Post by Michael TorriePost by Robin BeckerI am clearly one of the troglodytes referred to in recent discussions around the PSF. I've been around in python land
for far too long, my eyesight fails etc etc.
I feel strongly that a miscarriage of justice has been made in the 3-month banning of a famous python developer from
some areas of discourse.
I have had my share of disagreements with others in the past and have been sometimes violent or disrespectful in emails.
I might have been in the kill list of some, but never banned from any mailing lists.
Honest dialogue is much better than imposed silence.
-- grumblingly-yrs --
Robin Becker
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim
The PSF has really screwed this up. Really embarrassing, frankly. And
sad.
I read Chris McDonough's defence of Tim Peters and he has convinced me.
Not because of everything he said but because I have experience of
committees. And other things.
The problem is generational.
Later generations can see the faults of earlier generations in brilliant
hindsight. I certainly did.
In my case, those earlier generations caused depressions and world wars.
That was pretty bad wasn't it?
Can I blame my ancestors for that? My great-grandparents were born in
the second half of the 1800s; my grandparents in the late 1800s. They
were undoubtedly responsible for WW1 and the great depression wouldn't
you say?
So my parents who grew up after WW1 and both fought in WW2 were forced
to give the best years of their lives to the worst of times. Not their
fault. In fact they were heroic to do all that and have me and my
siblings starting in their mid-twenties.
Here's the rub: they had serious faults and I could see them clearly -
when I was in my twenties and having children of my own.
I'll be 80 next year and I have a clearer perspective now.
I now understand why the oldest known culture (60k+ years) survived
intact for so long including the last few thousand years of trading
between Australia and Asia and more recent centuries with Europe. It
wasn't entirely due to isolation. In fact there were hundreds of
separate nations and languages in Australia so no-one was all that
isolated. They had traders and diplomats and warriors just like the rest
of humanity.
The difference isn't with them it is with us. We have lost what keeps
them together. They respect their elders. We don't. They had to because
their survival depended on lore and knowledge which was passed orally
across generations.
The real difference is the invention of the printing press and its
successors right down to television and the internet.
We no longer rely on our elders for knowledge.
That has eroded respect.
With each generation the erosion gets worse. When I was a child, my
parents gave me a bike and a set of encyclopedia. They tested me on my
knowledge and taught me other stuff too, which I can't remember now but
I could look it up.
Our children got bikes and encyclopedia too but they were growing up
after Germaine Greer published "The Female Eunuch". They are Gen Xers.
That means they became totally aware of female emancipation and the
comcomitant male emancipation and other isms.
Knowledge is a small part of life. You have heard "it's not what you
know, it's who you know".
Inherited wealth solves all problems for the wealthy because that
inheritance includes every "who" who matters. For the rest of us getting
on with people is what really matters. Without the right "who", survival
is at risk. All the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips today
and still our survival needs to be curated.
So PSF Board members survival depends not on knowledge nor on having
policies and codes of conduct but on the right "who".
The survival of the Board and perhaps even the P language itself depends
on elders.
Elders have something which was well respected by earlier generations.
That is lore which is steeped in experience. Leadership can be taught
and learned. Experience has to be experienced. Young people almost by
definition, don't have it. "Young" is obviously a relative term given
one's perspective.
Experience and respect for experience kept the oldest known culture on
the planet functioning for a very long time. Even the advent of the web
has not detracted from that respect.
The PSF Board should reflect on their lack of respect for experience and
try to retrieve any damage that lack of respect may have done to the
very thing they were elected to look after.
I'm old and I respect Tim's age and would not expect him to suffer the
load of becoming BDFL but by golly that would be my preference.
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