wandelaar

Original Dao slowly died out. Some followed Starjumper when he left to start his own forum, others just stopped posting long ago. There may be some 10 or even less ex-members of Original Dao willing to (re)join this forum. Don't expect an invasion. ;-)

Well - apparently you prefer to reason about what happened on Original Dao on the basis of your own preconceptions instead of on the basis of facts and reports of those who were actually there. Did you bother to look at the Original Dao forum to see what kind of site it was? Do you seriously think that a spiritual forum can thrive with only a few active members left? However I trust that my description of what happened to Original Dao will be of use to some others who are more interested in finding out the truth than in waging ideological wars.

But that isn't what happened. There was some discussion before the owner decided to close the site as to how to revitalize the forum. And at that point some members proposed to allow politics in the public part of the forum, others including me disagreed as this was not how the site was supposed to operate. After much thought the owner decided that he would rather close the site than allow politics on the public spiritual part of the forum. So the public spiritual part of the forum died of its own accord, it wasn't killed by the hidden political subforum. Indeed at the end some members tried to politicize the forum but didn't succeed. But the public spiritual part of the forum at that point was almost dead already. - My own guess is that Original Dao simply wasn't big enough to continually generate interesting spiritual discussions: with only a few people around you eventually reach a point where everything has been said.

There are probably one or two members of Original Dao who could cause trouble because of their political extremism, but most members were perfectly capable of civilized discussion as one can see by looking at the public spiritual part of Original Dao. So yes - one has to be careful, but not much more careful than one has to be anyhow in these times of political polarization and upheaval. Besides so much active members of Original Dao weren't left lately, so even if they would all want to come back it wouldn't be the hordes that some are expecting.

The reason Original Dao is closing is not the set up with a separate hidden part for politics, but the fact that the activity on the public spiritual part of the forum gradually died out, while the activity on the hidden political part remained. But the hidden part was meant as a relatively unimportant side project for those interested in politics, and not as the main goal of the Original Dao forum which was discussing spirituality and in particular Taoism. The reasons it is closing can be read on the site while it is still in the air. Those who think that the spiritual public part of Original Dao was a place of untethered abuse should take a look while the site is still in the air to see for themselves. For the hidden political part I cannot speak as I didn't visit it.

Very good! Then I will stay out of it, just as I did on Original Dao.

Is the political part also hidden here? On Original Dao I deliberately never visited the political part because with all the polarization going on particularly in the US I have grown tired of political debates.

On Original Dao political discussions were only allowed in a hidden part of the forum. The discussions on the public part were generally civilized and informative. I understand that in this place also political discussions have now been moved to a special part of the forum?

I'm one of the wandering souls at the moment, I don't yet know what to do now Original Dao is closing. Original Dao was a great place to be but unhappily it slowly ran out of spiritual steam. Anyway I greatly appreciate the above post. We will see what happens.

What pronunciation is used in the academic study and discussion of Classical Chinese texts such as the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang tzu?

Don't know. I'm no longer active on this website.

In the Chuang tzu we read: What does that mean?

I personally don't think that general relativity is a pseudoscience but lets see why Taoist Texts thinks it is. So Taoist Texts go ahead and tell us what makes general relativity theory a pseudoscience.

I wonder what all this has to do with Marblehead or with Taoism. Please keep such relational stuff private. One can best deal with that by means of personal messages.

Happy to see David Hume mentioned here.

I think that Mablehead's position on life after death was that he didn't think it likely (on the basis of his materialist leanings), but that he wasn't absolutely sure about it. All much in the spirit of the Chuang tse.

The kind of survival of death that Marblehead would have accepted is the survival of the memory of who he was and the way (some of) his ideas and approach have taken root in us.

There is something to be said for that. Surely every human-made model of the world is flawed in some way or another. So why not just acknowledge that ones own position is flawed also. Discordianism looks like an interesting position to ponder. Can you recommend a particular book about it? But that's the problematic twist: if you hold on to a position that you know to be wrong you might not only hurt yourself, but others also as "collateral damage". Why? Because basing your decisions on a wrong idea about how the world functions might easily lead to dangerous and unhealthy action.

@ Manitou Thanks! @ Limahong Clear! So Marblehead really considered it OK to be knowingly wrong, or at least to refuse to consider evidence that might prove him wrong. I remember discussing quantum mechanics with him, and how he refused to reconsider his naive causal materialism in light of (if I remember correctly) the double slit experiment. To me it is hard to swallow when somebody refuses to change a provably false position when confronted with a refutation, even if that someone was Marblehead. But perhaps there is something to say for his claimed right to be wrong? I would be guilty of the same stubbornness if I wasn't ready to listen to argument in favour of Marblehead's motto. - Anybody?

Thank you. For the rest - Apech and others have already said it better then I could.

The worldview of a fanatic: The world is rotten and I know what is wrong with it. So I am justified in forcing my opinions onto others, because I know what has to be done. Furthermore those who disagree with me must be stupid, mentally ill or morally depraved for not seeing the truth as I do. Therefore I don't care about the feelings or opinions of those who dare to oppose me. I will not stop to do the right thing till justice is done! Left, right or religious - what does it matter...

Good! The above post by liminal_luke is much better than what I had in mind for Sean. So I will just say that I agree with liminal-luke.

The result of all this will be that still more Bums who hate fanaticism of whatever kind will permanently leave this place.

Politics is the one and only thing we greatly disagreed about, but this was no problem to him. Good to remember that the chasm can be bridged in these times of heavy polarization.