Nuxx:D0bd2d6e-804b-46f4-add3-334f58ca470a@u8g2000yqh.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!u8g2000yqh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.net.news.moderation Subject: Re: Ping Matt Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:27:07 -0700 (PDT) References: <1jyzzlf.1e6p80qztigzzN%real-not-anti-spam-address@apple-juice.co.uk> <587549889323272882.679266%steve%-malloc.co.uk@news.individual.net> Lines: 66 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1301592427 16572 127.0.0.1 (31 Mar 2011 17:27:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:27:07 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: u8g2000yqh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=WrLs9woAAAD151hWKA9yknAtxFHW4kE4 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 4648 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.net.news.moderation:39743

On Mar 31, 3:07 pm, Steve Firth <%ste...@malloc.co.uk> wrote: > D.M. Procida  wrote: > > Steve Firth <%ste...@malloc.co.uk> wrote: > > >>>> Is this "passive aggressive" newspeak shite code for "not aggressive but I > >>>> want to paint your comment on the blackest pigment available to me"? > > >>> No. > > >> Oh, so why are you using it that way? Because nothing that Tom is saying is > >> aggressive, and passive aggressive is an oxymoron. > > > It's not an oxymoron. There is nothing in passivity that excludes > > aggression. Passive is opposed to active, not to aggressive. > > Aggression is an active process, it can never be passive. > > > Passive aggression is a kind of dull, dumb obstructionism or witholding > > that instead of confrontation finds more evasive ways to undermine. > > You are describing "dumb insolence". Passive insolence is possible. > > The term "passive aggressive" is one of the New Age hippy terms that > attempts to use newspeak to make an act of passive resistance into > something that it is not - an act if aggression. This is done in order to > justify an aggressive response to a non-aggressive act.

Hmm. You've given me food for thought here.

I always thought that (for example) hogging the outside lane on a motorway, and refusing to move over even when someone is behind you and asking you to do so, was an example of passive aggression. What would you call that?

If someone deliberately moved into your lane ahead just to stop you passing, would you describe that as aggression? If so then is it not also aggressive to refuse to move out of someone's lane when you should? Surely they're both done for the same (aggressive) reasons, and both result in the same thing, it's just that the former example involves specifically doing something that one shouldn't (active aggression), while the latter involves not doing something that one should (passive aggression)?

What if one deliberately slowed down to antagonise the person behind them? Would that be aggressive? Would it depend on whether they used the brakes to slow down, or whether they just stopped using the accelerator (which could arguably be described as "doing nothing")?

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I'm just wondering what you have to say about my examples. I certainly do see your point that passive aggression (or whatever one chooses to call it) should not be countered by active aggression. The former ("doing nothing") can only be so bad compared with the latter ("doing something").

(I certainly don't think Tom's being remotely aggressive here, or in general. When it comes to URCM, he can be somewhat mischievous and/or snide, but one can't really blame him, and he's always humorous rather than unpleasant.  I don't really know what Tony's complaining about as it's human nature to not always be completely literal about what one means, and besides, the problem of how exactly Tom chooses to complain about URCM "moderation" will be solved once the general problems with URCM are solved and there is no longer constant cause for complaint. A bit like Tony's other bugbear regarding cycling being discussed on UNNM.  At any rate, anyone who dislikes aggression must surely see that there is far more of it from the likes of Chapman than there is from anyone who opposes the current URCM "moderation".)