posted
My aim was to do three things with this landmark: provide a brief history of myself, explain why I find it valuable posting here, and invite some self-examination of Hatrack as a community. Most importantly I’ll do it using 2000 words or less, so as not to overtax your patience.
I’ll start by relating my experiences here at Hatrack. I started out here as an observer rather than a participant, and only really dabbled in the impersonal debate threads. I’ve always held a bias against participating in online communities at a personal level, because A) I value privacy very highly B) I dislike the steady flow of trash one tends to find on myspace and xanga, and C) Posting online leaves a public record (I hope the Way Back Machine hasn’t caught the web pages I made when I was 12; probably not). Suffice it to say I’m not too worried now, and I see that the benefits of partaking in an engaging and intelligent community like Hatrack far outweigh these trivial concerns. While I made a point of digging through the backlog of threads before posting, getting to know people wasn’t my primary motive for joining at the time. But I’ve recently been revisiting a few old threads, finding familiar names. So here’s to getting to know you all better.
You should know that the story of my life isn’t tragic, doesn’t involve much hardship, and won’t renew your confidence in the nobility of the common man. I’m not here to justify myself; only to give my future posts a little more context.
Hopefully this will remain the most self-indulgent thing I write in a long time.
Without further ado,
A History of Non-Violence
My birthplace is a town outside of Nagoya, Japan. It’s countryside enough to be surrounded by rice patties and tea fields, but modern enough to have cable Internet and all the facilities you’d expect in a major city. As a (younger) child I returned to my grandparents’ place there every once in a while, taking part in such archetypal Japanese traditions as catching cicadas and stag beetles, lighting fireworks while snacking on watermelon during summer nights, or curling up under a kotatsu in the winter.
I spent most of my life in Tokyo however, where I attended an International school (my dad is Australian) and was taught in English. Imagine a liberal American private school populated with an especially cosmopolitan cohort of students (and teachers), and you’ve got a vague idea of what my school was like. We paid for our train tickets in yen, but for some reason our maths textbooks and play money were in dollars and cents. It was originally a Catholic missionary school, but I can count with my fingers the number of times I’ve been in the chapel.
Many kids’ parents were expatriate workers or recently immigrated. Some kids were the sons of diplomats, and got dropped off my chauffeurs. Most of us caught the commuter trains like everyone else.
You might be surprised how little racism or bullying occurred at that school. I think it helped that one of the underlying lessons behind all of our ethics and humanities classes was cultural relativism. You were right, and your neighbour who disagrees with you is also right. We were taught about the Holocaust very early on.
I’m not a cultural relativist anymore (at least in terms of morality), but I have better arguments against racism.
From an early age my attitude towards my home city was ambivalent. Tokyo is not a beautiful city, at least by my definition. If I honestly say that I love my home, it’s mostly out of a sense of comfort, familiarity, nostalgia. Life there is extremely convenient and full of activity, but I love the sight of nature too much.
I discovered Princess Mononoke at around this time, and it had a profound effect on my attitude towards nature, and probably also my views on aesthetics.
At about age 7 my dad’s work moved to the Netherlands. In contrast to the concrete urban landscape I was used to, Eindhoven was idyllic. We lived only one block away from a forest, which had a great bike/walking track and the occasional pond. I studied the Aztecs at school and played marbles during recess. This was during the Pokemon craze, for which I would like to apologize on my country’s behalf.
We returned to Tokyo after only one year, and found myself in the company of familiar faces. By this time I was beginning to question Christianity and amend Genesis to conform to my understanding of science. I never believed in Santa Claus, and was proud of it.
I was very much a moral puritan. I felt seriously guilty one day when weeding the garden with my dad, since the weeds were living things too. When my 5th grade teacher denounced the violent FPS games I liked playing, I couldn’t sleep and felt nauseous that night. I prayed every day.
This eventually relaxed a bit, and some time in middle school I consciously abandoned religion.
In my freshman year I went through a mild socialist phase. I had a rather frightening looking history teacher who ran his classes with paramilitary discipline. He was among the four teachers who were most influential on my life. The others were my 6th grade teacher, who substantially improved the quality of my writing (it’s surprising how much good a head start can do), and my history and English teachers in my last year of high school. The history teacher was the kind of man who in his freshman year at university did a combined Law and Arts (I think it was) degree, played with the local cricket club, joined the Army Reserves, and held a job or two on the side. He introduced me to the wonderful world of historiography. My English teacher was more the sort of person you’d find in an anti-war rally. I’ve never met someone so intelligent or well read as him.
911 had strong repercussions among the ex-pats in Tokyo, although I didn’t know anyone who’s relatives or friends were killed. There were surely better places to strike, but extra guards were assigned to the school. I remember sitting in class one day, watching the television as Bush declared war on the Taliban, or admitted to already having started a war, or whatever the purpose of that speech was.
I spent the last two years of high school in a pseudo-Victorian boarding school in Sydney, much to my dismay. My dad was under the impression that it would better prepare me for university here; a very unfortunate piece of misinformation, especially since the IB course at my old school is generally superior to the local HSC.
I felt that I missed out on a lot. My sophomore year was probably the happiest of my life, and the busiest. I got up early and read, studied history enthusiastically, ran several kilometres a day with the cross country team, went to the computer lab to write for the school newspaper, got home at 9, watched a movie and went to bed. My confidence was high, and every time our team went to the US Army’s recreational grounds to compete with students from other International and base schools, I improved my time noticeably. I was also very comfortable with my circle of friends, and I would have been the editor of the paper had I stayed (really, I was the only one who showed interest in journalism class).
A new experience like boarding is what you make of it, and I didn’t make much. I focused single-mindedly on my studies, and did well. Army cadets was an interesting experience, but that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say that it had the potential to be better, and I won’t be joining the army any time soon. All in all though, I have to admit that the past two years have widened the breadth of my experience.
I chose to enrol in Architecture at university. I think it was in my junior year that I decided I wanted to be an architect. I still do, though the course isn’t all I hoped it would be. Perhaps my expectations were too high. At the moment I’m somewhat disillusioned and maladjusted, but I’ll live.
So this is me in the here and now: I’m still on my summer break, trying to use the time to start a small web business with a friend (the details of which I probably shouldn’t disclose yet, sorry). I hope the 2nd year of my course will be more engaging, but we’ll see. I’m working on some New Year’s resolutions with limited success.
I watch a lot of films these days, read more (but not enough), and am trying to hone my aesthetic tastes by looking for more music and art that I enjoy. I want to understand that sense of awe and inspiration I felt when seeing Mononokehime as a 7 year old, or Gattaca after high school, or when looking at Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, or listening to Enya’s music. I hope to be able to evoke that depth of emotion through my own work; either through architecture or perhaps through writing.
Finally, so that you can anticipate my standard stance on certain issues, I consider myself: a hardline atheist, an Objectivist (a recent discovery of mine; I don’t expect this will make me especially popular), and a minimalist in taste.
And now we come to
Hatrack as a Community
Why is this place so special? I’m thinking of studying online communities as a topic for a short paper I’m doing, and have thought about this a lot recently. Some of it is luck/coincidence that friendly intelligent people decided to stick around, but a lot of it isn’t. I’ve tried to boil it down to a few factors which influence all online communities, and would appreciate your input.
The common denominator: Every community is centred around a common interest, which might be as narrow as 1/35th scale model airplanes or as broad as a common subculture. In the case of Hatrack, the common denominator is that we all have read and presumably enjoy OSC’s work (though some posts on the other side make you wonder). That already predefines a certain demographic.
Website content: The front page of Hatrack is regularly updated, and brings in a steady flow of new visitors.
Original group: The first few members of a community can easily set the tone for future interaction. Just as vandals tend to refrain from spray painting over murals, people tend to refrain from making vapid or offensive posts when they sense that a forum is populated with sensible intelligent people. The fact that OSC and his family openly participates in the forum surely helps.
UI: The design of this forum encourages clear written communication. Frivolous features like signatures and ranks are omitted (though they are not always negative influences), there are no pictures to clutter threads, and there is generally more written communication per square inch on Hatrack then on other fora (of course, there’s a limit there imposed by ease of reading). Also, there are only 2 forum categories, so it’s easier to keep track of new threads, and encourages participation. Hatrack feels more like one big comfortable living room, as opposed to an office with many cubicles.
Friendly Moderators, Forum Rules Which permit open communication but draw the line at character attacks. Check!
So what do you think makes Hatrack special? Why are you still here?
I’ll also try to answer any questions you might have about, say, my religious views, or the colour of my eyes, or the contents of my bookshelf. If you want to append a bit of your own autobiography, that would be cool too.
Oh, and my name is Sean. Hello.
[Edit to link the word 'kotatsu' as originally intended]
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Congrats on the 1000 Sean, it looks like you've led a very interesting life thus far.
You father is Australian, and you live in Australia now right? Do you speak fluent Japanese?
I've always wanted to visit Australia, more than I want to visit Japan (though I'd love to go there too). It looks like a wildly beautiful country (plus I want to visit Tasmania, because the capital and I share a name ).
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Hobart is my last name. I'll definetely go there some day, who knows when that will be, but when I do, you'll be the first person I look up.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Thanks for sharing a bit more about yourself. I'm glad you're here, I've really enjoyed your contributions to Hatrack over the last several months.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Yay architecture. Nice to read a little bit about a fellow Hatracker, thanks for sharing. Congrats on 1000!
Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:So what do you think makes Hatrack special? Why are you still here?
The people who post.
BTW, your observation about the uncluttered, high text-to-noise ratio of the Hatrack interface is also pretty accurate. Believe it or not, it was even PLAINER back in the Big Mouth Lion days, and some of us complained that posts got shorter and more frivolous when we moved to the new UBB interface. (In fact, I continued to use BML until it was closed down and I had no choice; I simply preferred that format for the sort of long, thoughtful posts that initially drew me to the forum. I learned to enjoy other types of posts eventually. *grin*)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Good Landmark. I really enjoy reading your posts. Usually I skim over peoples posts, especially long ones (such as Landmarks), but I read yours pretty thoroughly and consistently. When you first started posting with regularity I for some reason thought you were an old man.
If you don't mind me asking, do you look Japanese or Australian? Or ... Japastralian? (That is a neat word, if I do say so myself)
The thing that I most enjoy about HatCrack is that pretty much whatever mood I'm in, Hatrack has a thread for it. Not always, but if I'm in a lighter mood, I jump into the fluff threads, and if I'm in a serious, argumentative mood, there's almost always some debate threads around too. So I don't really have an excuse for not coming here every time I open up a browser, even if its just to check up on things.
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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You're already a 1ker? Wow, soon you will outdo myself, who has been here for 3 years already ^_^.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Cool. I have always wanted to be a diplobrat. You wern't, as I understand it, but you still got the cool international school childhood. Posts: 211 | Registered: Dec 2006
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erosomniac: I had to see it again a couple of years later to appreciate it though.
ElJay: I've always enjoyed your posts as well.
CPT Kirk: Thanks, and likewise.
MyrddinFyre: Maybe some day we will work together on a project.
Kwea: Yep, it sure is. Your wife can probably write Japanese better than I can. For some reason I switched from Japanese class to French in middle school, and haven't made up for the lost time. Predictably, I've forgotten all the French I learned.
Tom: What's your opinion on Vanilla? (the Commmunity tab has a working demo)
Dr. Strangelove: Thanks. . I read your posts consistently as well, and I think you make this forum a much more accepting and enjoyable place to be. To answer your question, I really do look Japastralian. It's kind of tough to say what a typical Australian looks like though, since this country is so multicultural (kind of like asking what an American looks like). If I had to say if I looked more Western than Japanese, I'd personally say Western; but I've met people who disagree. (That didn't help at all did it?)
It's true; there is a Hatrack thread for most moods.
Phanto: Well, post count =/= quality. Your posts make me smile.
PrometheusBound: Yeah, my dad was a mechanical engineer in technical sales. His company was originally founded by a socialist, so it makes a point of treating its workers well; it paid for the schooling and helped out with a lot of expenses. I doubt we would have been able to afford it otherwise. Tokyo is so expensive!
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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I wonder if I'll ever get to post a landmark. More than that, I wonder what I'll say...er, woild ulv sairn (is that the right way to phrase that?). Maybe I'll just rip off somebody else's landmark...not going to bother to think how to phrase that, since it clearly wouldn't be a realistic option anyway.
I don't actually like this forum. Nor do I consider it special. I come here for various reasons, this most recent round is because this place isn't special, and I need...justification, perhaps.
For all the tears I've shed, I still tend to wonder if I gave your species a real chance. And yet, that chance was never mine to give, after all. In the end, this is as it must be, and I don't have authority to spare your kind, even had I the inclination. So I come here, and I remind myself that I agree with what has been ordained.
Posts: 763 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Without having used it extensively, it looks slick -- but I think there's excessive whitespace, especially between comments and avatars. It makes it harder to scan any thread at a glance. That said, some of the other features reduce the necessity for scanning, so that's probably a wash. It's something I'd certainly consider.
That said, I'm a fan of threaded forums, and Vanilla doesn't appear to use a threaded model. It doesn't feel quite as "natural" to me as a threaded site.
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Richard, I still recommend that you seek professional help.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Thanks Tom. Isn't it threaded though? The front page just shows the latest posts, and if you hit the 'categories' tab the forum works pretty much in the same way as this one.
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Please do write a landmark, Richard! Tell us the true story of you. I'm sure it would be astonishing and deep, and contain much food for human thought. You should just make it a full length novel, but be sure to post each section as it's written. I don't want to wait until the whole thing is done to start reading it. And whatever you may think of our species, dear friend, I still claim you as kin, and that will never change.
Euripides, I enjoyed your landmark greatly! Thanks for writing it. I'm glad you're here on the forum, and look forward to reading your next thousand posts.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Thanks for the landmark, Euripedes! Keep growing and learning -- and sharing as you will. It's always fun to get to know more about folks from around the world. I look forward to getting to know more!
Richard -- you were actually one of the first folks I interacted with back on the Writer's Workshop -- a long time ago now. The thoughtful critique you gave some of my work has remained helpful, including help set the tone for what I could expect by participating here. Take care.
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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<--- Also interested in reading Richard's landmark.
quote:Originally posted by Earendil18: Euripides, that's so cool you grew up in Japan, I've always wanted to go there! The Netherlands? Wow.
I'm imagining ramparts of snow capped mountains filled with lush greenery. Am I close?
The Netherlands is very flat, since as ElJay mentioned, most of the land is artificially drained seabed. Otherwise you're right on the mark. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:For all the tears I've shed, I still tend to wonder if I gave your species a real chance. And yet, that chance was never mine to give, after all. In the end, this is as it must be, and I don't have authority to spare your kind, even had I the inclination. So I come here, and I remind myself that I agree with what has been ordained.
Is this guy an alien overlord overseeing the planned demolition of humanity? And if so, why did nobody tell me?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Euripides: Quite the enjoyable landmark. Sounds like we had similar experiences growing up. My parents, and sisters all live in Tokyo currently so I can fully appreciate your remarks about it Hong Kong is like a less crowded Tokyo to a degree.
I echo erosomniacs jab at your age, if you watched mononoke hime at 7 you really must be up there
I took rudementary Chinese while I lived in Hong Kong and by the time I was a missionary I only had a VERY basic grasp of the language. Did you have the same exprience growing up in Japan but going to an American speaking school?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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My mum is Japanese, so I learned both English and Japanese at the same time as I grew up. I was actually better at Japanese (I'm told) until I got to school, where the curriculum was in English. There was also a rule which encouraged students to only speak in English so as not to form cliques along racial lines.
There was of course a Japanese language class, but because everything else was in English and I didn't read Japanese books, I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about rote memorizing all those kanji. So while my speaking was fluent, my reading and writing has always dragged behind a bit. It's one of those things I'd like to rectify before I graduate uni.
So were you a missionary in Hong Kong? Despite the proximity I unfortunately haven't been there (but intend to visit).
Is your family in Tokyo because of your father's work?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Is this guy an alien overlord overseeing the planned demolition of humanity? And if so, why did nobody tell me?
The plans were in the basement of the permits building on Alpha Centauri. You had your chance to lodge a formal complaint then. It's not his fault you never saw them. Demolition will commence shortly.
I'm taking a class right now on Japan, it's a history/culture class, basic class. It's also boring as all hell.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: My mum is Japanese, so I learned both English and Japanese at the same time as I grew up. I was actually better at Japanese (I'm told) until I got to school, where the curriculum was in English. There was also a rule which encouraged students to only speak in English so as not to form cliques along racial lines.
There was of course a Japanese language class, but because everything else was in English and I didn't read Japanese books, I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about rote memorizing all those kanji. So while my speaking was fluent, my reading and writing has always dragged behind a bit. It's one of those things I'd like to rectify before I graduate uni.
So were you a missionary in Hong Kong? Despite the proximity I unfortunately haven't been there (but intend to visit).
Is your family in Tokyo because of your father's work?
Sorry, I was a bit unclear it seems. I grew up in Hong Kong with a 4 year stint in Malaysia. I was a missionary in Taiwan for 2 years when I was 19. It was not really until my mission that I really nailed down Chinese and even then I am just like you, my written abilities lag behind my spoken.
My dad's a banker, apparently he is better suited to banking overseas then domestically. Being fluent in Chinese at a time where not so many were helps I suppose.
Do you ever get back out to Japan these days? I am hard pressed to find the money to go back to Hong Kong. Not only that, I have to have a good reason to and renewing my ID card isn't good enough by itself.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: Hehe, what period(s) are you studying?
Doing a quick overview of the whole thing. We just finished the Nara Period, and we're zipping along.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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You must have had an interesting breadth of experience, BlackBlade. How successful are missions in Taiwan? I've never been there either, unfortunately.
I used to go back to Japan at least once a year when my dad was still working there and we were still renting a house. That was while I was boarding. But if I wanted to go back now, I would either have to stay at a hotel or more likely, impose on a friend. I haven't been back in about a year now, and probably won't for another. I hope to do some travelling with my old Tokyo friends though. It's just a shame that US and Australian universities don't always have the same holidays.
I'd also have to pay for the trip myself next time around, which does make it less plausible...
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Doing a quick overview of the whole thing. We just finished the Nara Period, and we're zipping along.
I once did a Japanese History course that tried to cover the country's entire history in a semester. I forgot most of the feudal age material. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Euripides, congrats on you 1000 post, and welcome to Hatrack. I come here usually because I'm bored. I stay here because I love the people. Once you get to know them, they're absolutely amazing. And i concur with the idea that there's something here for any kind of mood you're in. There's no limit to what people can talk about.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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