Shared forum moderation

Thank God, so there is still hope for ya Rick :slight_smile:

I watched Mooji on YouTube. He seemed okay…just not compelling enough for me to keep listening.

Anyone who’s kind, simple, sensible, and likes people, can be a guru. It’s a harmless way to make a good living.as long as you don’t promise anything, or incite your audience to aspire to more than being kind, simple, sensible, and at ease with all people.

Questions about shared forum moderation responsibility:

Say you read some posting in which you feel someone is fooling themselves, do you have the responsibility to share your take with the person and/or group?

Say someone is trying to fool others, is remaining silent okay?

Wasn’t there something said regarding your question like ‘take the log out of your own eye before removing the mote from your brother’s?

Maybe there is no formula for such situations?

Some people will naturally remains silent, for various reasons.

Either they are sensitively aware of the hurt this might cause the person making the deluded claim, because this might expose them in a public way; or they feel fearful of engendering an aggressive reaction from the other; or they are not personally moved by what the other has said (it doesn’t interest them, or they simply dismiss it); or they are happy to indulge such claims because it serves an inward purpose of their own (e.g. to advance their own unspoken self-beliefs). For this latter person, the other is only courageously putting into words the same claims that they would happily make of themselves, were they able to say it without fear of being challenged.

So the reasons for staying silent are complex. Some of the reasons are intelligent, and some are potentially harmful.

Other people will naturally feel like speaking out if:

they feel as though a person is seeking (however unwittingly) to gain power, authority and self-aggrandisement from making their claims, and the responsibility of pointing this out outweighs the reaction that the pointing out may cause; they feel as though their claims have crossed over from the eccentric and mildly ignorable to something approaching abuse (affecting other people on the forum); they are given to challenging other people’s claims, and would do this of anyone and everyone no matter who; or they personally feel threatened by the claims being made by the other, and (however unwittingly) reject them purely to protect themselves from the light of truth - in which case they are no longer sensitive to the affect this might have on the other.

Isn’t everyone on this forum subtly or obviously judging other people? Are not those persons claiming (or insinuating themselves) to be free of judgement sometimes the most judgemental of all?

Could be, not mine to say. But the ‘message’ is, take the log out of your own eye and whatever follows from that will be ‘different’ than if the ‘log’ (self) remains in place.

Not a formula, but maybe a guideline? What’s that Hippocratic Oath thingie:

To do good or to do no harm.

WWJS?

Wouldn’t it depend on the circumstances? If someone is occasionally making certain claims, and the group is intelligent enough to let it slide as a minor eccentricity, then do no harm is the simplest approach.

But if, in a group of around 10-15 people, several of them - aided and abetted by several others - repeatedly and vociferously assert these claims, and this begins to create a clear division into “us” and “them” (which is inherently conflictual), then being proactive might be the healthier course of action, even if it temporarily increases the intensity of the conflict (of division).

Not being Jiddu Krishnamurti, I don’t know what he would do. But I do know he rejected any traditional division between an enlightened “us” and conditioned “them”. He said to question authority (in psychological matters). He was surrounded by people claiming all kinds of things, and his approach was to be generally sceptical of everything of this kind.

Yes, Jesus is supposed to have said this (“with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”). The person who judges is themselves non-different from the judgement that they pass on another.

But this message is for everyone, correct? Are we, who are imparting this message of non-judgement to others, ourselves free of these judgements? That is, Jesus’ teaching on this matter is as much for those communicating his message as it is for those of us receiving it, correct? (unless we are Jesus, in which case this does not strictly speaking apply).

And so, to repeat something that has been mentioned a few times already, isn’t the manner the message? If we are genuinely nonjudgmental of others, will this not be communicated in our non preferential treatment of others, our commitment to fairness, our willingness to reciprocate relationship with another, our openness to being challenged, our willingness to admit where we have been mistaken, our willingness to admit that we are not Jesus?

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