Archaea, I think there is a difference between reacting emotionally and giving a situation what it asks for. I didn't say Laura is acting mechanically because irritation is prompting a particular response, and I think you're wrong when you say that "irritating" the admins or mods is a reason for being banned all by itself - there is always a much more concrete reason behind it. I think focusing on irritation is missing the point because it ignores the context and cause. Psychopaths can be irritating. So if you ban someone who displays major pathology - someone incinere and manipulative for example, it wasn't because they annoyed you, but because of the pathology. But they may also be annoying, yet that in and of itself is never the reason.
On the flip side, there have been new members who did some annoying but otherwise harmless things (like make a million posts a minute with no real content and maybe just one word replies), and that can be annoying, but the worst that happened is they were politely asked to cut it out to minimize noise. No banning (unless of course pathology shows its face like them continuously ignoring the requests and having 0 consideration for others, but that's now a different matter).
Hi SAO,
You're probably right about the circumstances of previous bans. I tried to find a few examples, which made me feel like maybe my perception of it is all out of proportion. However, I still have some problems, and there are one or two examples which I found that I want to bring up.
Also, just FYI, I didn't mention Putin.
Censoring ourselves at times is part of external consideration. So why didn't you simply not say it, or what made you think it was okay to say it?
First of all, it's going to be way too easy for me to come up with excuses and I don't want to do that. Let me just say that in my day to day life, I sometimes call some people a cow. For me it means cranky old woman, not moo moo cow.
You're right though, I should have practiced some external considering and not said it.
Hi goyacobol,
Thanks for your comments, I've recently been trying to break down emotional walls. So when the C's brought up the subject of covert antagonisms I decided that these feelings were better out than in so to speak. I do feel better as well, although I'm a little worried that now people aren't going to be interested in anything I say :P Maybe that's just my ego playing tricks on me again.
I don't know if you would agree but it seemed to me that you were "irritated" that Laura displayed irritation. And then you said
I think when someone is annoyed or irritated it's because of their self-importance.
I seemed maybe like a kind of projection of yourself to Laura? :/
That's true, and in fact in my first post I wrote:
I'll try to explain my feelings with an example. Yesterday, I read the first chapter of High Strangeness, the beginning really annoyed me because Laura talks about herself all the time. But by the end of the chapter I was enjoying the book and was looking forward to the next chapter.
Then in my second post I said that I think feeling annoyed is a result of self-importance. The C's said that these feelings are a result of "mostly ego" and if you look at what I've been saying: "Laura always talks about herself" and "Laura talks down to people." You'll see that these statements are a result of ego. If I didn't have such a "big head" I wouldn't mind if someone talked about themselves or if they were talking down to me.
But the C's also said these feelings need to be aired out, so I posted them here on the forum. I wouldn't have done so if I didn't feel it would do any good.
I understand your situation but I also see you may lack enough context. If you have read the wave you know Laura has actually been through a lot of crap and have been betrayed by the people that react like this, "pity me pity me, you are a bad person for pointing out my rude behaviors". The very same attitudes of abusers who react like the central victim when the victim reacts.
Of course, this happens from any intelligent psycho or from any person of basically, today's ponerized society. I have studied and in my opinion, is not a problem of empathy considering you called her cow, but one of pity and how easy we are able to mold our behavior around it. This pity ploy "please don't be so hard on me" has happened a lot of times in the forum, most of the times people not in tune with the group's aim. And is not like Laura will butcher you
I can see how ego could result in the "pity ploy" but I don't see how that relates to my situation. That doesn't mean I think you're wrong, but you're going to have to explain it to me.
I guess my questions to Archaea would be: 1) did you read the forum guidelines? 2) are you familiar with the work of Gurdjieff and Mouravieff and Castaneda?
I've read all the Castaneda books, but I haven't read any of Gurdjieff's or Mouravieff's books. I ordered ISOTM and meetings with remarkable men on amazon a few weeks ago and they should be here in two days. I've read the forum guidelines a couple of times.
If the answer is "Yes" to those questions, then it seems to me that there is a personal antagonism toward me that includes projecting and/or possibly serious Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
There is a personal antagonism towards you on my part, I'm willing to accept the idea that is a projection onto you by me, perhaps due to some emotional misalignment; and/or serious Dunning-Kruger syndrome which I googled, and google me told that it's:
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.
Which to me sounds like a run away sense of self-importance, or a "tumorous ego" which I think I could have as far as I know, because it's very hard to see one's self objectively, as you are well aware... AFAIK. It would mean that I'm a crank or crackpot.
Let me try and articulate my feelings, and please don't ban me :P When reading some of your posts, especially the ones where people get banned, I feel like you're being a bit hypocritical. I feel like this because it seems to me that you and the gang spend a great deal of time working against tyrants in places of power, such as the government, who don't have any feelings towards their "subjects" or if they do, then they're bad feelings.
But sometimes I feel like you personally treat some people who join the forum in a heartless manner. Take the guy from this thread, which conveniently popped up today, for example:
Re: The Predator - a dark truth right under your own nose, literally
This guy said he was working on an E-book about the predators mind. You said that in your experience what he was saying was wrong, which I think is OK to say or even a good thing to say. But then you tell him that you doubt anyone here is interested and to create his own website and preach from there. Then you banned him.
I think maybe you were making assumptions about where this guy was coming from. Maybe he was here to be subversive and distract from the mission of the forum, or maybe he was here to try and help discover the truth, and being insta-banned felt to him like an act of unwarranted emotional abuse.
I've read the wave and adventures with Cassiopaea (a while ago now) on the old cassiopaea.com site, and I'm currently reading High Strangeness, which I'm enjoying despite my personal antagonisms towards you and possible serious mental disease. I also understand that you've had five children, so you know a lot more than me about responsibility (I just have a dog.) From what I know of you I think you have a kind soul, so, as a deranged lunatic, I'm asking you to please spare a thought for the other nut jobs before you phaser blast (
) them off the forum.
I have a few suggestions as well on standards and protocols for banning people. I not going put them in this post though because I'm not sure anyone's still reading this :P, I will say though that I think this...
We the moderators reserve the right to do anything and everything we see fit to ensure a friendly comfortable environment for our guests; that includes deleting you and all of your posts if you break any of these rules or act like a psychological deviant at any time past present or future. Oh yeah people, I said future, Tom Cruise has nothin' on us.
...Is OK as a humorous statement, but I think you have to be careful when giving yourself too much power, for the sake of others.
