--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > Well at least ONE reader here knew what I was writing about. > > > > My bad. It never occurred to me that the word "heroics" > > could be used to refer to the soap opera events you had > > just described.
She put the term in scare quotes, so obviously she didn't think it was an appropriate term either: "And I don't feel noble about any of the 'heroics' at the end if that is what you're thinking." She used it because Barry was accusing her of trying to paint *herself* as "noble": "...decades later you're still trying to 'ennoble' it and make it sound different..." On the other hand, to describe her whistle-blowing as "soap opera events" is extraordinarily shallow and uncompassionate. This was very serious, life-altering, devastating business for the folks involved. And let's not forget how many times Barry has presented himself as a real stand-up guy for having occasionally opposed the rigidity of the TMO. > > I thought you were referring to something > > else from the annals of Robin lore, something you assumed > > I knew about. > > I also apologize for trying to riff on your reply "real > time" in a noisy cafe after a couple of Belgian beers > with high alcoholic content. In retrospect, I guess all > I was really trying to accomplish was to find out why > you (or anyone) were so taken by Robin, either "back > in the day" or more recently, on FFL. > > Your occasional descriptions of him as "noble" confound > me "Occasional" = once only, in this very exchange with Barry: "I thought it was rather noble actually, his desire to uphold what he felt was the best of who MMY was and what the Movement could have stood for." That's it, just that once. And she made it clear in her followup that even this, as far as she was concerned, wasn't very significant. > because I never saw that in the things he wrote here, She didn't use the term to describe what he wrote here. > back when I was still trying to read them. To me it was > pretty much all stuck-in-one's-head intellectual egobabble, > with generous helpings of abuse and over-emotionalism > served up on the side. Of course, he never "abused" anybody who hadn't abused him first. And to those who believe having, let alone expressing, emotions is evidence of unevolved "attachment," any size helping of emotion will appear excessive. > The only feeling I've ever gotten from you as to what > attracted you to him in the first place was that he > represented some kind of "adventure" for you. I guess > that's as close as I'm ever going to get to understanding > what you saw/see in him, so I'll leave it at that. She's said a lot more than that about what attracted her. Since Barry claims he wants to know "why [Ann] (or anyone) were so taken by Robin, either 'back in the day' or more recently, on FFL," I'll take a stab at explaining why I was so taken with Robin on FFL. (Of course Barry will refrain from reading what follows; so much for his desire to know the "why" in question.) I wasn't around "back in the day," but I think it was pretty damned "noble" for Robin to have had the determination and courage to spend 25 years by himself doing his best to figure out why he had made such a horrendous mess of things and to root out the flaws that he perceived in himself that had made him see himself in such a deluded light, to the detriment of his followers. I believe him when he says it was agonizing. How could it not have been? It also took tremendous courage for him to emerge from that process to face people who knew of his history-- the very people who were most likely to see him in a negative light--and to give them a no-excuses account of himself. That aside, although at first I wasn't willing to plow through all of what Barry characterizes as "egobabble," after awhile I began to find much more than just that in his posts and ended up reading every word of what he wrote here, much of it more than once. I told him back in December that as a former cult leader who used to be in Unity Consciousness, to the folks at FFL he was a "perplexing critter." He responded, in part: "I am aware that some of my posts are provocative, ironic, and even in a certain sense abstruse: so I am bound to lose a fewmaybe more than a fewreaders. After all, there are the Alexes as well as the Barrys of this world; and with Alex I am an acquired taste that he knows he will never have. With Barry, well, you know in what consists his aversion to my posts. There is a difference. "What concerns me in posting at FFL, Judy, is to meet every challenge head-on; and to test out my philosophy, my understanding, my experience as I go to express myself. I am here for self-metatherapeutic reasons. I am not here to make FFL readers believe in what I believe in.... "But the way I write is a kind of performance, and I am going to confuse, lose, alienate, and even repulse certain readers. But there will be those readers and posters...who will give me the very fairest of opportunities to make my case, and for this I find myself satisfied in general with the response I expect I am getting at FFL." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/299310 I certainly never had the impression that what he wrote here was any more "egobabble" than what many of us write, and it had, IMHO, considerably more substance, as well as a great deal more self-awareness and a remarkable willingness to face and deal with challenges (not infrequently by acknowledging a challenge's validity). Yes, his posts were often "abstruse" and tough to plow through. His writing style could be daunting in its formality, and it could also be confusing and rather messy when he was attempting to sort through some particularly complicated thoughts. At other times it had a seemingly effortless grace, elegance, and transparency that made it an aesthetic pleasure to read. In any case, the substance and the insights were, IMHO, well worth the effort of close scrutiny. Those who did a quick skim of the first few lines of one of his posts and decided there would be nothing in the rest of sufficient interest to merit any effort to read further missed out on a lot. I found it gratifying to interact with him; he was very much open to nonhostile engagement and put forth a significant effort of his own to understand and absorb what the other person was saying, and then to compose a relevant response. All that said, I also found him personally charming and charismatic, as well as wonderfully witty, far beyond the burlesque level of humor we've become accustomed to seeing here. His "ironic" posts tended to be sophisticated, hilarious, and devastating. I could go on, but the above hits the high spots, at least. Others' MMV, of course.
