Now, I weigh in at around 250 lbs in my socks, 6 feet 2 inches off the ground inspite of a compressed spine, and have lived long enough to have survived a fantastic and varied life. And although my parents marriage certificate was dated 10 years after I was born, I know I was a LOVE child, and not a bastard.
The point is I am not easily upset.
But the sheer volume of the negativity thrown at me for having an opinion has set me back on my heels as it were, to contemplate the process and try to understand the motives.
A business associate of mine has just had a similar experience, but on a global scale.
He has been fighting for nine years to save the last remaining tropical rain forests in the Asia Pacific Region. He is the type of person who has built his very successful life with his hands, from the ground up, and with the inspiration of his father's words, he has literally walked the forests from top to bottom, meeting and talking with the traditional Owners. He has created a unique process for them to stop logging, and create commercial carbon trading projects under the Climate, Community, Biodiversity Alliance and Voluntary Carbon Trading protocols.
He has fought Governments, the UN, financiers, traders, brokers, and bloggers. And the hardest fight he has had has been with the bloggers.
Blogging allows someone to anonymously say anything they like, with no consequences for the outcome. And the truly amazing synergistic effect of this negative and irresponsible behaviour is other bloggers pick up the mis-thruths and lies and give them creditability by increasing the frequency of the message.
We have even seen credible journalists publishing one thing in a magazine article, only to "privately" blog a totally different, and untrue story the same day. And then wonder of wonders, other journalists pick up the fake blog and run with it as a credible story using the byline of the originating journalist/blogger.
Now normally, I would just let this fraudulent and corrosive behaviour go by, treating it with the contempt it deserves.
But the negative and false stories these two people created between themselves and fed to the rest of the blogging world have almost destroyed the lives of 40,000 indigenous people in the rain forests, by eating away at the credibility of the project developer, and the project.
There is always a cost for a freedom, and it seems that the cost of freedom to blog is to be totalled in human lives in some cases, and I think that is just plain wrong.
So I would like to suggest that the world makes negative vibes illegal, and demands that people take responsibility for their personal attacks and false stories.
I take responsibility for my stance against the State Government, and they are punishing me for it.
The same should be true for bloggers who deliberately attack others simply for the vicarious pleasure of doing damage anonymously, with no consequences.
What do you think?
3 comments:
Without removing your emotion here Pete--which I think is entirely sane to the situation--I want to explore something I'm just now noticing in your use of negative vibes.
What I'm wondering about, is the possibility of "vibes with out information"; that is, a frequency ripple is sent and maybe emotion is activated in someone who is also on the "same channel", but without real information, a vibe can't affect thinking.
There seems to be something here that is tying physics and mind together, and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts...
On a less theoretical question.
What do we do when the Fourth Estate no longer functions as such? Pete, you're describing something that is terrible in the worst way: it's the kind that happens to a frog sitting in water that is gradually heated.
The terror, if perceived at all, is realized too late to do anything about it.
It's feeling more and more like we need to re-educate ourselves in being fit enough to make civilization. Why does it feel like we're devolving rather than evolving?
There's something going on here that is beyond Kuhn's observations: I think of propaganda as language that seeks attachment to an ideology over reality. At least when a scientist is wed to their theory, the theory itself is trying to illuminate the real.
I would like to see the word propaganda grow to carry the stigma that the word theft carries. And with that growth, I'd like to see us become fit to recognize it and shun it.
Mike, two things.
People attract other people by their attitudes.
Attitudes are always about something, and need to be observed to be relevant.
A vibe may well be an emotion without information - look closely the next time to see a negative person walk past. They reek of negative vibes!
The forth estate has let us all down badly - but it is our own fault. If you don't pay, and you don't read, then they don't survive.
However, the web is a new paradigm that has yet to find its balance. We are paying for the assumption of freedom without responsibility, again, all our own fault.
Until we take responsibility for our actions and our opinions, we will continue to have our most precious value trashed - that of "self" - because anyone can say anything at anytime and there is no consequence for it.
Our bad.
Sadly.
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