---In [email protected], <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
Thanks for posting this, Alex. I'm with Rick on this one. I honestly don't see in present-day FFL the "abuse" or "bullying" that Buck rants about. I see pro-TM posts appear without challenge, and I even see the occasional con-TM posts pass by without challenge. That, to me, speaks of progress. <snip> I honestly don't know what the fuck Buck is talking about. I think this place is just starting to show promise. I almost unsubscribed the other day. I was typing a post and put a quote in but I forgot who said it, so I googled it to find the author and it the only reference I could find was me writing in an absolutely identical post here in 2008! I'm not someone who likes to cross the same bridge twice so that was almost enough to tell me it's time to do something else with my tea and advert breaks. But I looked at what I'd miss if I didn't have FFL. You can learn a lot here, not just from the heavyweight writers who always have something worth hearing but unintentionally by the crazies and whiners and clueless who unwittingly demonstrate that you can meditate your entire life and not display a single shred of awareness. And if something exciting happens in our old spiritual alma mater it'll hit FFL first, I've learned more about Marshy and his organisation than it's possible to by googling. And then there's the book and movie recommendations, science updates. This place has it all! So it's good it's keeping going, my only recommendation would be to set Buck and Willytex and Seventhray free. They obviously don't like it here or appreciate anything anybody says but they clearly don't have the wherewithal to just unsubscribe and go somewhere else to absorb something they do find pleasant. In fact two of them do the opposite of what every spiritual teacher ever recommends and spend there entire time here negatively slagging off everyone else! Talk about not getting it. If they were forcibly unsubscribed they would be a lot happier, after a day or so's whining. Buck seems unhappy and just wants this place to be like Jim's site so why doesn't he just go there? It's not complicated. From: "j_alexander_stanley@... [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 5:54 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: List Culture and The FFL Post Count Buck, I ran into Rick at Everybody's last week, and I asked him, "Is it time to just shut FFL down?" He kinda shrugged it off and said he glances at it once a week to make sure it's not completely out of control. And, lately, aside from the ridiculous, hyper-egoic shitstorm in reaction to Judy's brief return, the group is pretty calm. Bitch all you want, but with Rick and I hardly giving a shit what goes on, nothing is going to change. ---In [email protected], <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : The bullies have run most wild here unchecked because nice people were not protected and thoughtful folks often inside are afraid of embroiling mean conflict upon themselves enough to invest in it, ..in provoking the bullying..“For the record, I apologize for nothing. Rien. Nada. Nichevo. Bupkus. I meant everything I've ever said here, and stand by it fully.”In thinking together, people often may fail in process of creative thought out of fears to extend themselves individually in to the collective, for fear of engaging with evidently untrustworthy folks. Engagement that may provoke unfriendly embroilment which potentially might be brought on to themselves by stepping forward in conversation. 'Thinking as process' takes skills and practice to see dissonances as thinking and get good at it, to get beyond ego and not let it get out of control. Too many of the writers in character writing here derail creative thinking on FFL by their default to the assault of the personal invective instead of just commenting on a substance of the material brought. That abusive character has been really unfortunate for the larger FFL community.The challenge of FFL as a forum community is to find constructive ways of engaging with people. That takes kindness, tolerance and patience as skillsets and practice to be able to think together and be creative, to look at and solve problems together. FFL is a long ways from that by a grip of vice of some folks who dominate FFL.Collaborating in 'Disconfirmation': seeking different ways of looking at models, of 'thinking' in constructive conflict.Thoughtful conversation seems a willing kind collaborative, a kind cooperative 'process in disconfirmation'. By contrast a trust in kindness as element has been driven out of Fairfieldlife at Yahoo-groups by a dominant methodical use of personal invective in the ad hominem used as weapon to personally hurt people here.Collaboration in a type of, Love? In kindness to a creative process?Quite evidently thoughtful conversation takes a civil kind collaboration in self-control to have productive conversation. Some have done their poisonous work here with the communal well-spring.Collaboration? Could many folks dare at all to publicly disagree here on FFL anymore given the lack of self-restraint in the culture that remains on FFL? What is mostly missing now from the dominant FFL writing is a kindness to process, a love enough of collaboration that seems necessary enough for there to be creative thinking between people. Instead what we have is a culture of rudeness that has long interrupted the communal thinking here and driven people away.The cultural place that was FFL seems to have been poisoned. The place evidently has died for lack of a willing collaboration as an oxygen that could include other points of view other than some caustic character of dominant internet haters and personalities in method. The cost to FairfieldLife at Yahoo-groups has been the loss of a forum for communal thinking.A pervasive unkindness in ad hominem-istic snark parading as 'intellectual retort', it's the dominant 'culture' here at FFL now, as the evident lack in thoughtful community culture here. Folks otherwise have come instead to fear to spend their time thinking here reading let alone posting here. It is a sad commentary on how it has gone down for FFL. Many of the writers left here have in many ways become the people they revile, bullies like they see Bevan or others in the movement community.Salon, saloon or shalom; who would enter in to a place met with the likes of, “You Suck..” or “Fuck you” as first text lines or “You lying Fuck” as a subject heading? MJ, there was a long period of a poisonous malignancy here in the postings between a few people who came on before you came along and added to it in your way. FFL is just not a safe place for well-meaning people to loiter or join in hence most folks wandered out. Meditators and people around Fairfield here always go 'whew-phew' and roll their eyes about the reputation of FFL as a place for thoughtful dialogue whence FFL gets mentioned. FFL got wrecked a while ago as a community place that way. mjackson74 wrote, well Buck how do you account for the departure of all the people who used to post on FFL in the years before I joined? Looking back at the archives, there were a whole bunch of folk who had already dropped out before I came along, so the fact that Judy, Anne, Jimmy the Enlightened and Nappy Nabby jumped ship does not seem to be that much of a recent trend.Yep, even Rick chooses to post substantial material elsewhere now instead of posting to FFL as to just shark-feeding for what is left remaining of FFL. A long list of people is now gone before us who had once helped further the culture of the list, mostly been driven off by an aggressive and appalling unkindness of culture in the ongoing personal shark-like attack by the ad hominem that evidently has become endemic here; that seeming 'professionals' default to use in their writing method instead of simply dealing with material posed. And those same complain about originality, thinking and lack of creativity..Nothing to see here folks. Just another person trying to blame the fact that he and the people he likes can't think of anything intelligent to say on the people they don't like. :-)Good timing, Turqb,Left or driven off? This as your thinking is fine as intelligent retort on one level Anartaxius except, the low post and dwindled active member counts may show something else.Looking in on the culture of what is FFL now, is it a surprise the numbers have dropped off when there is so much about Fairfield or larger spiritual matter being talked about otherwise by others actively involved in it? No, it is like the well was poisoned here by some.Ironically there is an evident invective that is intolerance to conversation here and to divergent idea by a concentration of some few who remain active posting here.If could be we are just getting on with our lives. Now that most of the TB crazies have left, some of the tart, sharp conversation has dwindled, and there are less opportunities for intelligent retorts. I think you would have welcomed the change. 'Intelligent retort'?We've not been very good at discussion here for some time on FFL and the place as a forum is nearly dead.Yep, visiting looking back in on Fairfieldlife at yahoo-groups evidently this is mostly a sad inhospitable place rendered down to some pulp substance of travelogue, movie reviews and the personal bickerings of a few. Om, for what once was Fairfieldlife,Sooooooooooo, turns out that there WERE ZERO posts since last night.Just another tell that FFL is going down for the count.
