lunarose wrote:hullo compared2what?
i'm wondering what it is you think we should be doing instead of what it is we are doing.
thanks, mrs. rose.
compared2what? wrote:My darling Lunarose, believe me, if I knew that I would certainly have mentioned it before now. I try to take responsibility for what I am responsible for, and then deal with that as best I can, like everyone else does. I am in no position to tell others what they should do.
I was having a fit of high-horsiness last night, mostly because that is the second time I've seen Teamdaemon take a position counter to mine with a superfluous ad hominem attack as a postscript, which made me reply in more irritably than necessary, especially because it struck me that someone who makes ad hominem attacks while disagreeing with peers is in no position to tell others they endorse foaming-at-the-mouth anger.
Plus the previous time involved telling me directly I must not be human if I had the opinion I had, which created a resentment that went away then suddenly reemerged yesterday, when I again felt I was being unjustly accused. Speaking from a more considered POV, I'm not even sure the remark was addressed to me, do not know TD, and should take responsibility promptly for 100 percent of my share of high-horsiness. Which I hereby do, with apologies to TD and to all. Though I would still like an answer to the two questions I asked, as if I had asked them politely. So I hope the apology is accepted. I'm sincerely sorry and can offer no excuse for the tantrum other than that....um....I'm human?
If you're asking what, in my subjective opinion, some routes to attaining what I regard to be standard practical know-how for a Person of the Left are, I can answer the question with due humility in those terms.
Is that what you're asking, or are you quite justifiably calling me out for being an asshole?
Please advise.
Embarassed
lunarose wrote:hi c2w? thanks for the reply. i was more asking about this:
'If you're asking what, in my subjective opinion, some routes to attaining what I regard to be standard practical know-how for a Person of the Left are, I can answer the question with due humility in those terms. '
since sometimes it seems you are pretty aggravated that people are doing what they are doing. which seems to imply you'd rather they were doing something else. thus my query.
i personally very seldom have any idea what people should be doing. when i have an idea about it, it is very seldom that that person would be at all receptive to my ideas. thus my curiosity (no doubt abetted by the close proxitimy of the cat.)
Techtonic plates shift, continents form, wheel is invented, conversation goes forward, birds fly north, birds fly south, lunarose asks chlamor question, chlamor answers.
lunarose wrote:hi chlamor. thanks for responding so promptly
Lunarose, lease forgive my delay in replying. I rebuke myself. You ask home questions, and I hesitate to answer them, because they are very serious issues to me, which I don't want to fuck up. I am clearly giving a wrong impression of myself, for which I apologize. And owing to which I'm going to address the stated reason for your query in more detail than you could possibly really want:
I'm not aggravated that anyone on this board is doing what he or she is doing. And irrespective of whether it's here, or on the ground, or anywhere in the world, I don't think that the actions of others are at all my business, under any circumstance other than the following, plus whatever eventuality I am almost certainly forgetting to account for:
(1) If they are abusing their power over others who are much less powerful than they;
(2) If they are in positions of power over others that they maintain through dishonest or illegal activities;
(3) If they are my elected representatives, or otherwise officially charged with the welfare and common good of the community;
(4) If they are -- in my measured opinion -- in danger of some kind and there's something that I can do to help them that neither violates their personal autonomy nor puts them (or me) at further risk, and
(5) If they are abusing me verbally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, or in any way.
That said, I'm a politically serious person. There are no venues at present through which I can participate in any organized political action the political values of which I endorse that also has some hope of being successful. However, political discourse is a part of the larger discourse on the threads where (if I understand you) I have said the things that imply I think others should be doing something other than what they're doint. When I say those things, I am trying to contribute to the discourse, according to my beliefs and the best information available to me. My politics include a very strong belief in the power of populist movements. And I'm personally very, very frustrated and also very, very frightened because I don't see even the wish for such a power developing anywhere. I've felt very elevated levels of what I think are rational fear and frustration in that regard ever since the court decision that put Bush in the White House that there should be one, pronto. My stated feeling then was that if they got away with that, in the absence of widespread popular protest, they would think, correctly, that they could get away with anything, and act accordingly.
That alone meets the first four of my five criteria for doing everything I can do to oppose something in whatever way does not impose significantly on the rights or autonomy of others. But that has turned out to be very little, because from then until now, case by case, whatever alarm I try to raise by whatever means is met as if it were just crazy talk, and something I should address as if it were my personal problem rather than going around alarming people with my alarming views. And oddly enough that response has never changed, even from 99 percent of the people who are close to me, and who, traditionally, have either agreed with me or thought I was expressing a coherent, if unduly far left opinion, although in broad terms, almost everything I said I feared then has since happened.
So. I believe myself to be neither omniscient, nor crazy. But I try hard to be clear-eyed, because these are important issues to me. As a result, I've been trying to point out what are to me clear and imminent dangers for eight years, and that's what I'm still doing. I do not want any RI board contributors to do anything other than read what I write, if they're interested, after which I would only want them to do what they judge to be best for themselves, whatever it is, as long as it is something that they know (or could reasonably be expected to make sure they know) doesn't hurt other people who are less powerful than they are.
Being involved in a cult-like organization meets that criterion, imo. WRT Tolle, I don't know that he runs one. I see stuff on the website that is familiar to me as indicative of an organization that has a predatory approach to vulnerable people. In reality, it might or might not have that approach. I don't know enough about it to say. What I say is that, I, personally,' see enough reason to be concerned that I, personally, wouldn't spend money on a book by him until I had made sure, one way or the other. I feel the same about Landmark, with a little more justification in terms of self-admitted actions of the organization. But not so much more that I am not open to learning anything anyone has to say on the subject. I have no first-hand knowledge of them.
In neither case does my position have anything to do with scorn for the spiritual or other benefits of meditation and similar practices. I practice those things myself. And to me, personally, spiritual needs are among the most basic os human needs, along with food. I do know people for whom this is not true, though. And I don't think they are foaming at the mouth with anger. I think they have individual needs that differ from mine. Similarly, I don't presume to pass judgment on people who do not feel the same constraint about Tolle that I do.
What I don't understand is why raising the possibility that there may be a reason to feel such a constraint is met as if it were an attack on the whole concept of spiritually beneficial practices in gneral, and a personal attack on everyone who endorses the concept, specifically. It's not. Nor do I understand why being able to claim a personally positive experience with an organization is adequate proof that your individual benefit was not gained at the expense of other, vulnerable people whom you obviously can't see if you refuse to entertain the possibility that you might find them if you looked. Or even admit that anyone who suggests there may be a reason for looking is motivated by something other than his or her own sick and selfish interests. And that is not a judgment, either. I really, truly just don't understand it.
I am equally baffled and even more upset by the anti-meds threads, to the point that I stopped reading them. It's an issue I care enough about to follow fairly closely. What I see, and I am open to having any part of my view rebutted on the facts, is that there's way more than enough evidence to be outraged at over-presciption and/or unecessary prescription of psychotropic medication. And I am outraged by it.
I also see what looks to me like a significant body of evidence that a distinct number of people benefit from those medications. I find it painful that these people, who are likely to be the most defenseless, are not only emphatically
not the first priority considered when the issue is discussed, their existence is virtually inadmissible as relevant to the discussion. And the standard for dismissing them seems to be the ability to cite at least one personal bad experience with psychotropic medication. And I do feel mildly judgmental about that. Because in that case, there is potentially a pretty substantial risk to people who are at a minimum equally vulnerable to serious damage as wrongly medicated children (or wrongly medicated adults who would be better served by some other approach) are. However, even then, my mild negative judgment is only of what seems to me to be a standard of debate that isn't adequate to the gravity of the problem. It is still not a judgment of the people who are debating, whom I take it on faith are doing the right thing by their own standards of rightness.
So the answer to your question is: I do not mean to imply that others should do other than they do. Broadly speaking, I mean to convey that in my opinion, the freedoms, rights, comforts, and responsibilities Americans take for granted are at enormous immediate risk from within. I've obviously got more than a casual opposition to the potentially cult-like, but it is, in part, because they use the same playbook the government does, wrt dishonesty I believe it would be for the good of all to learn how to be very sensitive to detecting. But mostly, being a populist who believes the populace to be in danger, I am less trying to say anything negative about any institution that I am to say something positive about united popular action, which requires united popular consensus, which requires pointing out what I believe to be dangerouss, as well as indicating what I believe to be the possible means of combating them.
To me, the first step in that direction is taking responsibility for what the American government is doing, by admitting that we the people
are the American government. Per my personal political beliefs, without that, there will never be any action. Frankly, at this point, even assuming a large, thriving popular protest movement springs into existence overnight, I think there's going to be hell beyond imagining all over the world within my lifetime, and that it is too late to stop nonviolently (and impossible to stop violently, though that's not what I, personally, advocate). That is definitely informed with even more fear and frustration because I am not personally in a financial or medical condition that makes me, personally, very likely to survive the hell I see coming. But it's sincerely not just myself I am afraid for. And since I am not omniscient, nor psychic, but am populist, I still advocate populist protest. It can't hurt. And I feel a personal obligation to advocate it.
From my personal political perspective, and based on as clear-eyed an assessment as I can manage to make, it is not constructive to spend a whole lot of time chasing what are, imo, unicorns in comparison to an urgent and more immediate danger. As it happens, I believe in those unicorns, and in the need for chasing them. It's just not, as I see it, the politically effective thing to do right now. But not everyone is obligated even to be political, let alone to agree with my politics. The obligation is not to me but to themselves.
But it remains more important to me personally than anything else to try to encourage people to ask themselves if the vast majority of the American population is in more than one kind of very major peril right now, all of which call for swift action.. For example, very severe and extremely widespread economic hardship seems to me to be, if not inevitable, very, very likely. Still being a populist, what I would
like to see people who agree with that proposition do is make their feelings known to their political representatives through united, coordinated, implacable and large-scale action. But that's just what I'd like, not what I think they should do. Same goes for the dangers posed by the loss of civil liberties and other constitutionally guaranteed rights; for the danger of continuing of an unjust, arguably illegal and definitely dishonest war that, ( imo),
we, the people and not just
they, the administration are waging; for the danger of allowing what seem very, very likely to be high crimes and misdemeanors by elected officials who should be impeached for them to go unaccounted for; and so forth.
By my own principles and criteria, there is very little else I can do on these boards than try to do that. Absent strong organizational and leadership skills that I don't have. So that's what I do.
Was that a satisfactory answer or not so much? If it wasn't, ask me specifically about whatever part I didn't satisfy.
