These are my opinions and not necessarily the truth. My perspective
is (particularly) limited, as all of ours are. Feel free to discuss or
criticise.
1. Death of discussion
-
Loss of anonymity found in forums during WMT's heyday due to FB
profiles led to positive reduction in flame war but also reduction in
debate because people are unwilling to be proved wrong or right as it
directly and often publicly reflects on whatever identity they are
nurturing.
2. Increase in sychophancy and mutual back scratching
- financial and social incentives for this
3.
Positive behaviour management systems (in place all over the world)
lead people to value affirmations of their behaviour/ideas more than
challenges to it/them. Increase in inability to handle criticism.*
- likes, +1s, etc
4. Trends of conformity and need to be accepted, intensified as awareness of cliques successfully marketed
-
any challenges to behaviour or ideas can be deleted at the click of a
button leading to self-affirming circles of people (block, delete,
unfriend, unthink) which can enforce narratives by ostracising others.
5.
Author status or desire to become author leads to more idea hoarding
(for books, presentations, etc) and less idea sharing, increase in need
for sales as opposed to idea propagation
- overall reduction in growth of WMT due to decrease in effective dialogue, the rise of ''chat''**
6.
Blogs become diffuse, contentless or perhaps worse become repositories
of content other than that needed (i.e. rather than blog about actual
material and subsequently create discussion WMT blogs become places to
moan, to sell, or even worse to share socio-political ideas rather than
metaphysical ideas - political overwhelms spiritual***).
7.
Blogs lose activity - blogosphere contracts. Social networks increase
at expense of blogosphere. ''Chat'' therefore increases.
8.
Intermediate material ceases to exist as nowhere now exists for such
discussions to take place - majority of transactions occur between
questionable ''elite'' groups or teachers**** and their students. Real
life events (seminars, webcasts, etc) generally mirror the 101
teacher-student (lecturer-audience) relationship as opposed to peer-peer
relationship.
9.
Continued proliferation of 101 material and accompanying students that
can be harvested for financial/social gain. Blogs become ads. Networks
become ads.
-
lack of development of research skills that are necessary to success in
plumbing the ancient depths leads to overall decline in average calibre
of average WMT student, decline in tradition's ability to pass
successfully into the next generation.
10. Increase in ''chat'', decrease in ''work'' - insane levels of spiritual flakiness/tourism*****
- coupled with pro-''nerd'' but anti-intellectual (???) = most dangerous trend for WMT
11.
Increase in sense of individual identity (via narcissistic networking)
and all its minutiae increase sense of loss of community and isolation
of said individual.
12.
Fragmentation into disparate ''micro-traditions'' or patchworks of such
traditions as central ground of QBL despoiled by scandals from main WMT
orders (GD et al) and WMT QBL's own logical inconsistencies.
- micro-traditions have less ability to interact as shared language (however faulty) is lost.
13. Loss of interest in mess that is WMT, high calibre student material lost more and more to Eastern mysticism.
14. CHAOS and DISSIPATION.
*One should beware the charming man. Embrace your critics. Here is the bard:
''Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.''
**Patrick Dunn once wrote that the law of ''keep silent'' actually could be interpreted to mean ''don't chat''
***I
understand the political can be spiritual but when more than 75% of
your post is about the economy, identity politics, or conspiracy theory
you are operating a different kind of (activist?) blog with a
metaphysical slant.
****Questionable in knowledge, understanding or questionable motives (money acquisition, the various scandals of late)
*****How
much work does one have to do to be considered non-armchair these
days? Ritual every day? Ritual once a week? I am interested - let me
know.
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