John Lash's Kalika war party

[Selkie]

Posted by Gardener (here)
...a change in JLL material occured quite some time ago maybe around 2-3 years...

I've been wanting to address this, because others have noticed that the change in Lash started around 2 or 3 years ago. What happened around 3 years ago? The Gaian Navigation Experiment started, that is what happened.

Looking back, I think that the GNE was not a good thing...not a good thing at all. The GNE turned JLL into monster of ambition, with visions of fancy cars and a multi-million dollar "center" in Andalucía...the works...just like every other megalomaniacal false messiah out there.

an addition A few weeks ago I found out that he really wanted another woman to live at Ambergane, but he chose me because I have a small income. I have absolutely no doubt that the person who told me this is telling the truth. I have never met anyone as manipulative, perfidious, mendacious and just plain rotten as John Lamb Lash in all my life.

[Hanson]

Posted by araucaria (here)
Here are three independent triangulation points with which to place John Lash, and understand that ‘probably not Silkie’ should read ‘definitely not Silkie’. And therefore, that there is no ‘false-flag attack orchestrated by a very clever and manipulative third party’.

No disrespect intended, but I don't see your three points triangulating anything, for the following reasons.

1. John Lash's point about "turning the other cheek" is valid, in my opinion. His conclusion is not erroneous, because this maxim does indeed "give total liberty to the perpetrators." If evil is to be resisted, people doing evil must also be resisted.

2. Bill Ryan decided to withhold the John Lash interview. It's hard to argue the pros and cons of this decision without hearing the interview.

3. The independence of Silkie's testimony is important, and like I said, I am inclined to believe her. However, that independence does not preclude a third party from encouraging her testimony in a concerted effort to discredit John Lash personally. John Lash could indeed be an unpleasant human being and still have significant insight into the problems before us.

[araucaria]

Posted by Hanson (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
Here are three independent triangulation points with which to place John Lash, and understand that ‘probably not Silkie’ should read ‘definitely not Silkie’. And therefore, that there is no ‘false-flag attack orchestrated by a very clever and manipulative third party’.

No disrespect intended, but I don't see your three points triangulating anything, for the following reasons.

1. John Lash's point about "turning the other cheek" is valid, in my opinion. His conclusion is not erroneous, because this maxim does indeed "give total liberty to the perpetrators." If evil is to be resisted, people doing evil must also be resisted.

2. Bill Ryan decided to withhold the John Lash interview. It's hard to argue the pros and cons of this decision without hearing the interview.

3. The independence of Silkie's testimony is important, and like I said, I am inclined to believe her. However, that independence does not preclude a third party from encouraging her testimony in a concerted effort to discredit John Lash personally. John Lash could indeed be an unpleasant human being and still have significant insight into the problems before us.

Thank you for your response. To answer your last point first, as Ulli pointed out while I was writing my post, John Lash has discredited himself with no help from anyone else. For all that, the value of his basic insights is not in dispute, which is why people round here have been reading his books, making interviews etc. The point about gurus is that they have to be right about everything. That does not mean that they are wrong about everything; it simply means that they fill in the gaps with their dogmatic ego by saying what you cannot accept willingly and naturally you will accept because I say so. So your point 3 is not the objection it purports to be, since there is no disagreement.

Which brings me to your second point: Bill Ryan’s interview. On the contrary, after reading his brief comments, it's hard to dispute the rightness of his decision not to publish, and I for one don’t need to hear any more. If you don’t find Lash’s use of the term ‘cockroaches’ totally offensive in terms of the comparison with humans (any humans), then I have two problems with that. It is not just the obvious insult to humans; that I find objectionable mainly because it really misses the point. The point is the insult to cockroaches: such a comment is totally inconsistent with Lash’s Gaia-Sophia principle since cockroaches are not an archontic force to be stamped out, they are part of this life on Gaia that is supposed to be so sacred.

If you still don’t understand the importance of the likes of cockroaches, then you will not understand where Bill is coming from; you will not understand that he takes Lash’s Gaia principle much more seriously than Lash does. That means identifying even with cockroaches. It is us ordinary people who are being trodden on like cockroaches. To use that metaphor in that way is evidence enough that Lash has espoused the unprincipled stance of the controllers.

Compare that with an interesting post Bill made about his reaction to a crab or some other sea creature in a little boy’s beach bucket.

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Re Verdillac's kind and interesting account, I'm unable to kill any living creature, no matter how small — or witness its suffering. I just can't help it. So his story does indeed capture a few home truths about me.

My personal dictum is that unless there's no choice, we should never destroy anything we can't create. All life is miraculous and sacred... way too easily taken for granted. You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

See how a tiny anecdote can ‘capture a few home truths about’ someone. We value our life because we value all life, and that includes any life that might be destroyed by indulging George Bush’s wet dream of being strung up on the nearest lamppost. But before you jump at Bill’s proviso ‘unless there's no choice’, let me respond finally to your first point.

‘If evil is to be resisted, people doing evil must also be resisted’, you say, begging the question as to what evil is. Sticking to cockroaches as pests: pests and weeds are not evil, or even doing evil; they are simply life forms thriving in the wrong place, i.e. somewhere inconvenient to another species. What has to stop is the pesticidal paradigm of killing off, and its karmic mirror image, being killed off. Both these things have to go, and being the two sides of the same coin, they have to go together. You may interpret turning the other cheek as meaning on the contrary more of the same from the victim’s standpoint; but that is a distortion of its true meaning. The true meaning is that a cheek is made for kissing, not slapping; and we are going to practise doing this until we all get it right.

The cockroach scenario comes in various shapes and sizes. The next size up, on the way up to the cabal or whatever you want to call it, is a black leopard. See here:
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post960958
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post963631

[Selkie]

Posted by Hanson (here)
...that independence does not preclude a third party from encouraging her testimony in a concerted effort to discredit John Lash personally...

No third party is encouraging me in anything, nor am I making a concerted effort to discredit him. Besides, as Ulli has pointed out, he discredited himself. What I am doing is exposing his personal behavior with me so that people can see that the "cockroach" statement is not a one-off...it comes from what the man is really like.

If I was making a concerted effort to expose him, I would be doing a lot more than responding to posts on this thread: I would have a website dedicated to it, or I would be writing and promoting a blog about it, or making Youtube videos about it, or I would be trying to get myself interviewed about it. So all-in-all, I would say that I have been really quite restrained in telling my story and relating incidents to illustrate his behavior because many of the stories I could tell involve other people who do not deserve to be dragged into it. They do not realize that they are in a cult any more than I realized it at the time. All I can hope for is that they read this thread, realize that they are in a cult, and free themselves.

And besides, when someone has been conned, like I was by John Lash, what would be wrong with his victims getting together to warn others?

And even if I were making a concerted effort to expose him, so what? Poisonous gurus like him need to be exposed. Should I keep quiet? Should I turn the other cheek in response to his ill treatment and threats? Is his "insight into the problems before us" so special and wonderful and valuable that I should keep mum about how he manipulates and exploits vulnerable people for his personal gain?

p.s. In other words, by posting on this thread I am resisting someone who did evil to me.

[Selkie]

Posted by araucaria (here)
...The point about gurus is that they have to be right about everything. That does not mean that they are wrong about everything; it simply means that they fill in the gaps with their dogmatic ego by saying what you cannot accept willingly and naturally you will accept because I say so...

(emphasis mine)

This is exactly correct. Beautifully written post, too.

Anyone who has not been in a cult, cannot really know what it feels like to have one crazy man think, feel and act like he has the power of emotional/psychic life-and-death over you, and who wants to squash your "I"...your individuality...out of existence.

I will give just one example of what Daniel Shaw, in Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation,

http://www.amazon.com/Traumatic-Narc.../dp/0415510252

calls subjective hegemony, which is so typical of John Lash and other poisonous gurus:

Lash and I were in a shop in Gaucin. It was my birthday and he said that he wanted to buy me a gift. They had many lovely shawls and he wanted to buy one for me. Out of nowhere, and for no reason I could see, he said to me, "We don't do blue." I didn't understand what he meant and he said, "Kalika Warriors don't wear blue. We don't like the color blue." I was like, WTF? "WE DON'T 'DO' BLUE"??? "WE" don't like blue???

That is an example of subjective hegemony. Such a statement may not seem like much, but it speaks volumes because with one, fell swoop Lash exerted coercive control not just over my choice of color, but over the color choices of everyone in his cult. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Lash took control of the color choices of his followers. And since he did it with the color blue on that day, he could do it again with another color on another day. Totally irrational. Not to mention totally hypocritical and at odds with what he "teaches" publicly.**

And notice that he did not say, "I don't like blue and so I want you to choose a color that is not-blue" or "Since I am buying you this gift you will choose a color that I like" or even "If you want a shawl then you will take the color I choose for you". No: by putting it in terms of "Kalikas don't wear blue" he made something as simple as the choice of a birthday gift into a mind-game. He made the choice of a birthday gift into a matter of loyalty to the KWP and to him. He made it into a mind-game and a test of obedience. It made my choice of a birthday gift into a double-bind. And this is how it was all the time!

** At one point during the GNE, if I remember correctly, Lash said that he was not going use the word "we" anymore. What a bull**** artist he is!

an addition: The incident of the "We don't 'do' blue" is even weirder than I let on above, because he was standing to my side, facing me, when he said "We don't do blue". I didn't know it, but behind me there was a display of silk shawls, one of which was the most gorgeous shade of turquoise blue I have ever seen. At the time he said "We don't do blue" I had not seen that shawl, and so it was like he saw it, knew that I would want it, but orchestrated the situation so that I could not choose it. He is perfectly capable of such a mind-****.

another addition: I cannot overstate the sheer creepiness of the man. Psychically, mentally and emotionally, he used to toy with me like a cat toys with a mouse, for the sheer fun of it. Playing mind-games with me served no other purpose and produced no other results than to frighten me and reduce me to an emotional wreck. It was mental and emotional abuse, pure and simple, for no other reason than to subjugate me and destroy my independence of thought and action. This is what poisonous gurus do. They capture people, and they do it by destroying, as far as possible, their followers capacity for independent thought and action.

[Selkie]

I wanted to say that I have thrown out Lash's whole belief system. I simply do not think that in order to value life and this planet it is necessary to believe that it is the body of a goddess from the galactic center who goes by the name of Sophia. Nor do I believe that in order to see the beauty and value of life, or the beauty of our planet, that it is necessary to believe that it was a deliberate experiment on the part of a goddess. As a matter of fact, no beliefs of any kind are necessary. Life on earth could be the result of completely impersonal, mathematical, accidental processes and that would still not render it one iota less wonderful and beautiful. All that is necessary is to stand in awe before the naked wonder of it all: mind-products like "The Story of Sophia" and the belief in "Her" (or "Him", if a god is your thing) are quite unnecessary and even a distraction.

an addition Nor are "Gaian Ethics" necessary. Defending ourselves against marauders is as old as humanity. We do not need any of the rigmarole of the KWP, with its "ranks" and "bands". No, the one who needs the rigmarole is John Lash, so that he can jawbone something as simple as self-defense into something complicated and confusing, like the KWP.

[Selkie]

Posted by Hanson (here)

Posted by Silkie (here)

• John Lash ... is a legend in his own mind
  
• the only thing John Lash cares about is John Lash
  
• seduce and recruit the vulnerable
  
• If you are not prepared to agree with John Lash 100% on everything, then its the highway for you
  
• If you are not prepared to let him bully and browbeat you, then its the highway for you.
  
• If you are not prepared to be a doormat and an unpaid household drudge for him, then its the highway for you.
  
• If you are not prepared to let him dictate your personality to you, then you are out.
  
• If you are not prepared to let him violate your boundaries, then its goodbye to you.
  
• underneath his charm he is a total autocrat, insists on complete obedience from others
  
• a narcissist who loves no one but himself
  
• no such thing as mutuality or power sharing with John Lash
  
• draw recruits and gain narcissistic supply, money and power
  
• (And notoriety. John Lash wants notoriety very, very badly)
  
• seduce woman after woman with one goal in mind...to gain their money, services and sexuality and connections
  
• looks wonderful from the outside: they would not be able to recruit anyone if they did not.

Fabulous list, Silkie!

People like John Lash tend to be hidden right under our noses. They wear a mask of charm to hide their true nature. Most everyone is under the illusion of their clever lies and deceptive behavior. Only an insider that gets close to them will see their true colors, and most of those won't talk about it in public, because the unsuspecting public won't believe them anyway. The public believes their eyes instead, which means they believe the mask, the clever lies, and the deceptive behavior.

What other people could you substitute in place of "John Lash" in the list and still have an accurate picture? Unfortunately, probably no one! Unless, of course, you've gotten close to them, spent time with them behind closed doors, and seen what's behind their mask. And then, if the shoe fits, what a story you could tell! But almost no one would believe you.

I've seen this kind of thing happen before, and I suspect Silkie is telling it like it was. Unless, of course, it's a false-flag attack orchestrated by a very clever and manipulative third party (probably not Silkie) who wants to discredit John Lash. With these kind of people, especially when they play the game against one of their own kind, or against someone genuine who is a real threat, the rabbit hole can go pretty deep.

In any event, it's still a useful list. Thank you, Silkie.

Actually, it was you who made the list from my post.

[Hanson]

Posted by araucaria (here)
If you don’t find Lash’s use of the term ‘cockroaches’ totally offensive in terms of the comparison with humans (any humans), then I have two problems with that.

Without hearing the interview and understanding the context of anything Lash said, I cannot comment accurately on the merits or demerits of the terminology Lash used. I suggest you can't either. That was my point. The decision was made that we can't listen to the interview in order to judge Lash and his ideas for ourselves. That's unfortunate, because I would like to do exactly that.

Posted by araucaria (here)
See how a tiny anecdote can ‘capture a few home truths about’ someone.

Would you say the same thing if John Lash had said it?

Posted by araucaria (here)
What has to stop is the pesticidal paradigm of killing off, and its karmic mirror image, being killed off. Both these things have to go, and being the two sides of the same coin, they have to go together.

I agree, but there are complications when faced with someone who is focused on killing you. Turning the other cheek in that situation won't get you any kisses.

[Hanson]

Posted by Silkie (here)
No third party is encouraging me in anything, nor am I making a concerted effort to discredit him.

The "concerted effort" refers to the third party, not to you. Third parties can be involved without the first two parties even knowing about it.

Posted by Silkie (here)
And besides, when someone has been conned, like I was by John Lash, what would be wrong with his victims getting together to warn others?

Nothing. That's exactly what should be done! I was commending you for sharing your experience with John Lash when I summarized your points in the list.

Posted by Silkie (here)
In other words, by posting on this thread I am resisting someone who did evil to me.

More importantly, you may be helping to save others from the same evil. That was also my motivation for making the list.

[araucaria]

Posted by Silkie (here)
I wanted to say that I have thrown out Lash's whole belief system. I simply do not think that in order to value life and this planet it is necessary to believe that it is the body of a goddess from the galactic center who goes by the name of Sophia. Nor do I believe that in order to see the beauty and value of life, or the beauty of our planet, that it is necessary to believe that it was a deliberate experiment on the part of a goddess. As a matter of fact, no beliefs of any kind are necessary. Life on earth could be the result of completely impersonal, mathematical, accidental processes and that would still not render it one iota less wonderful and beautiful. All that is necessary is to stand in awe before the naked wonder of it all: mind-products like "The Story of Sophia" and the belief in "Her" (or "Him", if a god is your thing) are quite unnecessary and even a distraction.

an addition Nor are "Gaian Ethics" necessary. Defending ourselves against marauders is as old as humanity. We do not need any of the rigmarole of the KWP, with its "ranks" and "bands". No, the one who needs the rigmarole is John Lash, so that he can jawbone something as simple as self-defense into something complicated and confusing, like the KWP.

Thank you for your kind words Silkie (in the other post).
The above makes very good sense to me. If the top of a jar of jam is mouldy, how much jam you need to remove that looks OK is debatable/subjective. Some will err on the side of caution, others will do the opposite, and occasionally someone will have a problem (and will be more cautious another time). There is no hard-and-fast rule, beyond the indisputable fact that caution is required. Extreme caution however – discarding the whole jar – becomes something else when you discover that no jam, however healthy and delicious it seems, is just needless sugar. Needless sugar being metaphorically a state of ignorant knowingness.

Similarly, it is only when all our sophisticated philosophical and other systems of thought fall away that we get to the ultimate message, which is literally too corny for words. Even notions like love and light are pretentious obstacles to simply ‘being nice’. If everyone were just a tiny bit nicer, we’d be on our way. But it does take some thought to manage this because there is always a baby crab to be nice to as well as a little boy. Bill put the crab back because that was all the creature could understand, and spoke to the boy with words understandable to him. He wouldn’t go into some abstruse theory of alien abduction, even though the facts of the situation might fit in with such a theory. No doubt he stirred a degree of empathy whereby the perpetrator got to feel it from the victim’s viewpoint and subsequently avoided giving all sorts of creatures a hard time. But interestingly, this would also sensitize him and in small ways others bigger than himself to this false hierarchy of life. In other words, the moral of Aesop’s fable of The Frog and the Ox is not lost on this little boy:

"Oh Father," said a little Frog to the big one sitting by the side of a pool, "I have seen such a terrible monster! It was as big as a mountain, with horns on its head, and a long tail, and it had hoofs divided in two."

"Tush, child, tush," said the old Frog, "that was only Farmer White's Ox. It isn't so big either; he may be a little bit taller than I, but I could easily make myself quite as broad; just you see." So he blew himself out, and blew himself out, and blew himself out. "Was he as big as that?" asked he.

"Oh, much bigger than that," said the young Frog.

Again the old one blew himself out, and asked the young one if the Ox was as big as that.

"Bigger, father, bigger," was the reply.

So the Frog took a deep breath, and blew and blew and blew, and swelled and swelled and swelled. And then he said: "I'm sure the Ox is not as big as this. But at this moment he burst.

Moral of Aesops Fable: Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction

http://www.taleswithmorals.com/aesop...and-the-ox.htm

Here is a timely video posted by SeymourVandal only two days ago:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=y97rBdSYbkg
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post968632
In this version of the domino experiment, you might see the little boy, now Verdilac the Avalonian, and Bill the source of the impetus, the experimenter flicking his domino. We see the effect on a domino just 13 sizes up. 29 sizes up we are told would be the size of the Empire State Building. Let’s keep going. Maybe 36 sizes up we would be knocking over ‘Buckingham Palace’ (and all it stands for) and counting. Where does it all end? It all ends either at the last domino or at the point where a domino is missing (has been removed).

I think you will find a domino has been removed. We hear of the Draco reptilians leaving the planet; see here: https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post967519
If so, then that might indicate that they have seen this tsunami of new awareness heading their way and accordingly are removing their large domino from the sequence. They may be acting as a fuse protecting other bigger dominos in this way, but that is irrelevant to the rest of us down here. Removing a domino from the sequence may somehow protect the domino, but it is no longer effective as a part of that hierarchy where the pressure and the threat were always in the opposite direction: from the top down. That system is now collapsing. Here is another analogy: sure, Edison made a mint from direct current, and sure, Tesla’s alternating current was confiscated. What we have here is the backlash from direct alternating current: direct but alternating to the reverse from planned direction.

The moral of the story is that gurus and anyone else seeking to climb up the power ladder are only preparing themselves for a bigger fall. The more you think you know, the more rubbish you are going to have to unlearn when it is discovered that almost anything that anyone ever thought they knew was diametrically opposed to the truth. The first shall be last, as Jesus said. Or the emperor’s new clothes from the mouths of babes. All this jostling for position becomes meaningless and indeed counter-productive when the tsunami comes along and put the smallest at the top of the heap.

[araucaria]

Posted by Hanson (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
If you don’t find Lash’s use of the term ‘cockroaches’ totally offensive in terms of the comparison with humans (any humans), then I have two problems with that.

Without hearing the interview and understanding the context of anything Lash said, I cannot comment accurately on the merits or demerits of the terminology Lash used. I suggest you can't either. That was my point. The decision was made that we can't listen to the interview in order to judge Lash and his ideas for ourselves. That's unfortunate, because I would like to do exactly that.

Posted by araucaria (here)
See how a tiny anecdote can ‘capture a few home truths about’ someone.

Would you say the same thing if John Lash had said it?

Posted by araucaria (here)
What has to stop is the pesticidal paradigm of killing off, and its karmic mirror image, being killed off. Both these things have to go, and being the two sides of the same coin, they have to go together.

I agree, but there are complications when faced with someone who is focused on killing you. Turning the other cheek in that situation won't get you any kisses.

I did not thank this post because I do not find it useful, but maybe if I answer anyway, something can be salvaged from it. You say you ‘cannot comment accurately on the merits or demerits of the terminology Lash used’. Fair enough, and too bad. But to suggest that I cannot is somewhat fatuous: I just did. So you are disputing the accuracy of my comments. Fair enough, I rest my case.

The decision was made that we can't listen to the interview in order to judge Lash and his ideas for ourselves. That's unfortunate, because I would like to do exactly that.

Unfortunate or not, the truth of the matter is that that decision was made and is not going to be reversed, and it is one that I accept and understand, and that you neither understand nor accept. Your post is therefore unhelpful because it has veered off into a virtual reality that ain’t gonna happen. What we have in this reality are a couple of indications given as examples of which we are told there are more. Which part of ‘Etc.’ do you not understand?

Would you say the same thing if John Lash had said it?

No I would not, and here’s why. John Lash has discredited himself, as several posters have stated, and has done so to the point where any truth he might utter cannot be taken as such. This is how disinformation operates. His greed for power is satisfied through blatant lies, such as to claim that Silkie does not like blue scarves. None of us are squeaky clean in this respect, but anyone who has stooped that low is facing an uphill task restoring any trust at all. But you yourself are turning this back to front. The tiny anecdote here is the blue scarf. And the home truth it reveals is JLL’s tyrannical untruthfulness. If you want to hear a whole lot more of that, joining Avalon was a mistake: you need to go and join his sect.

I agree, but there are complications when faced with someone who is focused on killing you.

‘I agree, but’: this something else I find unhelpful (obfuscating) in your post(s). If you can say ‘but’, then you don’t agree at all. Or you simply don’t understand. Again, you have veered off into a virtual reality that ain’t gonna happen. The real reality is that no one ‘is focused on killing you’. Turning the other cheek does not mean a victim turning the other cheek, it means turning the non-victim’s cheek. No black leopard is focused on killing Anna Breytenbach. And since no one is focused on killing me either, there are no complications, except in your imagination.

[Selkie]

Posted by Hanson (here)
...The decision was made that we can't listen to the interview in order to judge Lash and his ideas for ourselves. That's unfortunate, because I would like to do exactly that...

As much as it would hurt, I would like to hear the interview, too. But I trust that Bill made the right decision for Project Avalon and so I accept his decision on the matter.

[Selkie]

Posted by araucaria (here)
...The John Lashes of the world ultimately do not matter beyond infinitesimally – like the rest of us, only some of us have got over it...

[Hanson]

Posted by araucaria (here)
Your post is therefore unhelpful because it has veered off into a virtual reality that ain’t gonna happen.

Ah, you are looking for help in confirming your model of reality. My post was meant to challenge your model of reality just enough so that you would examine your beliefs. Apparently, "that ain't gonna to happen." That saves us both a lot of trouble and makes life easier. Thank you.

[Selkie]

Posted by Hanson (here)
...there are complications when faced with someone who is focused on killing you. Turning the other cheek in that situation won't get you any kisses.

Perhaps the decision to "turn the other cheek" has to do with the nature of the offense. If it is something minor, then it makes sense not to escalate the situation. So modern parlance for "turn the other cheek" might be to say "let it go" or "let it be". I know nothing about the Bible, but maybe "turn the other cheek" was never meant for situations where someone is seriously after you and it was only people trying to be ultra-pious who made it into the idiotic "no self-defense allowed" dictum it has become.

[Troy Martin]

Posted by Mnemosyne (here)
Anyone who claims to be enlightened is not because after the shift there is no person left to claim this.

I'm enlightened!

[Hanson]

Posted by Silkie (here)
...but maybe "turn the other cheek" was never meant for situations where ...

As Neo said, "The problem is choice." Which interpretation do we choose?

[Selkie]

Posted by Hanson (here)

Posted by Silkie (here)
...but maybe "turn the other cheek" was never meant for situations where ...

As Neo said, "The problem is choice." Which interpretation do we choose?

We? What's this "we" s**t? You choose. Or I choose. And I make my choice according to the situation. We don't choose anything, as if its some joint decision involving who-knows-how-many-people. So when you make your decision about what interpretation you want to go with, leave me out of it because I reserve the right to decide for myself.

[araucaria]

Posted by Hanson (here)

Posted by araucaria (here)
Your post is therefore unhelpful because it has veered off into a virtual reality that ain’t gonna happen.

Ah, you are looking for help in confirming your model of reality. My post was meant to challenge your model of reality just enough so that you would examine your beliefs. Apparently, "that ain't gonna to happen." That saves us both a lot of trouble and makes life easier. Thank you.

Well, no, I don’t have a ‘model of reality’ – not in any static sense. I was merely referring to the longstanding formula at the foot of every forum post whereby thanks were given to ‘helpful’ posts. I notice the word has recently been dropped; when or why I have no idea; but I can live with that changing reality. Change (for the better) is the part I am interested in, and helping one another is in my opinion the unchanging means to that end. You are welcome to try and challenge that model, but why would you want to do that?

What hasn’t changed yet is that the content of this forum is moderated, and that includes non-members’ contributions. The way I see it, as a member, JLL would have probably got a week’s vacation for the cockroach comment, and unsubscribed for coming back with more and worse. If that is an erroneous model of Avalon reality, your challenge will need moderator backing to cut any ice. It works for me the same way as if he were taking a driving test and drove through the first red light: there is simply no point taking things any further.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is the persistence of posts making challenges without substance to posts of substance. I am thinking for example of people simply posting a video and soliciting reactions; when others respond in detail, they are told they are in no position to comment unless they have also heard some interview which is then produced, again with no effort by the original poster. This kind of ‘challenge’ is a challenge in tone only; it has no content. That makes it a form of trolling and the correct response is to ignore such posts. It is not a matter of ‘saving a lot of trouble and making life easier’. In my model of reality – to which I get to contribute in a small way – people are happy to go to a great deal of trouble, but not in reaction to empty challenges.

The real challenge being raised by JLL’s material is to find an alternative to the kneejerk eye-for-an-eye approach to nefarious government. This is the subject of much discussion on the forum. One of the more promising ideas addresses the above suggestions that the world is operating like an unmoderated forum or a city where no driving proficiency testing is performed. There are too many threads on how to deal with the psychopaths for me to make a quote, but there is one explaining how the technology is now available for screening such people, and that psychopathic screening for positions of power would be an acceptable non-lethal way of ensuring that we are governed by individuals with the general good at heart. We all manage reasonably well with every kind of attribute to disqualify us from doing certain things: too short to be a policeman, too wide to be a flight attendant, unqualified to practise law or medicine, less than 20/20 eyesight to be a pilot, and so on. And many of these things we can work on through health care, education etc. And we now have a sex offenders’ register that removes a paedophile from certain activities involving a risk of their re-offending (and only those); this law was brought in by lawmakers among whose ranks there are quite a few sex offenders – but not enough to keep the lid on this type of legislation, and one day soon they themselves will fall foul of it. Similarly, it is only a matter of time before psychopathic screening legislation will get past the psychopaths and put them out of business in those areas where they cause harm. It will then be possible to find a cure for this supposedly incurable disease, as we invariably do.

This is no abstract, static ‘model of reality’, i.e. Reality, i.e. the total picture. It is a dynamic project for a new reality specifically targeted towards fixing a single crucial issue that a growing consensus accepts as a real problem that needs fixing. John Lash has been making a substantial contribution towards broadening our awareness of this issue, for which we are duly grateful. It is just that his fix is not going to solve anything. We need to find a better way. The above is a practical, no-nonsense direction we are already taking.

[Selkie]

Posted by araucaria (here)
...The real challenge being raised by JLL’s material is to find an alternative to the kneejerk eye-for-an-eye approach to nefarious government...

Yes. A knee-jerk reaction to retaliate is no better than a knee-jerk reaction to "turn the other cheek".