As I understand it, Crocker’s rules is not supposed to be a moral code or a way of life, but is a standard of etiquette. It’s a protocol. Humans are great at inventing and applying (and also subverting) social protocols, but you have to choose the right tool for the job.
Further data points: a few centuries ago, it was the convention particularly in written communication to use what would now be regarded as ridiculously flowery language. But, as Samuel Johnson said:
My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, ’Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, ’These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times.” You don’t mind the times. You tell a man, “I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.” You don’t care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don’t think foolishly.
Within rigid conventions of extreme politeness, people can still figure out ways to be extremely rude when they want to be. At least one writer has suggested that Isaac Newton’s famous quote about seeing further than other men “by standing on the shoulders of giants” was a veiled attack on Robert Hooke for being short. These days, British MPs are capable of expressing extreme contempt about Right Honourable Gentlemen in the opposition.
On the other side of the spectrum, Tom Wolfe has written that one of the main features of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale was to engage in criticism sessions that were somewhere between Crocker’s rules and hazing:
At Yale the students on the outside wondered for 80 years what went on inside the fabled
secret senior societies, such as Skull and Bones. On Thursday nights one would see the secret society
members walking silently and single file, in black flannel suits, white shirts, and black knit
ties with gold pins on them, toward their great Greek Revival temples on the campus, buildings
whose mystery was doubled by the fact that they had no windows. What in the name of God or
Mammon went on in those 30-odd Thursday nights during the senior years of these happy few?
What went on was… lemon sessions!—a regularly scheduled series of lemon sessions, just like the
ones that occurred informally in girls’ finishing schools.
In the girls’ schools these lemon sessions tended to take place at random in nights when a
dozen or so girls might end up in someone’s dormitory room. One girl would become “it,” and the
others would light into her personality, pulling it to pieces to analyze every defect… her
spitefulness, her awkwardness, her bad breath, embarrassing clothes, ridiculous laugh, her suck-up
fawning, latent lesbianism, or whatever. The poor creature might be reduced to tears. She might
blurt out the most terrible confessions, hatreds, and primordial fears. But, it was presumed, she
would be the stronger for it afterward. She would be on her way toward a new personality.
Likewise, in the secret societies: They held lemon sessions for boys. Is masturbation your
problem? Out with the truth, you weenie! And Thursday night after Thursday night the awful
truths would out, as he who was It stood up before them and answered the most horrible
questions. Yes! I do it! I whack whack whack it! I’m afraid of women! I’m afraid of you! And I
get my shirts at Rosenberg’s instead of Press! (Oh, you dreary turkey, you wet smack, you little
shit!)… But out of the fire and the heap of ashes would come a better man, a brother, of good
blood and good bone, for the American race guerrière.
At least one writer has suggested that Isaac Newton’s famous quote about seeing further than other men “by standing on the shoulders of giants” was a veiled attack on Robert Hooke for being short.
Seems unlikely. Wikipedia says that the famous quote was in a letter to Hooke himself, and with the full context it sounds like a true compliment:
“What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.”
The Wikipedia the article you quoted goes on to say:
This has recently been interpreted by a few writers as a sarcastic remark directed against Hooke. This is speculative; Hooke and Newton had exchanged many letters in tones of mutual regard, and Hooke was not of particularly short stature, although he was of slight build and had been afflicted from his youth with a severe kyphosis. However, at some point, when Robert Hooke criticized some of Newton’s ideas regarding optics, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. The two men remained enemies until Hooke’s death.
I linked to Google Books’ sample of pages 187-188 of Michael White’s book Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. The author looks at their correspondence in some detail, and makes an emphatic conclusion which I won’t spoil here.
So is his conclusion “speculative”? I don’t know. But he certainly wasn’t unaware of the context of the quote.
As I understand it, Crocker’s rules is not supposed to be a moral code or a way of life, but is a standard of etiquette. It’s a protocol. Humans are great at inventing and applying (and also subverting) social protocols, but you have to choose the right tool for the job.
Further data points: a few centuries ago, it was the convention particularly in written communication to use what would now be regarded as ridiculously flowery language. But, as Samuel Johnson said:
Within rigid conventions of extreme politeness, people can still figure out ways to be extremely rude when they want to be. At least one writer has suggested that Isaac Newton’s famous quote about seeing further than other men “by standing on the shoulders of giants” was a veiled attack on Robert Hooke for being short. These days, British MPs are capable of expressing extreme contempt about Right Honourable Gentlemen in the opposition.
On the other side of the spectrum, Tom Wolfe has written that one of the main features of the secret Skull and Bones society at Yale was to engage in criticism sessions that were somewhere between Crocker’s rules and hazing:
Seems unlikely. Wikipedia says that the famous quote was in a letter to Hooke himself, and with the full context it sounds like a true compliment:
The Wikipedia the article you quoted goes on to say:
I linked to Google Books’ sample of pages 187-188 of Michael White’s book Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. The author looks at their correspondence in some detail, and makes an emphatic conclusion which I won’t spoil here.
So is his conclusion “speculative”? I don’t know. But he certainly wasn’t unaware of the context of the quote.
I remain of course, your most humble servant.