---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
I wouldn't characterize Feste's motives as completely compassionate if I were you. IMO he's just missing the days in which the name of the FFL game was "pile on Barry," and he's trying to do whatever he can to start that meme back up again. :-) Maybe it's not all about you, Barry - maybe it's all about Richard's messages. Apparently you and James don't understand this because you've failed to keep up - I'm not sure how James could have read all 10,000 of my posts to FFL since 2003 - he must be a really fast reader! James seems to want to join in the FFL conversation and he seems like a decent guy, but maybe he is prejudice against people from Texas - which would be weird since you're from Texas too. Go figure. Richard J. Williams http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=Richard+J.+Williams&l=fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=Richard+J.+Williams&l=fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com Richard J. Williams http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=Richard+J.+Williams&l=fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com [FairfieldLife] OM 2008-08-28 Thread Richard J. Williams [FairfieldLife] Re: Posts in 23.5 hours 2007-03-19 Thread Richard J. Williams View on www.mail-archive.com http://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=Richard+J.+Williams&l=fairfieldlife%40yahoogroups.com Preview by Yahoo Isn't it fascinating that the thing that has *elevated* the level of discourse on Fairfield Life so much during the past month or so is the *absence* from it of a number of people who used to characterize those they didn't like as "negative." I suspect this says something about who was actually negative and who was not. :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : We all wear masks here on FFL, some of them benign, some of them grotesque, but behind them, and then behind the masks that we make for outselves in real life, we are all the same— or at least, not too dissimilar. Is this not so? I took Richard's part because he was subjected to a raft of posts condemning him, especially from our friend across the water, and I thought that I would express some appreciation of him. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jamesalan735@...> wrote : I think your concern for Richard is genuine, but mistaken. In any case, there are many other ways to show your concern than to condemn me as being 'mean-spirited' (an approach, as I have pointed out, you use regularly here), or to make wildly mistaken statements about addiction. You also assume that my comments affect Richard negatively and that your response will have some sort of soothing effect. My assumption is completely the opposite: Richard cares nothing about you, me, or anyone else here on FFL. See my original post for why I think this way. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : I thought your post about Richard was somewhat cruel, and I was trying to soften the impact so that Serious Richard might feel a little less unwelcome here. You are of course correct about a difference between routine behaviors and addiction. But I am unconvinced that Serious Richard is any more addicted to posting to FFL than a number of other posters here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jamesalan735@...> wrote : Feste, Your response has many inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions, many of which arise from your lack of understanding of what addiction is: Routine activities - 'things we like to do on a regular basis' - are not addictions, and your statement that they are is complete nonsense. In this statement alone, you lose all credibility. You have no understanding of what constitutes addiction. Your notion that assessing or recognizing a behavior is an addiction as being 'mean-spirited' is again, quite simply, nonsense. Apart from assigning to me a motivation that I don't have, your statement indicates that your perceptions of addiction (likely unacknowledged on your part) are that addiction is a moral failing or is being used as a 'put down'. You live in Fairfield. Considering events in FF over the last few years. I suggest to you that you examine such perceptions, and to put it bluntly, that you gain some rudimentary knowledge and see both how incorrect and offensive these perceptions are. In fact, if you care to read Serious Richard's posts, you will surely see they are intelligent and well thought out. Not surprisingly, I disagree with you that Richard's posts have been 'intelligent and well thought out'. However, more revealing to me is your arrogant assumption that I have not read them. Do you really think I would comment about someone's posts if I hadn't read them? No, I dont think that you do. But this is in line with your assignment of 'mean-spirited' motivations to Michael, Barry, me, and others when we have made comments that you do not like. Feel free to assign whatever motivations you want to me (FFL is the perfect place for this). But don't try to dress it up in some kind of discussion about the nature of addiction, about which your perspective is completely flawed. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : You can call it addiction if you want to be mean-spirited. Most of us have addictions of some kind or another. We can also think of them simply as our routine—things we like to do on a regular basis. In that sense I am addicted to checking my email, playing Lexulous on Facebook, checking into Fairfield Life, and a number of other things. Serious Richard's so-called addiction is no more pronounced than that of many other posters here, who say the same dreary old things day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.In fact, if you care to read Serious Richard's posts, you will surely see they are intelligent and well thought out. But of course, give a dog a bad name and hang him, that's the name of the game here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jamesalan735@...> wrote : And so Richard is back, and here is my prediction of how his behaviors will play out. Richard will continue to exhibit classic behaviors of a person with an addiction. As I noted in a previous post (included below), he is (and clearly was, prior to his banning) unable to control his behavior here. Asking an addict to control his behavior, or giving him a 'second chance', or asking him to modify his behavior is pointless. That is, each of these alternatives has a 0% chance of success. Because, truthfully, one is not asking the addict - one is asking the addiction. And addictions do not respond to reason, to pleading, to being asked nicely, to being ignored, or to being argued with. An addiction can only respond to whatever the addict needs in order to get high. Nothing else matters. This is true across all kinds of addiction, whether to substances or behaviors. So to stop the addictive behavior one takes away the means to get high - there is no other way. When deprived of the opportunity to get a high, addicts will engage in whatever behaviors they can in order to get the high their mind-body system needs. These behaviors obviously differ among addictions, but they have the following characteristics (among others): manipulation, playing the victim, and minimizing. In Richard's case, this behavior has been to write to Rick to "let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me and I wanted to post a few replies." This sentence is a textbook example of the above three characteristics of addict behavior: manipulation and playing the victim ('let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me'), and minimizing ('I wanted to post a few replies'). And so Richard is back and, within a relatively short period of time, his behavior will be exactly the same as it was previously. It cannot be stopped by Richard, no matter how much we might like that to be the case. It will only be stopped by him being banned again. It is not that Richard can choose to leave FFL or change the character of his posts: Richard cannot not post on FFL**. To put it another way: If in the very unlikely event that Richard decided that he would like to stop posting or change the nature of his posts, he wouldn't be able to do so. Even if no one FFL were never to interact with him or refer to him from this moment on, he will continue to troll the group. Rick let me subscribe to the group because some informants were still talking about me and I wanted to post a few replies.So, I promised not to out anyone's real name - now this is funny - since I subscribed three people in the group have outed me. You can't make this stuff up, Alex. LoL! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <j_alexander_stanley@...> wrote : Don't look at me. When I saw the subscription request, I left it for Rick to handle. Richard made no attempt to conceal his identity, so Rick approved the subscription, knowing fully well who it is. Rick's kind of a softie about stuff like that; after some period of time, he usually lets people back in. Years ago, there was another person who was far more deserving of being permanently booted, and Rick even let him back in. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Rick or Alex, If memory serves this arsehole has been barred from posting. Please send him back to wherever he's been dragging out his miserable existence since he last wasted everyone's time here.
