--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm seeing 38 posts for Judy and 37 for Shemp, and we've got > one day to go. Yahoo has been sending some duplicate emails, > so if you're certain of a more accurate count, you may be > within the limit, but you must be getting close.
Speaking as a former skeptic about the 35 posts per week limit, I have to speak up as a supporter of it now. And for an interesting spiritual reason. It emphasizes the desirability of being able to live in the present and not the past. Suppose that a poster is...uh...a tad uncontrolled in their posting habits, and feels somewhat of an... uh...compulsion to answer or "refute" any post that contains ideas counter to their own. Further suppose that this poster exceeds the limit one week, and therefore has to spend a whole day or more *not* compulsively answering and "refuting" the posts made on the day that he is unable to post. What happens? Well, he builds up a "refuting deficit," a "posting gap." If his nature is to always answer and "refute" all posts that challenge his viewpoints, and is unable to do so in "real time," he's going to "have" to answer and refute the offending posts the next time he is allowed to post. Suppose on that last day of the former week, the day he can't post, other posters here make ten such "offending" posts, posts that in his mind just *scream* to be answered and "refuted." Well, these posts just "have" to be answered, don't they? It's the compulsive poster's "duty" to answer and refute them. So the new week starts, and the compulsive, can't- get-over-the-past posters who exceeded their limits the week before just "have" to answer them. Say there were ten such posts made on the last day of the previous week that just scream for a reply. Well, the poster who has previously gone over his limit will "have" to answer them the next week, first thing, leaving him with only 25 more posts that he can make in "real time," that deal with issues happening in the present. Having exhibited a lack of control once, there is a strong chance that the compulsive poster will then exceed his limit *again* the next week, this time probably on Wednesday rather than Thursday. So what happens then? The compulsive poster has to sit there and not respond to maybe 20 new real-time posts made at the end of the week. These posts, and the ideas contained in them, will eat away at them so much that, come the *next* week, they'll have to answer *them* as well, leaving them with only 15 "real-time" posts that they can make that week. And the next week, only 5. And the week after that, perhaps no real-time posts at all. See the beauty of it all? The compulsive posters are now caught in a cycle of their own design, cutting down on the number of real-time, Here And Now posts that they *can* reply to each succeeding week, effectively silencing themselves. :-) And what will happen if they actually realize this, or if someone tips them off ahead of time to the cycle they're caught in? :-) Well, they'll probably try to put several of their compulsive replies in one long post, *so* long that no one here will even bother to read it. Again, silencing themselves. It's a great system in my opinion. Those who can exercise some modicum of control with regard to their posting habits never have to deal with this cycle, and get to live in the Here And Now. Those who cannot get caught in a compulsive cycle of living in the past, and get to live in the past. Everyone gets to play using the same rules, on a footing of total equality of expression. And only the ones who cannot control the frequency of their expression suffer from it. Great idea, Rick, and those others here who thought it up.
