--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Those on this forum who have felt that they had their > spiritual vibes lowered by me mentioning the Trappist beer > I was drinking in some cafe while writing a few recent posts, > you can relax.
Did anyone here feel this, or is it yet another Barry-fantasy? <snip> > That said, the subject of this Zen garden rap, inspired by > its stillness -- present even when full of groups of laughing > and screaming children or teens chugging energy drinks -- is > the frequent absence of that stillness on "spiritual" Internet > forums. This is a generic rap, about what I see as a generic > phenomenon. I'm not rapping about Fairfield Life per se, or > about any of its denizens. This is a fairly recent tactic of Barry's, to criticize FFL or its denizens but claim the criticism is "generic" in order to be able to engage in unfair and/or inaccurate putdowns without being accountable for what he says. <snip> > What I've noticed is that many 20-to-40-year spiritual > seekers and practitioners of high spiritual arts, some of > which would claim to be "the highest" such art, think > nothing of going slightly batshit crazy and reacting > angrily to someone who has done nothing more than believe > something different than they believe on the Internet. All Barry is saying here is that disagreement is expressed about beliefs. Because that's so normal and unsurprising, he has to find a way to make the disagreement seem somehow wrong, so he characterizes it as "going slightly batshit crazy" (whatever that could possibly mean) and "reacting angrily." That's another of his tactics. It would be hard for him to mount criticism of simple disagreement about beliefs, so he describes the disagreement in terms that he *can* criticize. Except that on FFL, in my observation, those who disagree very rarely "go slightly batshit crazy" or even "react angrily." That's not to say there aren't angry reactions, but they aren't just to somebody doing "nothing more than believe something different than they believe." The angry reactions are to nasty, gratuitous putdowns, to unfair criticisms, to illogical and/or dishonest assertions, to arrogance, to sloppy, shallow thinking, to inauthenticity, to self-serving opportunism, especially from those who attempt to portray themselves as more spiritual than those they're criticizing. This too is unsurprising. But those who express their beliefs without any of the above are almost never subject to angry reactions.
