Thoughts on Adding a Politics Forum

[Dharma]

Originally Posted by RTF671

Regardless, let's do this. What is the worst that can happen?

Mmmmm... people writhe in their habitual love of victimization rather than talking about how world event X relates to their creatorship of it?

As I said above, this one has to be heavily moderated for it not to be a waste of electrons. And I mean moderated for consciousness, not niceness and forum rules.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Dharma

As I said above, this one has to be heavily moderated for it not to be a waste of electrons. And I mean moderated for consciousness, not niceness and forum rules.

Dharma, it's not the moderator's job to judge how conscious a poster is. (Now that I think about it, it's no one's job to judge how conscious anyone is!)

[Brutha]

As I said above, this one has to be heavily moderated for it not to be a waste of electrons. And I mean moderated for consciousness, not niceness and forum rules.

Moderating for consciousness would seem to many people like enforcing certain political ideas.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Moderating for consciousness would seem to many people like enforcing certain political ideas.

Shouldn't be too hard to judge consciousness. Anyone who is against Ron Paul isn't conscious

[Love]

It seems to me that there is a lot of fear-based talk going on.

[Dharma]

Originally Posted by Angela

Dharma, it's not the moderator's job to judge how conscious a poster is. (Now that I think about it, it's no one's job to judge how conscious anyone is!)

Judging? No. Bringing people to a different level of consciousness than the status quo would be something "for smart people". No new consciousness = no new movement. Politics and world events will get people in their programming real fast. Just sharing my view since Steve asked.

It sounds like he's going to do it, so we'll see what happens.

[yorik]

It looks like the votes are in and an informal decision has been made (for a trial) but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents anyway.

I'm against a politics forum for several reasons.

1) This seems to be a website on achieving personal development, not "everything that makes a person well-rounded." Politics seems out of scope. Don't muddy the waters. Saying that politics is part of personal development is stretching a justification for something you want, IMO.

2) There are a lot of political forums out there with members a lot more experienced and informed than the average people here. If you want to learn about politics, go where the excellence is and listen to the experts. Getting political information here will be like getting your news from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". It works, but might not be the best way.

3) Any single web site probably should not be your single "home, home on the web"; it's too limiting. Be versatile! You should be members of lots of communities, for lots of purposes. I belong to this forum, a nutrition forum, a body building forum, a car forum, a NLP forum, and others. I go where I need to for the information I want. Again, I go where the excellence is.

Somebody earlier wrote "...this is relevant, important information, but how do I inform these people?" Keep in mind that what's important in one place is not necessarily important in another place. Keep things in their proper places.

My bodybuilding site has a politics forum, and there are some incredibly well-informed people posting there. Maybe this one will turn out OK. (BTW, their personal development resources are, at best, naive, compared to this site. That's why I come here.)

Enough of my pontificating...

[Brutha]

2) There are a lot of political forums out there with members a lot more experienced and informed than the average people here.

I don't think that this forum is a place for average people.

I go where I need to for the information I want.

I don't think the point of a forum is to provide information. It to provide conversation. If I seek pure information I'm better of going to the libary and reading what the experts on the topic write.

[Ralph]

I think such forum would definately becaue U.S centric. Like you said, 50% of people is from States. Other 50% are scattered around the world. It would be forum about politics of States and maybe some bigger European countries.
I personally find politics a topic to avoid. It's both boring and lowers my level of consciousness. Politicians lie and smart people can see through their lies. Most of the posts would just criticize I think.
Still, it can't do much harm unless you care about server space.

[Brutha]

It's both boring and lowers my level of consciousness. Politicians lie and smart people can see through their lies. Most of the posts would just criticize I think.

I don't think that any topic can lower the level of consciousness of a person. You can choose to make a conscious response or make a low conscious one but it's your responsibilty to act. The topic isn't responsible for your actions.

Someone in the state of unconditional love won't suddly change to a lower state when he meet the condition of a topic like politics.

Being conscious means to be responsible and don't let conditions determine your approach.

[Rose of Cairo]

I think there has been enough discussion about that now. Where's the point in discussing what could happen? Let's just try it!

My proposition is that "politics and worldly affairs" (or whatever you'll call it) replaces "fun and recreation", which is not really PD related. "fun and recreation" should be under "general". I also think that "general" should be separated from "introductions", cause many general threads disappear very quickly under the daily avalanche of new introductions - which is a pity.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Brutha

I don't think that any topic can lower the level of consciousness of a person. You can choose to make a conscious response or make a low conscious one but it's your responsibilty to act. The topic isn't responsible for your actions.

Are you saying that after you spend 12 hours straight reading about rapes, murder, torturing, that you'll feel your consciousness to be as high as if you had spent 12 hours reading love letters, gratitude statements, and all the wonderful things people are doing for each other in the world?

[Angela]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Are you saying that after you spend 12 hours straight reading about rapes, murder, torturing, that you'll feel your consciousness to be as high as if you had spent 12 hours reading love letters, gratitude statements, and all the wonderful things people are doing for each other in the world?

12 hours straight of reading any topic would lower my consciousness!

The responsibility includes choosing what you give your attention to, and allowing a space of freedom for everyone else to make their own choice, even if it's a topic that pushes your buttons. (maybe especially! )

A topic doesn't lower consciousness; a person does.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Angela

The responsibility includes choosing what you give your attention to, and allowing a space of freedom for everyone else to make their own choice, even if it's a topic that pushes your buttons. (maybe especially! )

I wasn't talking about topics that push your button, but talking about negative topics. These topis I mentioned in my above post do not push my buttons, but are quite negative. Brutha's post made it seem that reading such topics would not affect someone's consciousness. I get the point that you choose what to read, but that's not what Brutha was talking about (if I understand his post)

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Brutha

You can choose to make a conscious response or make a low conscious one but it's your responsibilty to act.

I think I get what you mean, seeker5, and my impression of what Brutha is saying, and I agree, is that not only do you choose what you read, but you also choose your response to what you read, regardless of the topic.

By the way, one man's "button pushing topic" is another man's "negative topic." Who's to judge what's absolutely true? You are, I guess, for yourself anyway.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by Angela

I think I get what you mean, seeker5, and my impression of what Brutha is saying, and I agree, is that not only do you choose what you read, but you also choose your response to what you read, regardless of the topic.

Ok. So Angela, you're telling me you can read about excruciating sad details of torture and rape for 1 hour and feel as wonderful as you would after reading all of the mushy love letters from your boyfriend to you?

[Angela]

Originally Posted by seeker5

Ok. So Angela, you're telling me you can read about excruciating sad details of torture and rape for 1 hour and feel as wonderful as you would reading after reading all of the mushy love letters from your boyfriend to you?

Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying.

[Brutha]

I wasn't talking about topics that push your button, but talking about negative topics. These topis I mentioned in my above post do not push my buttons, but are quite negative. Brutha's post made it seem that reading such topics would not affect someone's consciousness.

I haven't tried to read 12 hours of those material. But an hour of reading about genocide might rather increase me energy because I will think about solutions and about the big picture that produces those events.

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I'm open to trying a politics forum, but I have doubts that it would get much traffic. This is a first and foremost a PD site, so I'm not sure it's going to draw people in to discuss politics like it does with other topics. I haven't written any articles on politics like I have with most of the other topics in this site, and the articles tend to feed most of the forum traffic.

Exactly. This is a highly niched crowd - people come here because they're interested in personal development. This is what attracted me to this site in the first place, that fact that it's niched.

And I don't really buy the argument that we could discipline ourselves to ignore the politics threads. In theory, you could also start putting out links to porno sites and tell people not to click them. And yes, you could construe porn as a part of personal development if you really wanted to (by linking it to sexual health or something).

Of course "personal development" is arbitrary, but there has to be some sort of a limit. No?

[Angela]

Marco Polo doesn't want us to talk about world affairs?

[Dan.Linehan]

The problem is, how can we define "development" or "improvement" without an understanding of larger scale effects?

Is ruining the environment for the next generation really progress? Is a person more or less developed when they buy nice clothes that were made possible by child labor?

These things don't go away when you stick your head in the sand. To me, and many others, that's what personal development is about, living a life that's not reliant on abuse. To determine what is abusive there needs to be open dialogue.

[wolfgang]

Aren't politics a form of power over others and ego/power based? Is that something Steve and Erin want to support? It may be a pandora's box and cause lots of traffic which would be good for Steve's bussiness, though.

Isn't politics really just the term for the people in appointed positions and the power they have to try to handle issues? So then a politics forum would be just about talking about who is in office or who might be next and what their stances are on the issues? And not so much the issues?

Could we (and we do) talk about issues anyway in the other thread groups as approprite?

[Bliss Sage]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

The problem is, how can you say what "development" or "improvement" is without an understanding of larger scale effects?

Is it progress when you ruin the environment for the next generation? Are you more developed when you buy nice clothes made possible by child labor?

These things don't go away when you stick your head in the sand. To me, that's what personal development is about, living a life that's not reliant on abuse. To determine what is abusive there needs to be open dialogue, not fear of knowledge.

Well, those things aren't politics either and if a politician sees fit to take one of those issues up, it still doesn't make the issue politics, like eating meat is politics. There's nothing political to discuss about it. If you have a moral objection about eating animals, you stop eating them, if you have a moral objection to ruining the environment or buying clothes made by children, you do what research you need to and you implement your plan to not contribute to it, just like Erin and Steve don't eat animals so that they will not cause them to suffer. Those things are not politics and discussing them, either under a heading of politics or otherwise, does not amount to progress.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Bliss Sage

Well, those things aren't politics either and if a politician sees fit to take one of those issues up, it still doesn't make the issue politics, like eating meat is politics. There's nothing political to discuss about it. If you have a moral objection about eating animals, you stop eating them, if you have a moral objection to ruining the environment or buying clothes made by children, you do what research you need to and you implement your plan to not contribute to it, just like Erin and Steve don't eat animals so that they will not cause them to suffer. Those things are not politics and discussing them, either under a heading of politics or otherwise, does not amount to progress.

Is that what you meant to say, Bliss Sage, that it does not amount to progress to talk about things like eating meat or conscientious economics or environmental concerns? and that they are not political topics?

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Angela

Marco Polo doesn't want us to talk about world affairs?

No I want to keep you in the dark so that I can fulfill my diabolical ambition of being world dictator and ruling the ignorant masses by force. Was that not clear?

Look, I realize I'm the new boy here and I probably shouldn't get too opinionated just yet. But just hear me out for a second. If you look around on the internet, you'll find that there are literally thousands of discussion boards out there. Now, the factor that distinguishes the good ones from the bad ones is the ability to attract people who share a common interest - a niche crowd. There needs to be a common denominator, something that makes this particular forum unique. I'd hate to see this site falling into the same trap as 90% of the other forums by getting too general. Why open up the doors to people who aren't even interested in personal development?

And yes I can see how personal development is related to politics, but I can also see how quantum physics is related to a puppy. There's actually a reason we separate different areas of knowledge!

And if you want I could compile a list of good forums where mature adults talk about politics.

[Angela]

I was just messin' with you, Marco, because your namesake was such a famous nosepoker into world affairs.

(a psychic told me that in a past life I was one of Marco Polo's (the other one, not you) associates on his travels, and that my brother and I went off on our own and were never heard from again.)

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Angela

I was just messin' with you, Marco, because your namesake was such a famous nosepoker into world affairs.

Oh, right.

Erm... I knew that.

[Brutha]

Aren't politics a form of power over others and ego/power based? Is that something Steve and Erin want to support?

Saying power is evil, is what Steve labels as the lightworker syndrom. You need some power to change the world for the better.
Without any power you won't help anyone.

Isn't politics really just the term for the people in appointed positions and the power they have to try to handle issues?

No that term is 'politician'.

So then a politics forum would be just about talking about who is in office or who might be next and what their stances are on the issues? And not so much the issues?

No, a lot of it would be talking about issues.

Could we (and we do) talk about issues anyway in the other thread groups as approprite?

We do that a bit, but there are members who don't like to see that political discussion (as you see in this thread).

if you have a moral objection to ruining the environment or buying clothes made by children,

Yes, but when you are heavily engaged in the topic and make demostrations to get other people to stop ruing the environment or to buy clothes made by children that activity is political.

Of course "personal development" is arbitrary, but there has to be some sort of a limit. No?

I personally don't think that religion is nearer to personal development than politics.

[Savage]

I'm not sure politics works well as the main theme of a new forum. What if we simply called it "World Affairs" or something like that? It would be the place to discuss politics, but the overall theme would be focused on discussing what's going on in the world, politically, economically, socially, morally, environmentally, etc.

It seems the word "politics" turns a lot of people off. The word itself is practically enough to spawn an argument. But I think more people would be open to discussing the broader subject of what's going on in the world at large. This includes politics but also much more.

I avoid watching TV news because it's so negatively/corporately biased. There just isn't enough truth in it. But that doesn't mean I feel the need to avoid knowledge of what's going on beyond my local community.

I do think it would be good to add a forum along these lines, but I don't think centering the forum around the topic of politics is the best choice.

Your thoughts?

By the way, my motivation for possibly adding a forum is simply to do what's best for this community. It's not something I'm considering for business expansion or traffic building reasons. The forums are fed most of their traffic by the blog, so I doubt a new forum would spawn much traffic growth. Adding a new forum wasn't my idea -- it was suggested by several members, ostensibly to give the existing political threads a better home.

[jamestl2]

Why not just call it "international & domestic relations", or simply "civics"?

The social, economic, and moral topics you mentioned that may spawn from this new forum seem like they'd already belong in their respective forums though (Social & Relationships, Business & Financial, and Character & Contribution).