Taomeow

You are describing the static state, wuji. In the motion aspect of tao, they do create one another, but it's easier to understand if you don't think of "elements" but rather of "phases of qi" or "moments in the process." The Metal moment is solid metal only for a fraction of the whole Metal phase of the cosmic process of qi-in-motion. Melt it with Fire (Fire Controls Metal) and you have your liquid flow as a pattern of motion of this type of qi. Metal does not generate physical water as readily for observation as Wood generates Fire, but Metal phase of qi generates the fluid-flowing-liquid manifestations of qi, the attributes that then find their full expression in the next phase, Water.

What a neat description, Forest. I would add that the most dangerous thing about zombies always attacking in large numbers is that ordinary people, non-zombie but merely socially conditionable, as our species is by default (not always fair to call it "herd mentality"), will often follow their lead and join the side of the zombies whenever they see a crowd forming for whatever purpose. If a crowd supports it, it must be right. "The majority is always wrong." -- Nabokov

I'm all for rants, AM. But those are also the prime candidates for eventually turning into periods IMO. With a rant, timing is everything. Who would want to preserve at a forum, for everyone to see for all eternity, a rant about too many horses defiling the streets of Paris, London and New York with too much manure?.. And they used to rant about it in newspapers all the time! And as my son put it, "the only difference between a rant and an essay is punctuation." And who's to say that punctuation can't be reduced to one point? Sometimes it doesn't take more to make a point. Especially after it has already been made and has grown old.

If a post manifested and then reverted to wuji, from the taoist perspective it's tao. "To and fro goes the Way." And don't forget those buddhist monks who spend months on end working dawn to dusk, creating an amazing mandala in colored sand, and then take a broom and sweep it away in one whoosh.

To disallow it is stealing. Happened to me twice in the past. You have a falling out with whoever is in tech charge, they lock you out. All your context becomes theirs, you can't remove it, reclaim it, or stop them from plagiarizing it and using it as their own. Which they promptly did. Disgusting to the max. To jam an ownership stake into someone else's creative property, the outcome of their investing time, perhaps money into training, perhaps sweat and tears into arriving at this particular bit of creative offering -- to grab it and claim any ownership rights over it -- "it's not yours anymore -- the moment I saw it, it became mine, yes, just because you weren't paranoid enough to protect it by never showing it to anyone, it's now mine, na na na na! I want to grab what's yours and make it mine instead, and you can't do anything about it!" -- this form of stealing is not punishable by law (at least not yet, it may change, who knows -- intellectual property rights are in constant flux in the age of social media), but morally, it stinks to high heaven right now. If some people are not comfortable with being unable to grab and/or arrest what's not theirs at a forum and call it "their" property, why don't they go all the way. Steal a car, rob a bank. Pick a pocket at least, for chrissake. Too chicken for that, huh. But not too chicken to steal from me and gallop into the sunset on your high horse?.. Go steal a stick of gum. Relieve yourself. It cost less to the manufacturer than a post of mine cost to me, or anyone else's, to them.

What dog sled days of winter? We had no winter this year, not even the so-called SoCal winter. Everybody complained. "Too hot." Too hot in January, too hot in February. Can't please 'em no matter what you give 'em. At least it's comforting to know that it means nothing at all -- happened before, will happen again -- for lo, the Chinese just completed a largest scale climate study that showed the North Pole is gaining (not losing) ice at a record rate and we shouldn't be worrying about the global warming, per their data, instead we should be worrying about the new ice age that's almost upon us. (Here's an example of a subject where the OP would want total control -- or else there would be no end to bickering. No end till the end of the coming ice age. ) The prerequisite for a successful anarchy IS tight control of some fundamental foundational principle. An example is gravity. It is totalitarian. If you don't like it, go to outer space. But this is the world where everything you are free to do, you are free to do because this ironclad totalitarian law is always in place. So you don't worry when you buy a house that it will fly away. And you don't worry that your wonderfully reliable car will free-fall up the hill and away from you in an unpredictable direction. This kind of a rule. ONE rule, no more. But one ironclad rule. No exceptions. The difference between this proposed section and the PPF is that PPF is about what's of interest to a particular owner. I post a lot of notes for myself there regarding Chen taiji, e.g.. No one will read it who is not practicing that. So the audience for a PPF is very limited. But this section would have all subjects -- and each and every one of them would be safe for the OP to explore, no one will have the right to challenge anything there, at the penalty of instant and permanent ban if the OP so chooses. I don't know if it's doable technically but if it was, I would give each OP the mod controls in this section, just like in the PPF, but for purposes of the thread you create only. Oh, and of course anything that is against the rules of the forum in general would be still moderated by the regular mods. E.g. no one would be allowed to start a thread dedicated to harassing, belittling, attacking, or threatening another member.

That's the idea. Put a wall in the way and the whole stampede will go elsewhere to trample something else. Can't stop the stampede, but can keep it out of a stronghold maybe?

Someone's freedom to do anything that's a free choice always inconveniences someone else. My cat sits in my chair right now. I want that chair for myself. Do I delete remove the cat? Convenient for me, inconvenient for the cat. No way around it. Someone has started an argument in my thread. I have no time and patience to engage. I can't tell them to shut up. Do I delete my thread or do I shut up and look like I've nothing to say, making them right by default, as the last man standing, whereas I think they're wrong, but don't have the time or desire to argue my position any further -- yet don't want it to look as though they've pronounced their last triumphant word (because from where I'm looking they're full of shit, last word or not?) Oh, there's one more option. Delete my post. Leave them hanging with their triumph. Inconvenience them. If I can do it to my beloved cat, I sure can do it to them. Gandhi used to inconvenience the British with nonaction. Deleting posts can be many things, including peaceful protest, reversing an action to turn it into nonaction as a form of resistance. Or it can be a whim. The cat doesn't have to be in my chair, he could have chosen not to get in my chair to begin with, knowing he's been removed thence many times before. But he chooses to inconvenience me. So I choose to inconvenience him. As long as no one uses brute force (like gluing the cat to the chair so the decision once made to take that spot can't be reversed -- or gluing me to the chair so the cat can never inconvenience me anymore, I'll drag the chair on my ass for all eternity rather than let him... no wait... not very convenient either, come to think of it?..) So... I say, let them inconvenience, annoy, etc. -- it can't be avoided and it can be taken in stride, with minimal effort on one's part. But don't glue them to the chair.

For me personally, it's going to be the last experiment. Forums may have outlived their usefulness and do not justify the expenditures of shen anymore. Not just this forum, but the whole forum culture may be suffering from -- well, I'll leave it to your imagination what I have come to feel it's suffering from. So, if the format can't be changed to reinvent this usefulness once again, it may no longer be useful at all from my perspective. Example of what I mean: there were misogynistic threads in the general section, and then talk about the need for a safe haven for women to discuss their stuff, resulting in the creation of the Women's cultivation forum, resulting in more misogynistic threads -- and some women accustomed to cultivating the art of deferring to misogyny by all their prior training promptly welcomed them. What is a woman who was looking for a safe haven to conclude? That it ain't it. Before that: the Taoist forum was created, for the specific purpose of taoists not having to argue, defend, prove, etc, THEIR thing. Look at it now. Ain't it. So, what does someone do who wants to explore and share but doesn't want to argue, defend, prove, much less get attacked? Try something different -- or if that doesn't work, call it quits. So, if this never takes off, or fails right away, I won't be surprised. Most alpha tests do.

The whole point of the section, Marblehead, would be that if you disagree, the world is your oyster -- everybody disagrees with everybody everywhere, no need to search high and low for a place where people will come to bicker and argue. But this is conceived of as a separate and sovereign state apart from the world of discord. You are free to disagree and argue -- anywhere beyond its borders. Within its borders, all freedoms are allowed except the freedom to encroach on someone else's freedom. Someone else's freedom of expression will be granted as absolute freedom, free from the need to defend it. Challenging it in any manner for any purposes would be forbidden. And nothing else.

Let people control how they handle their own minds. Some people change their mind sometimes. Some do it often. Let them. Explore why yours reacts to that a certain way, instead of asking them to adjust theirs to your specs. More mileage in the long run.

.

.

.

.

Most definitely not dishonest -- just on the run, in response to a picture of someone afflicted with smallpox posted as an argument. The more thorough approach, to avoid pages of reaction to the indirect rather than direct link between the two (and the indirect link is undeniable, but takes work to sort out, which by your own admission you don't have the incentives to invest -- lucky you, I wouldn't have if I didn't have to as well) -- I agree, a picture of reactions to vaccines would have been a better picture in response to that ill-conceived manipulative appeal to human irrational horror posted by ralis (what does a picture of what smallpox looks like have to do with the discussion as to whether vaccines helped conquer it or it conquered itself, temporarily, appearing and disappearing as it did many hundreds of times throughout history -- and vaccines jumped on the bandwagon of its declining slope?) But you're right, my expectations of a more extended investigation of the link were way too optimistic, if you don't have your back against the wall (as I did when I had to start investigating), you won't bother. So it would have been wiser for me to have posted pictures of reactions to vaccines instead. Don't appreciate or deserve the "dishonest" assessment, but let me correct "on the run and too optimistic":

.

.

Would you believe me if I told you that there and then, where and when I went to school, not only was my education free, but the university actually paid me a stipend. You had to maintain the equivalent of B average (and no Cs) to get that, and if you had the equivalent of straight As, your stipend was increased. I almost always got the increased variety, for five years. Very non-useless money for a poor student girl who liked to party. Good old totalitarian days...

.

,

.

.

.

.