The Subject line is my reworking of Barry Goldwater's famous "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no sin." I found that sentiment curious when he expressed it, and I find certain aspects of "spiritual" Internet forums equally curious when they seem to swing behind my Subject line.
On forum after forum after forum -- NOT limited to FFL -- I have seen seeker after seeker after seeker think nothing of spending the vast majority of their posts ragging on someone who doesn't believe the same things he or she does about the spiritual path, one particular teacher along that path, or even mundane politics. Flame wars are sadly more the rule than the exception. I saw this even on an invitation-only forum composed primarily of Catholic priests. Like FFL, that forum was a "free speech zone," on which priests could anonymously talk about things that might have gotten them defrocked or even excommunicated if they had spoken them openly in a church, or among their Church peers. And while there was mutual respect, because they were all essentially heretics even to be on this forum, flame wars and ad hominem reared their ugly heads. One of the trends I've been noticing lately (you know how I love to look for trends) -- again NOT just on FFL -- is that some multi-decade spiritual seekers seem to have come away from their travels along the path feeling that pretty much anything is "fair game" when it comes to defending the ideas they believe in or the teachers who taught these things to them. They seem to think that it's perfectly OK to call the people who disagree with them childish names, or indulge in long character assassination vendettas to discredit them in the eyes of other posters. OK, this is an indisputable trend. Even the folks who might indulge in it here (myself being one of them in the past, and trying to learn from it) would probably agree with this. The real subject of this post is what I see as a corollary trend. The same people who *consistently* use a forum to badmouth people who disagree with their ideas about a path or teacher are coincidentally the same people who *consistently* contribute the fewest positive posts about the path or teacher they are "defending." On some forums, it's like there are brigades of seekers whose marching song is "Onward Christian Soldiers," or on others, "Onward Vedic Soldiers." They seem to *get off* on their chosen path primarily by indulging in (or creating) "battles" between the True Believers and the infidels or heretics. Some make up names for the individual heretics, or "group names" into which to bag them for the purposes of demonization. "Anti-TMers" or "Buddhists" are two of the latter that spring to mind when thinking of FFL. And yet. When you analyze the posts of these "spiritual warriors," fighting so long and so diligently to "defend" the path or teacher they revere, I think if you pay attention to the consistent content of their posts there is rarely anything said that actually *presents a case for* the path or teacher they are supposedly defending, and thus promoting. Their consistent focus is almost always "against" someone who challenges the path/teacher or criticizes them, and rarely ever "for." It's like they never give any "intro lectures." Some even come up with reasons why. The idea of "casting one's pearls before swine" has been presented lately as a justification for why they don't ever write anything positive about the path or teacher they revere. Well, you'll have to excuse me, but that 'tude speaks volumes to me about how that particular path or teacher views anyone who doesn't agree with them -- as swine. That, to me, is not really the effective "intro lecture" I'd be looking for to convince me of the positive benefits of the path or teacher in question. I don't think that this behavior -- focusing on the "against" while never quite stating what they are "for" -- is likely to change. It hasn't, in spiritual circles, pretty much since they were invented. But I do think it's a tad unproductive, and not just because it turns off lurkers who might have been more interesting in a "for" intro lecture. Why I think it's unproductive comes from my time as a Judo student. If you spend all your time pushing "against" your opponent, you are almost by definition off balance all the time. All that the opponent has to do is step out of the way and you fall on your face. Similarly, on forums where people have "stepped out of the way" by refusing to continue to engage in the battles other posters might attempt to lure them into, or reacting with a Zen "Is that so?" attitude to ad hominems, in my experience as a watcher of trends, the consistent "against" folks consistently *keep* pushing against. Often they're fighting against imaginary opponents, because the people they're trying to demonize or goad into an argument just *aren't there* for them any more. They've moved on to more productive conversations. I guess all I'm suggesting in this little cafe rap -- not seeking to change anything, just to point out what I see as trends -- is that I think that it's a good practice to step back from the battles every so often and assess one's own contributions to the forum. When was the last time you wrote something positive about the path or teacher you consistently spend the majority of your posts "defending?" Defending things is easy. Presenting an effective intro lecture isn't.
