Doug,
I want to thank you for finally breaking your silence and commenting on the
things you will "bear in mind" when looking for posters to censor. Uh, I mean
"moderate," of course, because we all know that censorship would be BAD.
But I think you're wrong about the "reference" value of the post below, so I
will tell you why:
1. This post does NOT represent the feelings of all people who practice TM,
although it claims to. Many on this forum who still practice TM and feel
positively about Maharishi went out of their way at the time to comment that
they did *NOT* feel "insulted" by the post this person is trying say was
offensive and insulting.
2. This post is an attempt by one person to assert that she has the "right" to
speak for ALL TMers and declare them all "insulted" by the post in question.
She has neither that right, nor that ability. As mentioned in point #1, a few
strong TMers spoke up back during the original furor saying that they did NOT
find the post in question overly offensive, and that they did NOT feel
personally offended by it. Thus the person writing this "brief" below is not
only speaking for a group she has no right to speak for, she's WRONG in
claiming that they would all feel "insulted." She's trying to claim (in
essence) that what *she* felt is what *everyone* who practices TM would feel.
3. She's even WRONG about the insulting nature of the post. While the language
used to create the metaphor for a certain mindset is admittedly over the top
(for effect), the mindset is very real, and has been documented many times in
the past -- on this forum and elsewhere. Every time a person knew that
Maharishi in real life did and said things that his PR and his dogma claimed he
was incapable of doing -- and *ignored* what they knew about what went on in
real life -- they were exhibiting this mindset.
I call the mindset "Attempting to deal with cognitive dissonance by denying the
existence of the conflicting reality that goes against what they've been told
to believe." For example, every time one of the skin boys told someone that
Maharishi never "entertained" women in his room after hours *when they knew
better because they were there and let the women in*, they were exhibiting this
mindset. We have *several* of these skin boys on record as belatedly admitting
to have lied in this fashion. Or take the TM teachers who, if asked, would
swear on a stack of Gitas that Maharishi was *incapable* of being dishonest or
breaking the law because he was so "in tune with the laws of nature" that being
dishonest would be impossible for him. Then remember that some of the TM
teachers saying this had *themselves* been asked by Maharishi to illegally
carry large sums of money from Europe to the US, or from Europe to India. They
*knew* he was capable of breaking the law because he had asked them to do it
for him, but when asked, they denied that he was even *capable* of breaking the
law.
THAT is the mindset I'm speaking about, and that my metaphor was carefully
chosen to represent. It exists. It's more prevalent than people like the author
of the screed below want to admit.
4. A *group* cannot feel "insulted" -- only individual humans can feel
insulted. This is the problem posed by radical Muslims who claim that saying
something they don't like about Mohammed is heresy and "insults" ALL Muslims.
Bullshit. 95% of Muslims don't give a shit what some person from another
religion or from no religion says about Mohammed. The people claiming that a
*group* is offended are just posturing and demonstrating faux outrage. Below,
this person is trying to "recruit" people who feel like they're a part of the
group she's "faux defending" into agreeing with her, and feel "insulted" by
what I posted. Unfortunately for her, many members of the TMer "group" here on
FFL *didn't*, so she failed even in that.
5. Finally, the last and most important point -- and the one that those like
the person below who are *still* trying to use this moderator boondoggle to
"get" the people they've obsessively hated for decades want to obscure -- is
that all of this is IN THE PAST. As such, it is not "admissible evidence" when
attempting to moderate or ban anyone in the future.
Buck has elsewhere *claimed* that he will base his decisions as a moderator on
current activity. I don't actually believe him, or believe him capable of doing
so, but he *has* claimed it, so if he ever tries to moderate someone based on
their supposed "history," everyone has the right to say, "Now WAIT a minute,
Doug...you can't do that. You have to show us the exact post you feel is
offensive, and it has to have been made since you became moderator and claimed
in public that you would allow everyone to 'start over clean.'"
Doug, I do not envy you the task you've set for yourself. I think you were
quite foolish to undertake it, in fact. But since you have, I really *AM*
trying to help by pointing out errors of thinking that -- if you follow them --
will result in making FFL as a group and you as a person into a laughing stock
and cause them to lose ANY credibility whatsoever. Falling for an appeal such
as the one below -- that claims to speak for an entire group and claims that
the entire group was "insulted" just because one person says so -- would be one
of those errors.
I hope that you will prove yourself wise enough in the future to figure these
things out for yourself. Until then, you may expect me to keep commenting on
them to help you put them into a perspective that represents a larger slice of
the population of Fairfield Life than the voices attempting to use you to "get"
people they don't like.
From: "[email protected] [FairfieldLife]"
<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Moderating The Peep Show
Thanks, Authfriend your post here seemsa fair brief of a time on FFL. I
will keep it at hand as a referencegoing forward.
---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote :
If one were to be actually honest, instead of just pretending to be, two points
would need to be made:
1. The "insult" wasn't really to Maharishi; it was to those who revere him. It
was said that if they had witnessed him sexually abusing a baby, they would
nevertheless continue to maintain he was a life celibate. The hypothetical
image of Maharishi abusing a baby was tasteless and offensive, but it was the
vicious slur on his followers that triggered the upset and outrage.
2. It wasn't just this one entirely gratuitous insult, malicious as it was,
that led TM supporters to walk out. This was just the most recent in a very
long and relentless sequence of savage, sadistic insults by TM critics
personally targeting TM supporters.
Barry wrote, in part:
Which is interesting in the context of all this this latest soap opera hysteria
on Fairfield Life, because if people are honest, what it's really about is that
a few living people became so offended at what was said in passing about a dead
person that they went bat-shit crazy.
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