If I am reading this right - it looks as if he has been HIRED by Zaadz!!

That is amazing! 

And sincerely - if a few of the features I've been pining for now forever, in a community site, get enacted - well, then I'll start spending all my time there!

I can only shake my head at some of the issues in the greater political sphere today. 

NSA has collected tens of millions of phone records.

Bush challenged hundreds of laws

Not to mention the various stories of politization of policy, based on ideology.

Now, despite what is happening out in the wide world, bringing oneself, BACK to center, back to breathing, back to silence - the day is beautiful, this moment - and this moment, and this moment, are experienced as Perfect.

So - what's the correct response, if anything, to stories such as this?  

Category error, is the biggest issue here, for a spiritual person.  What is God's, what is the world's?  What is the spiritual and integral response, if anything?

Okay, well, I need to revisit the other's days post regarding comments, because I received - guess what - some constructive comments!!

First off, I came on rather stronger than I intended, - and The Pagan Bodhisattva picked up on this -  so it doesn't seem that my "histrionics with a wink and a smile" came across correctly in the previous post.  So, yes, partly I was definitely kidding.  The last link pointing to the meta-confusing-nature of cross-cross-cross posts, was supposed to be the tip-off, but I may have been too obscure for my own good. (Imagine that!)

Secondly, Graham English - one of THE blogs to go to for learning more about NLP - pointed out that Steve Pavlina at least, had explained why he had turned off comments. 

Steve Pavlina's REASONS, are actually interesting.   His reasons are:

a. Time investment in managing comments
For me, this makes a lot of sense - it DOES take quite a lot of time to manage and interact with comments - and it is totally valid that there are opportunity cost for doing so - and since much of the world does NOT happen when blogging - to paraphrase John Lennon - "life is what happens to you when you are busy blogging" - well, who can argue?

b. But the other reason is really interesting, and highlights an important issue, so I will exaggerate the reason here, for effect. What I would boil it down to is that Pavlina is saying that basically, people are idiots.  Which is funny, because my exact comment was " ignore the hoi polloi common man who deigns to comment on my blog."
Now, why do I say that about Pavlina?  here's his reasons listed -
" -Partly this is because I want to maintain certain standards of quality"
"- Does it [criticism] do myself or anyone else any good?"
"-A good portion of criticism is simply the other person projecting"
"-there’s invariably an explosion of juvenile comments"
"-As this is intended to be a site “for smart people” who take personal development seriously, I think having too many comments like those weakens the site overall"

Let me know what you think, but - when I look at this - you can clearly see - as subtext - a certain bit of superiority running through this? 

The thing is though - he's RIGHT.  We all know that opening comments can lead to trolls, can lead to stupid blogfights, can lead to various other things that are negative.  The signal-to-noise ratio is HIGH in the blogworld. 

For me, because I have this idealized conception of a peer-to-peer structure - and blogs with comments, and then community blog sites, fall into this realm - I think it's worth it. 

I still find it fascinating however, that the main spiritual and self-improvement sites, don't allow this type of peer-to-peer functionality, and most likely for the same reasons that Pavlina does not.

Related - score a win for non peer-to-peer spiritual sites, and What Is Enlightenment won the Webby in the Religion and Spirituality category.  Good design and good content will beat naive amorphous peer to peer every time - even if the founder is a doofus.  (I blame C4Chaos endorsement - never under the power of C4!)

In other news - Matthew Dallman has initiated comments, and I'm glad for it.  He is debating the same type of issues.

At any rate - comments.  Sound and fury signifying nothing?  Are the personal growth "heavies" justifiably superior, in a "read the f**king manual, and listening to what I'm saying" way? 


Lastly, who are the spiritual/personal growth leaders out there, who enthusiastically embrace peer-to-peer in their online sites, despite the sound and fury, where maybe 60% of the noise signals not too much?