[From Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT)]
Examine your experience to see if the following is not consistent with it:
You cannot communicate successfully with someone whom you do not respect and
admire. If you can accept this observation, the following test (small "t")
is appropriate. Before attempting to communicate with someone, get in touch
with your feelings of admiration and respect for the person. If you cannot
accomplish this, don't even bother to try communicating.
Bruce Gregory
from [ Marc Abrams (990702.1040) ]
[From Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT)]
Examine your experience to see if the following is not consistent with it:
You cannot communicate successfully with someone whom you do not respect
and
admire.
Or if not admire, at least no dislike for.
If you can accept this observation, the following test (small "t")
is appropriate. Before attempting to communicate with someone, get in
touch
with your feelings of admiration and respect for the person. If you cannot
accomplish this, don't even bother to try communicating.
I agree, but would take a slightly different tack ( at least initially ). If
the discussion or person were important to me ( for _any_ reason ) I would
try to pinpoint why I feel the way I do and see if my feelings were
modifiable. If I thought they _might_ be, I would try to open a dialogue
with the person to see if in fact that respect could not be established. If
it couldn't I would stick with your advice.
Marc
[From Bill Powers (990702.0923 MDT)]
Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT)--
Before attempting to communicate with someone, get in touch
with your feelings of admiration and respect for the person. If you cannot
accomplish this, don't even bother to try communicating.
I like this, because it puts responsibility where it belongs. If I can't
get along with someone else, then I'm kidding myself if I think I really
want to. In any relationship, it's not what the other person does that's
important, but what you do. That's the only thing you have control over,
surprise, surprise.
Best,
Bill P.
from Phil Runkel on 2 July 99, replying to Bill Powers (990702.0923 MDT)
replying to Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT)
Bill said:
In any relationship, it's not what the other person does that's
important, but what you do.
That sounds good to me, too, but I'm not sure what's going on in that
sentence. Important to whom, for what purposes? And what does
"important" mean in observable actions? Does it mean producing
controllable perceptions? If so, we have circularity here. I'm not
trying to throw away the idea; I like it. But I'd like it to be more
precise, and I am unable to put the precision into it.
[From Fred Nickols (990703.1615 EDT)]--
Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT)]
Examine your experience to see if the following is not consistent with it:
You cannot communicate successfully with someone whom you do not respect and
admire. If you can accept this observation, the following test (small "t")
is appropriate. Before attempting to communicate with someone, get in touch
with your feelings of admiration and respect for the person. If you cannot
accomplish this, don't even bother to try communicating.
My immediate reaction upon reading the above was to exclaim, "Oh! Cool!"
I'll let that stand as my response... 
Regards,
Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting "Assistance at A Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095
[From Bill Powers (990703.1922 MDT)]
from Phil Runkel on 2 July 99, replying to Bill Powers (990702.0923 MDT)
Bill said:
In any relationship, it's not what the other person does that's
important, but what you do.That sounds good to me, too, but I'm not sure what's going on in that
sentence. Important to whom, for what purposes?
You're not supposed to ask gurus questions like that. You're supposed to
assume that there's some terrifically important meaning in such statements,
and that it's your responsibility to figure out what it is. Actually asking
the guru what he means will cause others to laugh at you and pretend that
they understood even if you didn't, and the guru will turn his great soft
brown eyes on you, full of sorrow and condescension, and make you feel as
small as a bug.
MR. P. R. EUGENE, your queries are important to us and we hope we have
addressed your concern. Please feel free to contact us, MR. EUGENE, any
time you have further concerns about <insert subject here>.
Sincerely yours,
Gurus Inc.
P.S. Let this be an answer to all those still puzzling over those words.
[From Bruce Gregory (990707.1730 EDT)]
Bruce Nevin (990706.1412 EDT)
Was this a way of telling someone that the reason they did not get a
response was because they were unworthy of respect or admiration?
No. Whether I respect and admire someone is unrelated to whether they
are worthy of respect and admiration. I do not comment on the rest of
your post, not because of a lack of respect or admiration, but because
of a lack of anything to say.
Bruce Gregory
[From Bruce Nevin (990706.1412 EDT)]
Bruce Gregory (990702.0957 EDT) --
Examine your experience to see if the following is not consistent with it:
You cannot communicate successfully with someone whom you do not respect and
admire. If you can accept this observation, the following test (small "t")
is appropriate. Before attempting to communicate with someone, get in touch
with your feelings of admiration and respect for the person. If you cannot
accomplish this, don't even bother to try communicating.Bruce Gregory
Was this a way of telling someone that the reason they did not get a
response was because they were unworthy of respect or admiration?
No, no. I will treat your communication with greater respect than that.
Two proposals are blurred: a prerequisite for communication, and a
criterion for freezing people out.
Let's assume we agree how to identify when communication has been
successful. Suppose you respect a person, even admire them. Can you
communicate successfully with them if they do not respect you? For example,
if (following your advice) they decide you're not worth communicating with?
What is respect? Is it a private personal perception, or is it a social
relationship? Don't they have to know that you respect them? Don't you have
to know that they respect you? When one comes to know of another's respect,
is that not itself communication?
In the old joke, the two by four is used "to get the mule's attention." Is
that about establishing respect? Is this what NATO has been doing? The
point does not require such extreme examples. When you converse with a
child as a fellow human being, do you not establish mutual respect in the
course of communicating? Is mutual respect an initial success of
communication? Are there limits on communication if respect is not mutual?
If one party perceives the other as disrespectful, does that become the
first item on the disrespected person's communication agenda? (Careful:
assymetric privilege in an accepted social hierarchy is independent of
respect or disrespect. A general may be respectful or disrespectful of a
sergeant.) What is "self respect," beyond requiring that others treat you
with respect?
Does mutual respect mean each party perceives that it is mutual? One party
thinks "I respect you" and "I perceive that you respect me"; the other
party thinks "I respect you" but (in ignorance) "I don't know whether you
respect me or not" or (in error) "I perceive that you don't respect me."
The respect is "actually" present on both sides, in some god's-eye view. Is
the respect mutual in their communication? Does not the second person seek
to establish the yes or no of the other's respect?
If the other person perceives that you admire them, or love them, or
adulate them, can't that actually get in the way of successful
communication? (Unless of course you are controlling a perception of their
admiration, etc. as a "success" of your communication!) Do you have to
admire someone to respect them? In the extreme case, can't you have a
"healthy respect" for an adversary whom you despise?
The second proposal was a criterion for freezing people out. Aren't there
lots of motives for communicating, hence, many criteria for refusing to
try? If admiration is one of your motives, so be it; does that make
admiration a prerequisite for everyone, always? What if you absolutely must
communicate successfully with someone that you do not admire--a hostage
situation, or Milosevic.
I don't agree with either proposal. Refusal to reply is in itself a
communicative act, and may very likely be a successful one--with the
difficulty, however, that silence is maximally ambiguous.
Part of respect is the avoidance of unduly disturbing the other person's
control. To respect someone, you must be alert to signs that what you are
doing is a disturbance to their control. Conversely, social animals do not
merely resist disturbances if they see that they are due to another's
control--they object to them, protest, cast aspersions, assign blame, and
so on. These kinds of communication must be in any model of respect, or of
various forms of disrespect, including coercion.
Bruce Nevin