Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: List Culture and The FFL Post Count

[dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]]

“2. Don't be unkind. Exploitative or degrading comments are not welcome in 
Groups. Also not welcome are belligerence, insults, slurs, profanity or 
ranting.” Exploitative, especially: unfairly or cynically using another person 
or group for profit or advantage;
 to use selfishly for one's own ends.
 Degrading: causing a loss of self-respect; humiliating
 Belligerence: a warlike or aggressively hostile nature, condition, or attitude.
 Insult: to speak to or treat with disrespect or scornful abuse. A 
disrespectful or scornfully abusive remark or action. An insult is an 
expression, statement (or sometimes behavior) which is disrespectful or 
scornful.
 Slur: an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them 
or damage their reputation.
 Profanity: abusive, vulgar, or irreverent. 
 To Rant,  to speak or declaim extravagantly or violently; talk in a wild 
over-vehement way; rave.Keep your content relevant to the group and moderate it 
correctly. “Don't be unkind”. We depend on each member to help keep it [FFL] a 
safe, fun, and positive place for everyone. Yahoo Groups, in its sole 
discretion, may terminate or remove any content, Group or your Yahoo ID 
immediately and without notice if (a) Yahoo believes that you have acted 
inconsistently with the spirit or the letter of the Yahoo Terms of Service or 
the Yahoo Groups Guidelines, or (b) Yahoo believes you have violated or tried 
to violate the rights of others. Please help us keep Yahoo Groups an enjoyable 
and positive experience. If you see a Group or content that violates our rules, 
please let us know by contacting us [..yahoo-groups]. Some people evidently are 
not amenable to group collaborations which it seems is why groups, 
organizations or larger society may well protect and preserve themselves for 
the utility and well-being of their larger membership by removing or separating 
destructive asocial members.There is good reason to lack trust in collaboration 
on FFL at Yahoo-groups by what has been allowed to become a dominant culture of 
a few here. Of a fear of getting needlessly ensnared by any participation of 
putting ones thoughts and self forward. Folks generally are denied the 
opportunity to think together with good people on FFL for all the snark of the 
ad hominem attack.It takes skills and practice to see discussion as thinking 
but it takes allies of kindness to think together creatively. For the 
engagement within a group [FFL] to be effective there need be folks and a 
moderation willing and able to stand up to bullies who would destroy forum, to 
have a thinking forum.Truth evidently won't 'set us free' until we have the 
courage, skills, habit and moral courage to kindly explore it. There evidently 
are few allies of civil discourse on FFL and Rick Archer in moderation is 
seldom here to evenly protect civil discourse. Kind thoughtful discussion is up 
to the folks left here to seize if it can be had at all. Kind discourse has 
been 'thrown to the dogs' on FFL to tear up by a lack of moderation let alone 
any self-control.The bullies have run most wild here unchecked because nice 
people were not protected and thoughtful folks often inside are afraid of 
embroiling mean conflict upon themselves enough to invest in it, ..in provoking 
the bullying..“For the record, I apologize for nothing. Rien. Nada. Nichevo. 
Bupkus. I meant everything I've ever said here, and stand by it fully.”In 
thinking together, people often may fail in process of creative thought out of 
fears to extend themselves individually in to the collective, for fear of 
engaging with evidently untrustworthy folks. Engagement that may provoke 
unfriendly embroilment which potentially might be brought on to themselves by 
stepping forward in conversation. 'Thinking as process' takes skills and 
practice to see dissonances as thinking and get good at it, to get beyond ego 
and not let it get out of control. Too many of the writers in character writing 
here derail creative thinking on FFL by their default to the assault of the 
personal invective instead of just commenting on a substance of the material 
brought. That abusive character has been really unfortunate for the larger FFL 
community.The challenge of FFL as a forum community is to find constructive 
ways of engaging with people. That takes kindness, tolerance and patience as 
skillsets and practice to be able to think together and be creative, to look at 
and solve problems together. FFL is a long ways from that by a grip of vice of 
some folks who dominate FFL.Collaborating in 'Disconfirmation': seeking 
different ways of looking at models, of 'thinking' in constructive 
conflict.Thoughtful conversation seems a willing kind collaborative, a kind 
cooperative 'process in disconfirmation'. By contrast a trust in kindness as 
element has been driven out of Fairfieldlife at Yahoo-groups by a dominant 
methodical use of personal invective in the ad hominem used as weapon to 
personally hurt people here.Collaboration in a type of, Love? In kindness to a 
creative process?Quite evidently thoughtful conversation takes a civil kind 
collaboration in self-control to have productive conversation. Some have done 
their poisonous work here with the communal well-spring.Collaboration? Could 
many folks dare at all to publicly disagree here on FFL anymore given the lack 
of self-restraint in the culture that remains on FFL? What is mostly missing 
now from the dominant FFL writing is a kindness to process, a love enough of 
collaboration that seems necessary enough for there to be creative thinking 
between people. Instead what we have is a culture of rudeness that has long 
interrupted the communal thinking here and driven people away.The cultural 
place that was FFL seems to have been poisoned. The place evidently has died 
for lack of a willing collaboration as an oxygen that could include other 
points of view other than some caustic character of dominant internet haters 
and personalities in method. The cost to FairfieldLife at Yahoo-groups has been 
the loss of a forum for communal thinking.A pervasive unkindness in ad 
hominem-istic snark parading as 'intellectual retort', it's the dominant 
'culture' here at FFL now, as the evident lack in thoughtful community culture 
here. Folks otherwise have come instead to fear to spend their time thinking 
here reading let alone posting here.  It is a sad commentary on how it has gone 
down for FFL. Many of the writers left here have in many ways become the people 
they revile, bullies like they see Bevan or others in the movement 
community.Salon, saloon or shalom; who would enter in to a place met with the 
likes of, “You Suck..” or “Fuck you” as first text lines or “You lying Fuck” as 
a subject heading? MJ, there was a long period of a poisonous malignancy here 
in the postings between a few people who came on before you came along and 
added to it in your way. FFL is just not a safe place for well-meaning people 
to loiter or join in hence most folks wandered out. Meditators and people 
around Fairfield here always go 'whew-phew' and roll their eyes about the 
reputation of FFL as a place for thoughtful dialogue whence FFL gets mentioned. 
FFL got wrecked a while ago as a community place that way. mjackson74 wrote, 
well Buck how do you account for the departure of all the people who used to 
post on FFL in the years before I joined? Looking back at the archives, there 
were a whole bunch of folk who had already dropped out before I came along, so 
the fact that Judy, Anne, Jimmy the Enlightened and Nappy Nabby jumped ship 
does not seem to be that much of a recent trend.Yep, even Rick chooses to post 
substantial material elsewhere now instead of posting to FFL as to just 
shark-feeding for what is left remaining of FFL. A long list of people is now 
gone before us who had once helped further the culture of the list, mostly been 
driven off by an aggressive and appalling unkindness of culture in the ongoing 
personal shark-like attack by the ad hominem that evidently has become endemic 
here; that seeming 'professionals' default to use in their writing method 
instead of simply dealing with material posed. And those same complain about 
originality, thinking and lack of creativity..Nothing to see here folks. Just 
another person trying to blame the fact that he and the people he likes can't 
think of anything intelligent to say on the people they don't like.  :-)Good 
timing, Turqb,Left or driven off?  This as your thinking is fine as intelligent 
retort on one level Anartaxius except, the low post and dwindled active member 
counts may show something else.Looking in on the culture of what is FFL now, is 
it a surprise the numbers have dropped off when there is so much about 
Fairfield or larger spiritual matter being talked about otherwise by others 
actively involved in it? No, it is like the well was poisoned here by 
some.Ironically there is an evident invective that is intolerance to 
conversation here and to divergent idea by a concentration of some few who 
remain active posting here.If could be we are just getting on with our lives. 
Now that most of the TB crazies have left, some of the tart, sharp conversation 
has dwindled, and there are less opportunities for intelligent retorts. I think 
you would have welcomed the change. 'Intelligent retort'?We've not been very 
good at discussion here for some time on FFL and the place as a forum is nearly 
dead.Yep, visiting looking back in on Fairfieldlife at yahoo-groups evidently 
this is mostly a sad inhospitable place rendered down to some pulp substance of 
travelogue, movie reviews and the personal bickerings of a few.  Om, for what 
once was Fairfieldlife,Sooooooooooo, turns out that there WERE ZERO posts since 
last night.Just another tell that FFL is going down for the count.