Caroline, Free to Shine asked you a question earlier, regarding your definition of a Scientologist, I saw Emma asked you some question too, as did I.
New question; What should we think or do about a person who comes along and performs long screeds indicating a high degree of criticism or condescension at some other peoples meeting place and that person refuses to define any of their terms or answer any awkward questions?
In fact if such a person just kept banging on being only half on subject, what should the reaction be?
Thanks in advance.
I saw that post by Free to Shine, asking me about my definition of a Scientologist. I have an answer but don't know how it applies to this thread, so I declined posting it. Perhaps s/he could expand on the relevance. Otherwise, it could appear like a bit of a derail. "Who or what is a Scientologist?" is a huge subject, so perhaps deserves its own thread.
There were some questions in the grudge match area that I also did not address. The grudge match area doesn't work for me, for reasons I've already given.
But here you have asked a question in the public area about what we should think and do about someone. I will assume for now that this is a question you seriously want me to address.
1. If you have not just formulated an impossible scenario or a straw scenario for some reason (maybe just to make me jump), please identify where this has happened. Please give me an example of where a person came along and performed long screeds indicating a high degree of criticism or condescension at some other peoples meeting place and that person refuses to define any of their terms or answer any awkward questions.
2. You imply that ESMB is other peoples' meeting place, and not for that person who allegedly performs long screeds indicating criticism or condescension. But how about if you are mistaken, or for that matter lying, and the person performs screeds of all sorts of lengths, as on subject as any other poster, really does define terms when necessary or prudent, and does answer awkward questions, wouldn't ESMB be a meeting place for that person too? Or would you still stay mistaken, and still project your disapproval of and non-support for this person?
3. You also imply that criticism is not wanted here, that less criticism is better than a high degree of criticism. Yet virtually everyone here calls himself or herself a critic. And critics all practice criticism. I've mentioned before at some length that I do not belong to the "critics," as they are often called. I considered myself part of the group briefly but left it many years ago.
Nevertheless, I still retain and use the ability to criticize, by which I mean I will evaluate or analyze the merits or faults of something. In addition, I might oppose, when such criticism, analysis or evaluation results in a conclusion that opposition is warranted. So one doesn't have to, for example, analyze or evaluate the merits of Scientology over and over, or the merits of victimizing people, to oppose Scientology and oppose victimizing people whenever they raise their meritless heads.
4. This brings up then the desirability or the undesirability of criticizing, that is analyzing and evaluating the merits or faults, of ESMB, and of course its operators, and for that matter its people. It's all being done, obviously, and I can see where ESMB will be an embarrassment to some people in the future; and consequently why some would want to suppress or attack criticism of all this. I actually think that if meeters here are afraid of criticism -- real analysis and evaluation of their meeting place's merits and faults, not the black PR some members here call criticism -- or if meeters are concerned about how their meeting place is viewed, they should welcome criticism of their meeting place, become transparent, and stop the embarrassing performances.