liminal_luke

Something I wrote in my journal yesterday which may be apropo... I often judge the value of a practice by how much subjective pleasure it gives me, or whether or not it faciliates an intense peak experience. And I’m questioning whether these are good criteria. Practices often follow certain rhythms and there are times when benefits are not readily apparent or at least not dramatic. During these times I’m often tempted to quit and yet I think it’s possible that these times are actually, ironically especially potent. Maybe the secret is to embrace boredom. To recognize those times when it’s hard to persevere as being especially valuable, as presenting uncommon opportunity.

This answer reminded me of a snippet from shame researcher Brene Brown's TedTalk on vulnerability. She tells the story of her first appointment with a therapist. After briefly describing her reasons for seeking help, Brene has the following exchange... Brene: It's bad, right? Therapist: It's neither good nor bad. It just is what it is. Brene: Oh my God, this is going to suck.

Most people and cultures have a moral code, a deep sense that some actions are right and others wrong. We may disagree about the nature of right and wrong actions, but we tend to agree that there is such a thing as right and wrong. When asked to define pornography in 1964, US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said "I know it when I see it." That's how I feel about evil. Personally, I'm not OK with the murder of human beings but am OK knowing that other animals and plants die so that I can live. I'm not OK with the death penalty but am OK with women who choose to have abortions (as emotionally complicated as that choice may be). I'm OK with people in terrible pain deciding to end their own lives. Other Bums doubtless think differently. If I did something deeply against my own moral code (like kill someone) I'd probably vomit. Throwing up is a good barometer of evil, a sure sign that my body is unable to assimilate my actions. The world would be a much better place if everybody just avoided doing things that made them want to upchuck. That would be a good place to start. I believe that evil fragments and good unifies. Daoist teachers I've listened to have used phrases like "the mind becoming one with the heart." They've talked about the 3 dan tiens coming together. I think there's something about this coming together process that transcends cultural differences. If I do something and it tears me apart, I'm probably on the wrong track. If doing something allows for more integration and unification, it's probably not so bad. This is how I judge.

Spirituality is what you turn to when you've run out of other options.

Had the thought the other day that maybe what people think of as "enlightenment" or the non-experience of non-duality is really the same thing as the end point of taoist alchemy. What do people think? When yin and yang are "cooked" by putting various fiery essences under a big pot of yin essence is the steam that emerges the same "thing" as non-duality? Are "merging with the tao" and the recognition of "self" as pure awareness just different ways of talking about the same thing?

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Me too. Thanks!

No glove, no love?

At the risk of beating a very dead horse, I´ve been asking myself two questions. (1) Do the staff members who favor this new COVID discussion rule believe that the vaccines are "safe and effective" or at least that their benefits outweigh their risks? @Trunk can correct me if I´m wrong but I believe the answer is yes. (2) Would staff feel the need for this rule change if they did not have this belief that the vaccines are a public health good? I doubt it. The new rule is crafted in a very careful and intelligent way so that it appears to be value neutral. Reading the text of the rule, one can´t say that forum staff are favoring one specific view of the pandemic over another because the policy applies equally to all Covid related ppd threads. Here´s the thing though: the membership of the Bums are a particularly perceptive bunch. Not much gets by us. And the two Bums who this ruling most directly effects are arguably more perceptive than most. No amount of careful wording can disguise the fact that forum staff is, in fact, taking a position here on Covid public health policy and using their powers to advance a particular view. Of course staff members are people too and it´s natural and right that they have their opinions just like the rest of us. What´s a bit irksome however, at least to some of us who don´t share the conventional view, is that these positions are allowed to color the way the forum is run. That said, I know this is a very difficult issue and everyone, including most especially forum staff, is just trying their best to get through it all as kindly and responsibly as possible. Perhaps this whole issue is settled but I just wanted to share my thoughts.

Lots of great ideas here. The tricky part is often that works for one person might not work for another. We´re all so individual. I like to try things and see. One unusual suggestion I´ve played with is mouth taping before sleep, putting a piece of surgical tape over my lips to encourage nose breathing.

Hi Steve, I´m sad and surprised to hear you´re leaving the mod team. My understanding of impermanence could use some shoring up because in my mind you were the Forever Mod. But of course that´s not true for any of us, and perhaps it´s for the best that we weave in and out of various roles, on the forum and in life. Yueya´s observations are often piercingly apt and this last one is no exception: you´ve been "a huge stabilizing influence on the forum." Modding is hard work. It takes considerable emotional energy to stand steady as the winds of public opinion blow all about (or at least that was my experience during my stint). But whatever individual Bums might think of particular modding decisions, what´s obvious to all has been the goodwill, seriousness, hardwork, and sense of responsibility you´ve brought to the job. It was an honor to work with you for awhile. I hope this new phase as a regular member proves to be peaceful and restorative.

I´ve been remarkably strong when it comes to resisting the Covid vaccines; not so strong when it comes to resisting apple fritters. Ya can´t win them all.

Hi zerostao, So true! The great majority of us have suffered losses of one sort or another. Some losses are obvious, others hidden and overlooked. I am sorry for your loss, whatever it may be. Some of us have lost our health. Some of us have been traumatized or burdened watching as loved ones lose their health. Some of us have been bereaved. We are unemployed, financially strapped, isolated and lonely. We are angry and afraid. A few of us feel as though we are living through a dystopian movie that will end with the extinction of our species. That´s painful. Some of us have missed graduations and proms. Weddings have been cancelled, travel curtailed. Families have been torn apart as people find themselves unable to bridge differences of opinion about vaccines and masks and social distancing. Some of us have grown more depressed and more anxious. Many of us have gained weight. There should be a 12 step group for people who have been hurt by Covid. Hi, I´m Luke and I´ve suffered during the pandemic. I wish there was a semi-public space to speak out our collective grief. A place where we could take our traumatized, twisted-up, damaged selves and feel, finally, like we belong.

This morning I realized why this new rule bothers me so much: my feelings are hurt. Most people don´t realize how difficult it is, emotionally, to hold beliefs about the pandemic that are at odds with the mainstream view. It´s freakin´ hard! Reading the news, I´m bombarded with stories telling me that as an unvaccinated person I´m selfish and stupid, that unvaccinated people like myself are responsible for virus mutations and overcrowded hospitals and countless deaths. Prior to Covid, I never thought of myself as someone who would carelessly kill senior citizens and the immunocompromised. It´s been quite the adjustment to look at myself in the mirror through the eyes of media pundits -- not to mention my friends and relatives -- and see the face of a conspiracy theorist crank, and maybe even a psychopath, staring back. What happened to the nice guy that used to be me? It´s against this backdrop that I´m trying, not very successfully, to assimilate this latest forum policy change. What´s clear is that forum management has decided that people that think as I do are wrong and dangerous. This is just one more assault in a long line of assaults, the latest takedown of my character. I recognize that my feelings are not uppermost in most people´s minds at the moment. This policy is crafted to protect the physical health of Bums who the mods fear might make a bad decision based on something they read here. My delicate sensibilities don´t rate given our current state of emergency. I get it and I´ll be fine. I´ll focus on my own good qualities as I see them and try not to care so much about what people on the internet and President Biden think of me. Maybe I´ll take a break from the forum. Or not. So carry on protecting people from "misinformation." What else can you do? I just wanted to share a little bit more about what this is like for me.

It´s true that the rule is crafted to appear value neutral: it applies equally to all Covid ppd threads. It´s also true that "staff is not going around deleting posts that don´t fit their idea of truth." Nevertheless, the effect (and arguably the intention) of this ruling is to shut down discussion. Here´s why. At present the only Covid related ppd threads that get any appreciable traffic at all are those of Cheya and Taomeow, two Bums who have been critical of the mainstream approach to the pandemic. Trunk posted an announcement of this rule change in their their threads and the rule is clearly aimed at them. This rule creates two tiers of ppd ownership, a double standard. Cheya and Taomeow are only allowed to moderate their Covid threads under extreme peril -- a single misstep could result in an immediate and irreversible locking and pitting of what might amount to years of work. Everybody else gets to moderate their ppds at will. Imagine it was you that was subject to this unequal status. Would you be willing to continue putting out the time and effort it takes to create material that others find interesting and worth responding to? Likely not. Only a very specific kind of person -- submissive, insecure, comfortable with humiliation -- would accept such treatment without complaint. Neither Cheya nor Taomeow have what it takes, alas, to continue working under the new conditions. They´ve packed up their Covid threads. I´m hoping they don´t leave the forum altogether but time will tell. The foreseeable (and perhaps foreseen?) effect of this new ruling is that debate has been stifled. We´ve lost important contrarian voices at a time when contrarians are becoming an endangered species. So sad... (Later edit: I do want to acknowledge that the intent of this new ruling is to save lives. I appreciate that the moderators might feel as though they´re in something of a Covid pickle. As much as I disagree with the approach taken, I do appreciate the good intentions.)

As gobsmackingly wrongminded as it may seem to some, there are people who refuse the Covid vaccine out of compassion for others.

@Trunk Is a Bum allowed to have a Covid related thread in a ppd that is locked to all replies?

Civil discussion isn´t easy. The Trump-Talk era here on the board was difficult for me because some of the more right-wing members were openly dismissive and demeaning of members who shared opinions at odds with their own. In a way, I was glad when Sean arrived with his communist/anarchist sledgehammer and busted up the place. Previously timid leftists emerged from their burrows and did little happy dances; I was reassured to see that a person could be spiritual, even Taoist, without loving Trump. Still, looking back today, I miss some of the wiser, more measured conservative voices. I miss Brian, I miss RedCairo. I´m a free speech guy at heart and, with very limited exceptions, I think people should be able to say what they want. My free speech leanings put me somewhat at odds with the zeitgeist: in the name of combating "misinformation," many are increasingly in favor of censorship.

@Bindi To me, if someone says "vaccines make you gay" -- that´s homophobic. So I guess what I mean is the original material you found in the mostly LGBT sites was homophobic. The sites themselves may have quoted it in order to make fun (in poor taste, imo). Those sites are arguably not homophobic but they quoted (and you requoted) homophobic material. Did you make up the story that vaccines make you gay? You did not. But clearly the original writers of that thesis made it up. I think that´s what Cheya meant when she said that those stories were made up -- not that you made them up but that the religious leaders who originally wrote them made them up. For what it´s worth (not that you should care about my opinion), I don´t think you´re a bad person, Bindi. I appreciate that you are trying to counter what you see as "misinformation." I think you´re smart and scientifically astute. But the posting of the vaccine-makes-you-gay material feels, at best, a little tit-for-tat. You may not mean it in a snarky way but it does come off that way. In my eyes, a ppd is kind of like a person´s home. The rest of the forum is more like a public square, occasionally like a rowdy sports bar, but a person´s ppd is their own little corner of the forum where they can decorate things to their liking and put their feet up. If you came into my home and told me that I wasn´t very intelligent (didn´t know how to interpret data) and started bringing up bizarre homophobic analogies, I might ask you to leave. My objection to the current rule is that it makes Cheya and Taomeow (and anybody else who starts a covid related ppd thread) into a kind of second class citizen. Everybody else gets to have a ppd home with a sturdy door that locks, while they are forced to stand by while anybody and everybody, however rude, walks through their place. They don´t dare take any kind of action to stand up for themselves because doing so could be interpreted as a "first offense" by the mod team and lead to immediate punative action with no opportunity for dialogue or recourse. It´s not surprising that they´ve hidden their threads; that´s what anybody with a modicum of self-respect in this situation would do. Some may be happy to see those threads go but it makes me sad. I think we´re missing out on a lot of good thinking and useful information. This is all very unfortunate.

@Bindi For fairness sake, I´ll say a few things in your favor I believe to be true... * I don´t believe you personally are homophobic. I think you linked to those sites with homophobic views in order to make a point. To me, it doesn´t matter much whether or not the sites were actually LGBT sites or not. * I think your analysis of Cheya´s article was correct. The conclusions it tried to make were erroneous as you pointed out. There´s room to debate whether your comments in Cheya´s thread are worthy of moderation or not but I found them snarky. The whole posting of the homophobic links to me feels a bit like a tantrum. I´m not privy to your mindstate at the time so I can´t actually say you were having a tantrum, but that´s the sense I get from reading. Saying "Do any of you actually know how to interpret data" is an insult. You might believe it´s an accurate assessment but it comes off as an insult. I believe if you had found a less emotionally combative way of making your points about the science Cheya would of continued to welcome your participation in the thread.

Ralis, I think you´ve put your finger on the exact issue at hand. As you say, the big social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, etc) have put forth considerable effort to ban what they take to be "Covid disinformation" from their platforms. The question I believe the moderation team is grappling with -- although they haven´t said as much -- is to what extent this forum should do the same. The logic that underlies "banning COVID disinformation" rests on some assumptions. Those who take it upon themselves to do such banning believe they are in possession of the truth. They believe the sources they get their information from are trustworthy, and other sources of information untrustworthy. Since they know what´s what and views contrary to their own can endanger lives, they feel justified shutting down the free flow of debate. I question these assumptions. Although I´m no expert, I think it´s possible that the big government health agencies aren´t giving the public a complete, truthful and nuanced accounting of what´s going on with the Pandemic. For this I´m labeled a "conspiracy theorist." People think I´m nuts. I don´t think I was crazy before all this started but I might be before it´s over.

Yes she did but only those that contained personal insults. Cheya allowed almost all of Bindi´s to stand whether she agreed with them or not, as long as they didn´t also contain insults. Bindi was not banned from the thread until she reposted homophobic links that the moderation team had already disallowed. Have any of your posts in Cheya´s threads been hidden, ralis? I think it safe to say that Cheya has disagreed with you on occasion but, to my memory, has not used her moderation powers to silence your views.

At the risk of being a royal pain in the nether regions, I´ll reach out one final time. Part of me wants to ask you to justify this latest ruling by posting an example of a blatant shutting down of opposing Covid opinion but I won´t do that because I don´t want to be "that guy." You´ve likely had enough of thinking and discussing this issue. You might even be ready to return to the demands of your (gasp) real life. I get it. So here´s the favor I´d ask instead. Would you be willing to privately consider whether there´s been any blatant shutting down of opposing Covid opinion? Have you found an example or two when a ppd owner of a Covid thread has hidden a post or banned a member who wasn´t also being insulting or throwing some sort of a tantrum? If not, I suggest that this ruling is creating a problem (and potentially more work for the moderation team) where none existed.

I know your heart is in the right place Trunk and I appreciate that. You don´t want someone to make a bad medical decision for themselves as a result of something they read here, especially given that such decisions could have lethal consequences. This situation feels so serious and so out of control that it´s tempting to do things we ordinarily wouldn´t (like impose rules on ppd moderation) in order to avoid contributing to the current catastrophe. I get it, I do. I understand how difficult it is to navigate this situation and that you and the rest of the moderation team are doing your best. That said, I urge you to reconsider this latest ruling. I don´t think the moderation team ought to be in the business of influencing the health decisions of the membership. Not even now. It may seem like you have a responsibility to combat what you might feel is "misinformation" but there is reasonable doubt as to what is true and what isn´t. You´ve mentioned that the moderators don´t have the energy to adjudicate all this and I totally agree -- they shouldn´t be in the business of making such judgments. In the end, I think we all have to trust each other to make up our own minds. That´s tough to do but it´s the right thing. Somebody might convince somebody not to get vaccinated and the unvaccinated person could die. Somebody could convince a person to get vaccinated and they could someday suffer as yet unforeseen debilitating side effects from the injection. It´s not the place of the moderation team to decide what´s true for others. However much you might personally disagree with some of the views put forth in threads by Cheya and Taomeow, the right thing to do is to allow discussion. A person might think given this latest rule that the ppd owners have been blocking posts of Bums who disagree with them willy-nilly. That is not the case. Taomeow has never hidden a post in her Batshit Sane thread. Cheya has only hidden posts of Bums who were flagrantly insulting or else linked to homophobic websites. Bindi´s vaccines-cause-homosexuality links are offensive. Is there really any question about that? These same links were deemed offensive when she posted them in her PPD and were hidden by the moderators at that time. What has changed now that she should be allowed to remain in a thread after reposting these same links we originally objected to? She was not banned from Cheya´s thread for disagreeing with Cheya about science. She was banned for linking to homophobic content. To reverse Cheya´s considered decision seems wrong. On the face of it, this latest decree seems to be about supporting the free exchange of information but in fact it does the opposite. Cheya and Taomeow have already hidden the threads in question. That´s not your fault of course but it´s easy to see how they might feel offended by having their moderation powers diminished. Nobody wants to be singled out as less worthy of standard-issue ppd ownership. Especially when it´s happening to them and nobody else. There are no pro-vaccine threads in ppds that will have to abide by this new ruling. Please reconsider.

I´m all for open discussion and don´t object to solution #1 but would suggest a slight softening. As the rule stands now, it could have a chilling effect on the ability of those with Covid topic ppds to take any moderation action whatsoever, however justified. Suppose a Bum insults another Bum in a thread in the course of putting forth an opposing view? Or suppose a Bum links to homophobic sites in a thread in the course of putting forth an opposing view? (Astoundingly, this happened.) In these cases I think a ppd moderator ought to have the option of hiding the post in question or even banning the offending member from the thread. If it was my ppd, I would want the option of using my own judgment in such matters. As the rule stands now, any moderation action on the part of a ppd owner might feel fraught with danger. What about taking a "first offense" to be an opportunity to open up a dialogue between the moderators and ppd owner rather than a trigger for immediate and punative action? In some ways this seems like a solution in search of a problem. I´m pretty active in several of the threads in question and can´t think of a single instance in which a thread owner has used moderation powers to shut down polite disagreement. Am I missing something?