(2020-08-24, 01:38 PM)chuck Wrote: There is truth and value sometimes in ribaldry or in what may at first appear to be personal attacks that cut a little too close to our protective ego zones. But this place is not the place for such behavior, and unfortunately for me, it is less of a place because of it. The clown , the jester, the trickster--these are important roles that stir the pot of complacency and cut like a hot knife through well caked layers of "make-up". Not always pleasant and not appropriate behavior for every online forum.
Heh I've thought back to FDRS's behavior on the forum every now & then and I have to agree I saw the value in such a genuine trickster figure - I've seen pale imitations of such behavior on other forums where people play at being a trickster but it doesn't have the same feel.
OTOH if I'm honest with myself there was never any standard of rules that could give such a figure free reign while also reigning in the imitators. It was a moment in time where his presence was especially useful/needed as I think many could still feel the existential dread of having their world view threatened by the "opposition" - whoever that was at the time.
But I also feel that I wouldn't want this place to go back to the old Skeptiko raw-ness. I feel I've largely moved on from debating "skeptics" and am more interested in the disagreements proponents might have with each other about the nature of reality. That suits a luncheon atmosphere better.
In an ideal world both Psiencequest would exist as-is and Skeptiko would retain some of its old community/character. But I still wish Alex the best on whatever journey he's on despite even my own contentious but now years passed departure.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(2020-08-14, 10:44 AM)Typoz Wrote: It is roughly three years since the Psience Quest forum was founded.
One way or another, we're still here. Personally I'd like to thank all members past and present and readers / lurkers too for keeping this venture going. The future is as yet unwritten. Let's see what it brings.
Yeah it was really good many of you decided to come together and make this forum a reality.
I suspect the effort may not be fully appreciated for some time, perhaps after the forum itself is gone, but having a resource such as this place is incredibly valuable.
As Colin Wilson once put it:
Now it should be clear why I think that ‘the paranormal’ is of such immense importance. Here is one field that is untinged by contemporary pessimism. The clear message that emerges is that man possesses powers of which he is normally unaware. As Richard Church watched the gardener wielding the axe, and noticed that the sound came after the blow, he says that he experienced a marvellous sense of freedom. His enemy so far had been ‘the drag of the earth’. Now he realised that he had been overestimating the enemy. It was at that moment that he made an instinctive effort and rose from the ground and glided about the room. When man can clearly recognise the existence of these powers, and incorporate that recognition into his everyday awareness—so that he is no longer subject to a permanent ‘leakage’ of vitality—then he will suddenly have become a totally different kind of creature.
Wilson, Colin. Supernatural . Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
I'm pretty confident I'm the, or at least a large part of the reason TheRaven and Oliver don't post anymore, and that makes me sad. I don't like that that's among the things I've contributed here.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
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