maybe we could just use the internet to promote peace amongst ourselves, the ordinary everyday people. like between me and armando. he sought me out to have peace in our relationship. it shook me up a little and convinced me this can be done.
i was at pff yesterday. all in all, a very exhausting but very worthwhile experience. some people there feel they are owed an apology. tell me, do we need to negotiate who will be the first to drop their weapons? or do we just do it, and let go of sorting out who started what or why. can we do it without assigning blame and asking for anything in return. even if we are turned out, not welcomed. can we pursue peace there?
it seems to me if desire is the root of the problem then in this case, it’s the desire to be right or to be acknowledged as right. what if that’s exactly what is wrong?
one last thing. maybe this peace thing is just a simple as bypassing governments. maybe we can achieve peace, from one person to the next by “paying it forward” and acknowledging that is what is happening. and the internet can facilitate this. maybe it will end up with warring factions going to each others web sites and asking for peace. ridiculous? maybe. but maybe not.
armando started with me. i brought that to some others.
no letters to write or e-mail petitions to sign. nothing to buy or donate to. just make peace with somebody you’ve been at war with and then ask them to do the same.
Robyn knows about this… her story has stuck with me about her siblings.
here’s one more urgent reason we should consider this:
this baby, exposed to depleted uranium. look at this tiny, innocent human being. then tell me how important it is to be right as we turn away from each other. take a long look. we need to stop this.
peace is up to us.
go in peace… pf8
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with those willing to have it.
We can however, practice unilateral peace.
That is a distinction that I hope can be seen at this site.
I believe we can be tolerant and open here wothout sacrificing our own views of how a site should operate while at the same time not engaging in tit for tat with those who attack us.
I followed your attempts and admire you for your efforts. If you can continue them, my admiration would only grow.
I am not capable of doing what you did and instead choose to practice unilateral peace. I won’t attack them or defend myself.
Besides there are more important and more interesting issues to discuss.
that if youre able to forge a ‘peace’ between 2 blogs, an anti-those-two-blogs blog will start not a week later, and start lobbing mangoes at the peaceful 2
i prefer to stay on message…as much as possible…and divert myself when needed or appropriate with positive things like sports and knitting. i hope your efforts are rewarding to you.
That all of the posters there responded to your heartfelt efforts?
I thought you did a great job and had great conversations there with the folks who are interested in peace. I admire your efforts greatly and thank you for them.
I never wanted to be ‘enemies’ with pff.
But….did you find that there are some people it is just not worth talking to? People that are only interested in insults and argument purely for the sake of arguing?
As I hope we illustrated with Revisionist, anyone who wants to post here in good faith is welcome.
It is ONLY the people who want to come here and disrupt the site purely for the sake of disruption that aren’t welcome. The people who have no intention of actually TALKING to anybody. You said it was exhausting. The exhausting part ,imo, is going around in circles with people who have no intention of listening to anybody else. Do you want to be exhausted every day here?
Is that what we are here to do? Or should we just …..skip over….the people who have no interest in an actual dialog and get on with what we want to do?
For the record I never wanted and still don’t want war with pff. And again, anyone who wants to come over here and actually TALK….like Revisionist did….is welcome.
Screaming at us what assholes we are is not talking, coming over to pour gas on fires for entertainment is not talking. Attacking people here for who they are is not talking. None of those things are welcome.
Peace and open dialog is.
yesterday in lightweights and cam cream. There had been a particularly unwarranted ad hominem attack on a dear friend of ours on an orange page and I wanted to gather some intel on what was behind it. Prone behind a top ridge boulder, I saw pf through the scope fending valiantly, trowel in hand, level along a brick course of a young bridge. I could see that cover was not required and moved on – sidewinding across the ridgetop.
I observed several locations, following spoor and referring only occasionally to the translator. Returning without disturbing or setting a single trap of my owm, I concluded that despite most inhabitants being on a track which converges and diverts from time to time, we are on exactly the same heading. I saw one or two bandits, but they seem to operate in small packs and left alome seemed to turn on each other with frenzied yappy savagery.
When that bridge is done – and the secret they tell me , is the placement of the keystones, there’ll be peaceful coexistence for sure, might even register. I just don’t think anybody should be prepared to remove all the blue smarties for anyone else.
And DU? Where else would a “civilised” society leave tons and tons of that muck lying around than in the middle of a landscape composed of one of nature’s best abrasives? After all it is the inhaled and ingested particulates which are deadly.
will probably cheerfully suggest I am wrong headed as usual, but my take on PFF and I just go to read I do not have an account, is that they absolutely delight in being “approached” by folks from other blogs. It feeds their willful and silly self importance and reinforces their perceived “rebel” street cred. I think thee are scads of smart folks there with creative flash, that dialectic just is not where I am hanging at this moment in time. I am not saying making allies is wasteful, I am just slightly more leery of some.
i don’t care about peace with pff, and i don’t care about war with pff. i don’t care about pff. they’re a distraction and an irrelevance.
there are things that matter. our relations with pff are not among them. i wish people here would stop worrying about them.
They’d eat me alive over there!
Lead by example and may your efforts be well rewarded…you know, in karmic rewards.
I’ve missed all this, happily, though f.dave’s funny paragraph above got a grin.
Over the last few days some folks have said things on here and the orange, in a completely unrelated matter to the current topic, which has me keenly aware I would watch them drown in a river in front of me while I sipped my cola, and I suspect the reverse is true in spades. That doesn’t keep me from rec’ing their comments or appreciating their continued progress toward common goals. Or, not much.
What has me bugged about this process, over the last week or two, is that as a human activity, for me, specifically, about ten percent of it — the essay writing, the work of researching or synthesizing, and the sudden flights of empathy that let one perceive another’s particular pain in comment threads– encourage mindfulness. The rest, for me, does not. At this point I despair of the world, but wish a certain collectedness and peace for myself…
there’s fewer photos of felis catus at pff.
Just sayin’.
I have a link that has similar pictures, but I don’t know how accurate/reliable/true it is, or if it’s staged for sensationalism and anti-propaganda.
If one or both of you would email me (myname at epluribusmedia dot org should work), I’ll send the link along for any insight/comment; I don’t want to post it without having it verified, but keep in mind: it’s bloody gruesome.
:/
yet give the number one reason to FIGHT for peace. DU doesn’t go away and on my other machine somewhere there are pictures of damaged DU tanks on flatbeds somewhere in Kansas. That, I think was last year.
This picture in the reality of today could very well be my grandson. See this.
http://www.docudharm…
With such damming evidence in hand though consider the Herman Goebell’s effect. By this I mean the greater the lie the less people will believe. You are essentially presenting evidence to people who have their heads so far shoved up their asses they will exercise their defense option of dismissing your rantings and placing them in the “tin foil” category. They will then go about their normal American,soon to be extinct, life.
My personal choice given the time, effort resources and money would be to make DU a household word, (note here Big Al Gore did not do this) so making “enemies” on this board or the other board pales in comparison.
As a bannee from multiple places Lasthorseman can so testify.
Lauren Moret is another name you might like to know on this subject.
We may also note that while Abu Ghraib is indeed a household word DU in fact is not. In any case I would applaud your efforts in disturbuting knowledge of DU related subjects. I do think the internet bitching does have an effect, after all we were supposed to be nuking Iran last month.
and suspiciously ban users…and walk away unscathed.
Seriously, man, what the hell did ya’ll expect?
You CAN NOT be committed to free expression/speech when an expression/speech is banned or denied. Is that really so difficult to comprehend? And to top it off, you expect liberals (or progressives as some have labeled themselves) to see something judicious in denying expression, to accept it as necessary, to write it off…
DD, by choice, is in a bind. DD, by choice, is compromised.
And so, every time any of you declare support for free expression/speech or claim that DD supports such, there will always be a counter with the header as ‘liar’ or ‘hypocrite’. And really. How can you refute it?
DD & PFF will never make peace as long as the circumstances remain as it is now. Or at the very least, you don’t even know if peace is attainable as long as the circumstances remain unchanged.
PFF is a site where users have become used to free expression. DD just banned a legitimate issue. An alliance, let alone a peace, is not likely. And you are not helping your case at all by going over there to defend the ban. Your efforts, for peace, are futile as long as these efforts don’t include removing this ban. Most are not willing to let you or DD off the hook. And why should they?
is this ‘writing in the raw’ you speak of?
sounds like i’m missing something good…
Against my better judgement, here is my 2 cents.
Please note these generalizations are just that, discussions about what I see as an ‘average’ poster at each of 3 sites.
Looking at this from as neutral a perspective as I can…
Let’s look at 3 different characteristics of blogs, bloggers & blogging:
Rules of the board
Belief in the ‘power’ of blogging
Openness to new ideas
Now, if I rank the 3 sites we’re really talking about here (pff, docudharma, and dKos) along these characteristics on a low / medium / high attribute rating, I would say:
pff is Low rules (none), Low belief in power of blogs, and High in being open to new ideas.
docudharma is Medium rules, High belief in the ultimate power of what we can achieve, and High in being open to new ways of doing things.
dKos is High rules, High belief in power, and Low in being open (democrats need only apply).
Besides the rules aspect, to me a real difference is belief in the power of blogs / blogging. We are optimists here for the most part I think. We may be naive optimists, but we have a shared belief in our hopes that our ideas and ideals can change the world for the better.
Many of our friends at pff scoff at such an idealistic view. They believe discussion should be open and unfettered, that’s the real only important thing, and that we’re quite frankly off our rocker if we think we’re going to be able to change our bedding in the morning, never mind the world. Truth be told, they are probably right. But I just can’t help myself, there’s got to be something to hope for.
So – since all 3 places are so different, why do we feel the need to influence each other so much? These differences are real and the ‘belief’ issue especially is very powerful.
It puzzles me, this battle we are fighting. Although it doesn’t puzzle me why the pff crew don’t have much use for us, they think we are fools and knaves for being dreamers. I may be a dreamer, but thankfully I’m not the only one…
Cheers.
Hi pf8. I missed this one today as I was deep in oil companies in Burma.
Here’s my confession. Before this site went up I made an account at pff, different from the one I use here. I didn’t exactly make any buddies there, but I did gravitate around the posters who are pretty darn smart and are thoughtful about the issues. It was a very mutually respectful situation. I even wrote some essays there that were very well received.
I avoided all the personality bashing there and was somewhat stunned at the uproar over photos of nudity. The horsefuckers were another story altogether. The thing that made me leave permanently was the sudden influx of horrendous right wingers. I wanted to physically vomit on them!!
Then you guys started this blog and I was saved from leaving blogland forever.
So for what its worth, my experiment over there showed that a bridge could be built based on verbal interaction. I think your efforts there showed the same, as did Revisionist’s second essay over here. I wonder if it would be different if I went over as this uid. Most likely, at least to start. I still enjoy reading several of their writers and I still think all the blog and personality bashing is wasteful and ridiculous.
For what it’s worth…
I’m late to the discussion and it is late for you, but just wanted to say that I really admire and appreciate what you are trying to do. I’m learning a lot – and still trying to make sense of it. If I figure anything out I’ll let you know. Meanwhile…
Well, I just read this diary and discussion for the first time this morning. Oh my. Peace is a tough subject, I guess.
Interesting that there are laws against “disturbing the peace.” Wonder what that means.
One thought I have is that “disturbing the peace” may be connected with substance abuse, drunken blogging, perhaps, late night bullshits.
Why write the diary you wrote?
I engaged the substance fo your comment and you do not want to discuss it?
That explains a lot.
Perhaps more than you would like.
Even mine have been affected but thank God not from the womb and in ways that look like forever! One war is enough to find the end of so I’m grateful for every online war I miss. “God is great, Sabu; He plays with us.”
We disagree on the particulars, perhaps. But the vision is the same.
But, I know this much. Banning a legitimate issue weakens whatever effect you intend.
I could understand if I/P was something criminal, spam or pornography. But it’s not. It is a legitimate issue and involves human lives not unlike those in Burma.
And when you ban such a topic without justification (‘incivility’ is not a sound justification), you’ll get people coming outta nowhere to condemn the decision. Do you really think that everyone at PFF follow I/P? From what I’ve observed, most of the people there calling ya’ll out on this don’t regularly participate in I/P. Hell, some who protest this ban would be considered my ‘opponents’ on this issue.
As I said before, this ain’t about I/P. It ain’t that easy.
You should come to pff they are always talking about you. I’m a little confused about why but there’s no such thing as bad press over there.
as I said in another essay a day or two ago ….
human culture does not have within it the the constituative charteristics to embody what you seek…….
a few of us are beginning to realize what it might take and are making the journey…
many many more have no intention of ever making that journey……
they behave in ways that are repugnant because there are no direct concequences….
they are seperated and shielded by the anonymity of the net…..
their intention is to cause conflict ……
it is their drug……
it is my belief that we expect more from the medium which is the internet than it can deliver…..