believe honesty should trump all other virtues....and there are some folks in real person who cannot handle that any better than you .....and yes, I really don't care about the forums of SP and its participants. I respond some, usually when asked a direct question or someone like you might misinterpret something like this original post. I post a little....but for the most part I do ignore the continuous blather in the forums....my investment in one thread, titled "why treat other species like crap" was me standing up for animals, and was for them, first and foremost.

Dow Williams wrote:Most contributors do so for the users of our beta at large, not necessarily for many active members and especially not for most forum participants.

I'll pass on most of the above, but In this sentence Dow is on to something--or maybe not, maybe I'm mistaken. But it always confuses me when someone says, "I'm so mad about that forum post, I'm going to strike back by nuking all my pages." Assuming you make pages for the real audience and for the love of mountains, the connection just doesn't make sense to me. It's like the US saying, "What Iran said in the U.N. is so outrageous, we're going to nuke Idaho."

Truth may be preeminent but it's possible to offer it in grace and humility. Hiding behind a shield of "brutal honesty" is a cop out. Simple pride and selfishness at work and on display.

If you don't care what someone thinks, feels, or says online...then my only possible assumption is that you don't care offline either. No reason for me to bother seeking out your friendship. I'll stick with people that speak truth and live humbly. The two can go hand in hand.

This idea that the two worlds are somehow separate is a fallacy.

logsden wrote:This idea that the two worlds are somehow separate is a fallacy.

Concur.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden
1681

Bubba Suess wrote:

logsden wrote:This idea that the two worlds are somehow separate is a fallacy.

Concur.

A little off topic, but I think it is interesting. I am not a dualist and I do not subscribe to Plato's theory of forms, being more of an Aristotelian along thomistic lines myself. However after noting my concurrence to logsden's point it occurred to me that the correlation between the physical world and the internet is quite analogous to the theory of forms. I think some interesting insights could be teased out here. After all, to paraphrase Whitehead, philosophy is just a footnote to Plato.

Sarah Simon wrote:Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden
1681

I still use his translation of Plutarch.

The true story of the Dow I knew:

The Dow I met was a very kind soul. He invited me into his home and entertained us. We had some good conversations and he kindly said that if my wife and I ever needed a place to stay in Canmore, we were always welcomed to visit. If I could get time off in summer for more than once every decade, I’d certainly take him up on it, but alas….maybe someday (though I do have a new guidebook on winter climbs/ski tours in the Canadian Rockies).

The Dow I knew in person is different from the Dow I sometimes see on the message boards. No offense meant (in fact the opposite is meant), but I like and admire the Dow I met in person better.