Hi, MSB!! Okay, I read part of Metaphysics and Spiritual Practices, the most recent posts. It has quite a lot of Shalom Hepzibah writing on it, and all his Christian stuff gives me a headache, as he well knows already, sweet as he is otherwise. The post that really had relevance to me is this one, which reflects my spirituality pretty well:
techstocks.com
I am not sure what to say about your clique/shunning/some behaviors will not be tolerated comments. Since this is the FEELINGS thread, if someone is being particularly annoying or rude, I think it is appropriate to say how you're feeling about that. You do not have to jump naked into the hot tub, MSB, and scan the ensuing photo onto your SI profile to do that, however, so I don't think it really makes people that uncomfortable to just TALK about their feelings. You would not have liked my encounter group at college, which was run by a psych professor and for which I got credit, but was very intimate, to say the least. We had to let ourselves fall backwards to form trust of the group, who were to catch us before we fell. We led each other around blindfolded, and once we took all our clothes off and talked about our most intimate feelings. Perhaps that's why just typing words on a screen talking about feelings is not too revealing or threatening, or a big deal to me.
There have been cliques over here that have come and gone over the almost year-and-a-half that the Feelings thread has been in existence. I personally think it gets very narrow and boring when one clique seems to be dominating the thread, and like it best when it feels like a lot of people drop by here occasionally to read, and maybe to post.
Shunning the people who are consistently shitty, as you so eloquently put it, MSB, might bring the thread to a close. Who is to say who that would be? Certainly not me!! There are definitely people here who do not care for each other much, but most of their interchanges are amusing and intellectually stimulating (to me at least), not really rude or anything. Interestingly enough, the people who do not think they like each other's electronic persona might really hit it off if they met each other. Who knows?
If anyone is truly reprehensible or engages in repeated personal attacks the webmistress will come to our assistance, and perhaps ban the person from SI. I think that is really a last resort. All the threads at SI are open to everyone--you can tell someone to go away, but they don't really have to, unless they violate the SI conduct rules.
The only person who comes to mind as truly deserving of banishment is the infamous Iggy, and he is not here anymore. I didn't like his posts because they seemed to be purposefully irritating and I felt like he was a plague on the thread.
I do wish more lurkers would speak up now and then. It would be nice just to know who the wallflowers are, who are all very welcome at the party, of course, but I am curious as to who those people are in the corner and what they are thinking about. Or perhaps they are just laughing their heads off!!!!! |
