Thanks for your replies, everyone.

Perhaps I should learn to trust my own judgment first and foremost, rather than allowing people like this to make me doubt what I'm sure of.

This is not directly related to your conversation. This is a suggestion. Unless there is a person you have an actual relationship with; and, for some reason cannot reach by cell phone, anyone will be well served by deleting any and all Instant Messaging programs from their computer. Any contact made via these devices is fleeting, at best; and, a colossal waste of time, at worst. Being interrupted from your own work, or thought processes is unproductive.

Roho, as always you make a sterling point.

I spend so much time saying nothing on MSN...

I deleted my personal myspaces for this reason.

Maybe I should free up some disk space.

My boss made me use this communication modality at work. I quickly nicknamed it "Instant Pestering".

MSN is like a direct pointless bitching line. I have acquaintences who never complain to me of their problems in person. When it comes time to MSN, I get the standard "Hello." followed by a period of silence, and then "I am having a shitty day today." I usually log out at this point.

File him one under pretentious and stupid.

I can see where you're coming from. However, I have made several friends via IM (most of whom I have also met in real life) and this is our main mode of contact. My mistake was allowing a complete stranger to contact me without any prior introduction.

Noooooo?

By the way…I have no idea what post-structuralism is. I can look it up, and perhaps guess what it means by looking at the word…but, right now, I do not know.

Well, see, there's REAL poststructuralism (Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida, etc. etc.), which was a specifically French phenomenon from the '60s-'90s. These guys are the Heavies.

And then there's the cottage industry of mostly North American (also some French and Italian) commentators on poststructuralism. This is a morass of bullshit that doesn't deserve the name. (Or, as I've heard one French philosopher refer to it, "boulchite".)

There! I have just finished reading about post-structuralism. If this chap functions, as he wanted to convince you to, I have no doubt I could argue that post-structuralism contains the same weakness as many of the other existential movements of the 1960’s. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I studied hermeneutics.

Now…do you perceive me, in this post to be any more intelligent than in the last?

I hope not.

You just ran in to one of the many “Cliff Note” addicts who feel that they can read an article on the Internet, and come across as some type of expert. We have seen an ample amount of that crowd here; on LttD. Knowing something about a subject is a far cry from understanding it. But, many are incapable of understanding.

Yes, you're right.

I have to admit, I didn't have the patience to sit and read about post-structuralism. I read a little but it didn't interest me enough for me to continue. I suppose whatever (little) interest I have in philosophy doesn't extend to this level. Oh, well.

I'm still confused by this guys contention that pretending to know something about a topic when in fact you know nothing is in some way a strength. Why? In my experience trying to blag things never turns out well, you eventually get called on it so what's the point? Besides, anyone idiotic enough to determine lack of knowledge on a topic as an automatic weakness is probably someone who is less well equipped to actually combat their own ignorance (which is what actually matters).

Phoenixrisen - I'd toss that one on the rubbish pile if I were you.

Exactly.

I have a few friends who bug me about why I don't have an IM account of any sort and I always tell them, "If you want to talk to me, call me. If you want to write at me, email me."

Foucault and Derrida (and other favorites like Lacan, Marx, and Freud) weren't without their flaws, their ignorances, and their errors in judgment, though--and that's to be expected, because they didn't have some of the knowledge we have now--so that's part of why we're in the mess we're in. People still cling slavishly to the ideas that have been thoroughly challenged and debunked, and even to the ideas that some of these theorists themselves renounced later in life.

It would be like if there was some clan of Lamarck-worshipers running around, or heck, even some extremely dogmatic Darwin-worshipers!

The founding fathers may have had some honor and some novel and interesting ideas to begin with, but it certainly hasn't been enough to keep things out of the muck. The bad and the wrong tend to grossly outweigh and outnumber the right and the good, as far as I'm concerned.

Incidentally, what's the difference between Po-Struc and PoMo? I tend to use both interchangeably.