Peace...
Inspiring stuff. But, as a soulless Darwinist, I'd say that the beauty of the analysis, banter, erudition and whatever that has happened here is happenstance. It is wonderful that it happened, and continues to happen, but it is irrelevant to the 'construct' that is the Mudcat forum.
It's lilke the extraordinary beauty of the scales on a butterfly's wing; magical, beyond the making if any one of us, but in the wider sense, irrelevant.
At root, it is Max's site; no more, no less. If, on some damp saturday afternoon, with the bairns squawling and an aunt somewhere being aunt-like, he could quite easily pull the plug. Pffft. All this would cease to be. As flies to schoolboys are we...
Thus, as far as I'm concerned, I'm prepared to live in an 18th century construct, whereat Max is the Prince Esterhaze and we are the ammanuenses of latter-day Haydns. Yes, it's nice here, and some lovely things have happened, but let's not take it for granted.
Maybe it's like my lovely female cat, who got run over a couple of months back. As she cooled and stiffened, and I cried like a blubbery thing, I was intrigued to see her fleas coming "to the surface"; crawling up from her skin, where there was no longer any warm food, to the tips of her fur, in the hope that the could cadge a lift on another passing mammal.
As such, we should all be realists, if not opportunists...