[Buddha-l] As Swami goes, so goes the nation? (Dan Lusthaus and Richard P. Hayes)

[Richard Hayes]

On Apr 22, 2010, at 1:49 PM, Mitchell Ginsberg wrote:

> My point, to get back to the point, putting aside the specific issue of emoticons pro or con, was that I could not tell from your exchanges with Dan if it was all just playful repartee or if there was some sort of strong irritation you have against one another.

Well, I hate to have to tell the truth about this matter, because part of the whole point of the irony game is to leave everyone guessing as to whether any given statement is straightforward or tongue-in-cheek. To tell someone that you are going to pull their leg and then to pull it sort of misses the whole point of leg-pulling, doesn't it?

This reminds me of a story that the great logician Raymond Smullyan wrote in one of his books on logic and logic paradoxes, most of them based on self-referential claims such as the Liar's paradox or Russell's paradox. Smullyan wrote that when he was a child, April Fool day was coming, and his older brother told him every day for a couple of weeks "When April Fool gets here, I am going to play a trick on you that will make you look so foolish you'll probably die of embarrassment." The anticipation mounted, of course. Finally April Fool day came, and all day long young Raymond was on the alert for the trick. Nothing happened. At the end of the day as they were going to bed, Raymond said "I thought you were going to play a trick on me, but you didn't. Did you forget or chicken out?" His brother said "Gotcha! THAT was the trick. The trick was that there was no trick."

Oh well, since I have spoiled the irony game forever more just by saying that it is all a game, I might as well go ahead and say it is just a game. I don't have even the slightest feelings of irritation about Dan or anything he says. I think he's a bloody fool quite a bit of the time, but it doesn't annoy me in the least. He can't help it. Moreover, I almost always read what he was to say, just in case he manages to write something that is not foolish somewhere in the midst of the tons of unnecessary verbiage he heaps upon every topic he writes about. Reading his messages is sort of like the game of looking for a gem in a dung heap. It's fun to play, but it's not a bad idea to wear gloves.

Coyote