The other day, as a bullet point under a list of things I found Interesting (as opposed to Not Interesting) on the Internet, I came up with the following cafe blurb, written quickly and probably under the influence of a second mocha cappuchino:
> * Those who listen to other posters enough to get > a feeling for the things they find interesting, and > then write to discuss those things. But discuss, not > argue. For example, I may be interested in movies, > but I am completely uninterested in arguing about > them. Taste is subjective; you either like a movie > or you don't. Being "right" doesn't enter into the > picture. In retrospect, I think I was Onto Something with this particular mini-rant, so I will expand upon it. My subjective opinion -- which is officially worth Jack Shit -- is that there are often more interesting spiritual discussions to be found on forums discussing movies and TV than there are on forums discussing spirituality. I think this is because people on movie forums *cut each other more slack*. They are less liable to become didactic and authoritarian about their views of a movie, because most of them realize that "It's only a movie." It's a piece of art, and by definition the appreciation of art is subjective. You and I may argue for days about whether "Desperado" is a better movie than "Citizen Kane" ( and it may well be :-), but at the end of the argument nothing would have been proved or decided. The argument started with two people holding opinions, and it ended with two people holding opinions. As a result, folks on movie forums don't tend to develop into agressive cliques who battle each other for some kind of imaginary supremacy. Roger Ebert may have loathed poor Gene Siskel *at the moment* when he gave away the ending to "The Crying Game," but next week they were back to (fairly) cordially trading opinions about other movies, agreeing on some, disagreeing on others. On the spiritual forums...er...not so much. There it is more likely to find people who are convinced that their opinions are *more* than opinion, some kind of Truth. Discussions of whether God exists or not or whether Krishna was really blue are NEVER "only a movie." "They're discussions of Truth, goddammit, and only we/I/ my group *know* the Truth." Therefore arguments that can be classed AS arguments (as opposed to mere energetic swapping of differing opinions) tend to spring up on the spiritual forums. People try really hard to "win" them. Even though as far as I can see, the things being argued about can no more be "proved" to be Truth than one movie can be "proved" to be better than another. BORING. In my experience, movie and TV freaks tend to be nicer people than spiritual seekers. They're more likely to treat each other as equals, and with compassion. If I had to recommend to a young person what might be better for their evolution -- hanging out on an Internet movie forum or hanging out on a spiritual forum -- I'd have to go with movies. You meet a nicer class of people.
