And I thought I was going to have a few days off from this place. [comments in text]
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@> > wrote: > > > > [Comments in text] > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > <snip> > > > I find it fascinating that you focus on my purported > > > emotional projections onto Barry, while completely > > > ignoring Barry's own tendency to project. > > > > I was posting via a post you had written, and to give what > > I wanted to say some kind of point of view, that seemed to > > me to be the point of view to take. Barry obviously does > > mention others in his posts and makes comments about them. > > Don't feel like you have been picked out for persecution. > > If 10 vehicles are going 75 in a 50 miles per hour zone > > and one gets ticketed out of the group for speeding and > > the other get off free, it might just be the fall of the > > dice. > > Ah, I see, you claim to be a cop qualified to discern > who is guilty of infractions and hand out tickets. But > you seem to be carrying around a loaded pair of dice, > because this is hardly the only time you've singled me > out. First of all I was responding to a post you had written. I was questioning some of the things you said in the post. I am not a cop. The traffic ticket example was an analogy; I was not handing out tickets. If ten drivers are speeding over the limit, a policeman normally can only catch one of them as they pass by, and one is unlucky and the others get off scott free. Like a lion and gazelles, one in the herd gets it, and the others are untouched; the unlucky one just happened to be closest to the edge of the heard that day. You are standing in a crowd of ten people, and the one mosquito in the area bites you and not the others. Another day, something else happens, or maybe nothing happens. There was nothing personal except that it was your post I responded to. > > Look, Xeno, I could not possibly be less interested in > taking enlightenment lessons from you. You do not have to take anything from me. You can ignore me. I happen to like to talk about enlightenment. Fairfield Life seems to be a forum where people talk about enlightenment. You can ignore with the same indifference as Barry. Since my name is attached to the posts I make, you can use that as an identifier and not look at posts with that name. > If you want to > engage me in the realm of duality, you will (a) come > down from the mountain; I am not on a mountain. I am just an ordinary person. I am almost on ground level; there seems to bit a bit of wood and concrete just below me though. Why is it you have fashioned this as a command? (b) observe duality's rules of fair play; I was not aware that duality had rules of fair play. If our modern ideas about the universe are correct, it all averages out in the end, but the universe is not entirely uniform, it is lumpy; there are statistical anomalies, meaning there are events on the far ends of the bell curve. So sometimes evil triumphs and good is trampled underfoot and the innocent are imprisoned and executed while the guilty get off, and live lives of plenty. Duality is what I presume (correctly presume I hope) is what we are trying to get away from on this forum. We are hoping to experience the world as a unity, not as a collection of Lego blocks stacked together in some incomprehensible fashion. > and (c) not retreat back up the mountain to > avoid dealing with the issues you've raised. Otherwise, > I don't recognize your authority to hand out tickets. As I said, I did not hand out any tickets. You have not been cited. > > Have I made myself perfectly clear? Typically you are clear. > > <snip> > > So, do you feel you project your inner feelings and musings > > and ideas onto others as you discuss them, or do you feel > > you do not do this? > > Not anywhere near as much as you imagine. I am not sure how much I imagine about this because I do not have any yardstick to measure. I am making a presumption that you do this which does not specify the quantity of the article under consideration so a relative measure is not possible. The question above was not how much you do this, but whether *you* feel you do this or do not do this. I think I was asking for a self analysis, and if I had specified it more precisely, I would have asked how much you yourself feel emotion intrudes into your arguments, and perhaps under what circumstances that proportion might increase. > > I might point out that some of us here have had much > longer experience with Barry than you have. He can be > very impressive at first blush because of his skill > with words, but ultimately that skill fails to hide a > barrenness and lack of authenticity, as well as a > profoundly malicious hostility toward most other people. Yes, Barry is skilful, and I have experienced what I would call hostility from him, but I do not regard him as malignant. There are things in this world that we call malignant, cancer for example, but all these things are natural occurrences that have their range and course of action. I tend to interpret malignancy as something that could destroy me, and by virtual of that, I fear it. As fear recedes (even a little of this dharma releases one from great fear, so says the Bhagavad-Gita), the sense of malignancy in the world also recedes. > > Some folks realize what a malignant presence he is on > this forum more quickly than others. You have my permission to regulate me to the slow learners club. > > <snip> > > As far as I can see, Barry conserves his energy for what > > he likes to do. > > Which is, mostly, putting down other people. There are many passages in his writing that I would call ad hominem attacks. He points out that others are making ad hominem attacks. The problem here is if anyone responds to this by pointing out he is making ad hominem attacks while making them himself is instigating an ad hominem attack. Now in my own estimation, my own projection of my inner world, Barry has said some very unkind things to people on this forum in the past. I may be mistaken in the following, but is there a trend in which he is becoming less specific in his criticisms? He is not naming specific people, but leaving blanks, so to speak, in which one can fill in a name or two. Our inner worlds of thought and concept, with their back histories, and our natural tendency to completion, have an impulse to respond by filling in those blanks. Logically the gap is a blank, but intuitively we tend to fill it in with some specific item from our memory which is swimming in the swamp of our back history. And thus we come to the conclusion, not really logically, but probabilistically and probably also emotionally, that 'oh, he is talking about me'. Thus by our own hand we accept the insult, if what was written is interpreted as an insult. > > > If he does not engage in an argument, perhaps he knows > > this, perhaps not, but he is saving himself a lot of work > > by not engaging. > > And some of us see this as lazy and/or fearful. Again, > if one is going to hand out tickets, one has to be > prepared to defend them in court. No tickets have been issued. The docket is clear. > > But that excuse for not engaging doesn't hold water in > any case, because he has enormous amounts of energy > invested in fantasizing about his critics--not just > about their inner lives but about factual elements of > their behaviour and what they've said. Here is my own projection. Barry writes quickly, so he says. His output is rather large, so I tend to believe him here. There is a large tongue-in-cheek quality to his output, I think he is having a ball. He is doing what comes easily and naturally to him, and because it is enjoyable for him, it doesn't feel like work. Its downhill all the way. When it is not downhill, he will back away. > > One of his comments on MZ's posts, for example, was > that MZ has been attempting to convince people to > accept Jesus. Anybody who's actually read what MZ > has written knows that's flat-out factually false. I will have to accept your analysis here because I find MZ's writing a real chore to plough through. I find it hard to discern any facts in MZ's writing because I find it amazingly convoluted. Your writing is generally very clear. Barry's writing is always clear. If MZ could compact what he says by about 90%, I would be more likely to read his post more than in a cursory fashion. > And then his post this morning in response to yours, > which was a compendium of ludicrously false assertions > about MZ and me "trying to lure people into tarbaby > arguments that [we] then don't allow them to leave." Judy, you have a very linear logical, mind. This is a great asset. If Barry's writing involves fantasising (as you point out), then we can conclude he is being analogical rather than logical, he is creating illustrations of the point he trying to make, so factual fidelity is a casualty, but our minds fill in the blanks. Now in this post he did specifically mention you and MZ at the end, so it seems natural that the 'his or her', and the 'two worst offenders on this forum' that appear earlier in the post refer to the two of you. Judy, you are like a pit bull in an argument, and reading MZ for me is like falling into the LaBrea tar pits in Los Angeles, California. I think Barry is referring to these two kinds of tenacity. You go for the kill with laser precision, and MZ traps and buries with vast, intricately folded pseudo profundities. And I am likely guilty of this latter characterisation myself, but in my defence, it seems others can sometimes actually understand what I say. > Those are just two of the very recent examples. His > history of making stuff up about his critics is very, > very long and very, very extensive (and very, very > well documented). This is, in fact, one of the main > reasons he no longer responds to criticism of his > posts, because he's found trying to defend his > falsehoods ends up doing him far more harm than good. If you accept that Barry is writing fiction, why bother to correct it in an attempt to conform with factual truth? > > Whether he *believes* what he says is always a > question. It's never been clear whether he's a chronic > liar or simply desperately self-deluded, but either > way, it's a tremendous amount of mental and emotional > labor to construct and maintain those demonstrably > false views in the face of reality (not "Reality," but > on-the-record, ordinary factual reality). It does seem > to be the only way he knows to preserve his self-image. You are creating a false dichotomy here. He is either a chronic liar or simply desperately self-deluded. There are other possibilities. Also if you are self-deluded, you do not necessarily have to be desperate. All fiction writers are chronic liars, but we generally do not appreciate them that way. We appreciate them for their ability to make up stuff, and to express it in an admirable way. Because you respond to Barry's writing, and because you seem to be a specified subject in it, either directly or veiled, you must be getting some value out of it; what is in it for you, to persist in this battle with him? If his writing attacks you, must you respond to safe face? There was a guy once who said to turn the other cheek. He died of course, as a result, so maybe that is not always the best policy; if you whack a nest of wasps, they typically do not follow this policy, so there are precedents in nature for an active response. It has been going on for years, and seems like a stalemate in chess, but not because the forces are equal, but because one of you is playing chess and the other checkers, 'though Barry might be playing Grand Theft Auto or Halo or something like that to your precise chess moves. (And that is a false statement, it is not factual reality of the ordinary kind) Now regarding enlightenment, am I correct in saying that while you deal with factual information in your posts, you do not seem to discuss enlightenment much in your posts? Enlightenment is about as non factual a subject that one could discuss. There is much written about enlightenment, but do any real facts exist? Any bullet-proof definitions? It would seem to be the height of subjectivity. Why are you here? I would like to close by posting a prophesy. This was spoken by Michael Palin portraying a prophet in the movie 'Life of Brian'. There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi--with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock.
