Although I've followed this round of disagreements, I've kept out of it. But I would like to make a few comments. Take them or leave them, as you see fit.
I've been an active participant on the Internet since 1993--back in the days before the advent of the Web. So I have quite a few years of experience observing personalities and how people communicate in an electronic forum. And I've learned one thing: It's impossible to know someone well enough simply from reading his/her posts to made an informed decision about that person's true personality or motivations. Over the years, I've had the experience of reading people's posts, communicating with them extensively via email or telephone, and then eventually meeting them in person. I've found that, although I felt I got to know people fairly well via posts and email, it wasn't until I meet them and truly got to know them that I could partially begin to understand them.
I said "partially." Why? I've also found during my 47 years of life--30 in the organization and 17 out of it--that people are complex beings, and it's nearly impossible to pin labels on people or understand their true motivations. I'll give you a couple of examples of why I feel this way.
My little brother is an elder and circuit overseer in training. He and his wife have been regular pioneers for years; his only son just went to Bethel. He's a Nazi elder, which he's proved over the years by his actions. He starting shunning my sister and me more than 10 years ago based on the fact that we stopped attending meetings (we've never been DA'd or DF'd). He's refuses to participate in any family activities--including my parents' 50th anniversary--if my sister and I are in attendance. He's gone after people who weren't even in his congregation, in campaigns to get the "goods" on them and get them disfellowshipped. He has a reputation of being a hardliner, a mean bastard, an asshole. I've known him all 44 years of his life. I've observed him in almost every situation. I've had long talks with him. You would think that I'd be able to come to an informed conclusion about him--what personality type he has, what his motivations are, what makes him tick. But you'd be wrong. I honestly can't. My brother is a complex person; he's intelligent, but he's also had experiences and influences that I don't fully understand. My sister, my parents, and I have had long discussions trying to understand what makes him tick and figure out what he's going to do as the heat on the organization intensifies. None of us can do it. We simply don't know.
Here's my second example. My first real job--after 11 years as a housewife (I got married as soon as I graduated from high school)--was a glazier in a busy commercial glass shop. I was an experiment, the first woman glazier in town. My boss was a guy named Lane (my father, who also worked at the glass shop, used to say, "When you know Lane, you know pain."). Lane's nickname around the shop was "Gabby" and it fit him perfectly. The man never shut up. He was the most obnoxious person I'd ever met, in ways that are difficult to explain. Hardly anyone in the shop liked him; in fact, most people went out of their way to avoid him. But I was stuck with him; he was my boss, and he took great delight in following me around and critiquing everything I did. Finally, after putting up with him for a month, I told him that he was obnoxious--quite a step for me, because I'm not a confrontational person and never say things like that to people. He took it pretty well, and I could see that he made an effort to be more likable. But he couldn't change the fact that he was Lane. As time went on, however, I started to see a different side to him. He was a giving person who went out of his way to do things for people. When I moved to Fort Collins to start school, he arranged for the rental of my moving truck (got me a sizeable discount), came over and loaded the entire truck, and then drove it up to Fort Collins for me because my dad's back was bothering him too much to drive. He unloaded on the other end and drove the truck the back (a 400-mile round trip). He gave up his whole weekend to do this for us. What I discovered from knowing Lane is that people can appear to be a certain way, and that aspect of their personality might be so overwhelming that it obscures other things about them. The secret of getting to know and appreciate people is to look past their shortcomings and focus on their good points. After many years of knowing Lane, I came to understand why he acted the way he did, and I was able to develop a genuine liking for him.
This board has a real mix of people from a lot of different backgrounds. And each one of us comes here carrying a lot of baggage. Whether we like it (or admit it) or not, that baggage colors the way we see things and the way we react to people. Have you ever met someone and instantly taken a dislike to them? I have, and several times I realized later that I disliked the person because he/she reminded me of someone I didn't like or had had a bad experience with. I think that often happens. We all have experiences in our lives that cause us to react to stimuli in different ways. The person I might take an instant dislike to might be the same person someone else finds delightful and endearing; we'd have a hard time understanding each others' impressions.
All I can say is that we need to give each other the benefit of a doubt. Most of us have suffered through some extremely difficult circumstances, and we need to be patient and understanding with each other. And we certainly shouldn't judge others' motives and personalities based merely on participation in this unrealistic forum.
One last comment and then I'll shut up. Back in 1993, when I first got involved in the internet, I met some great people--some of them, like Alan, Marilyn, Kent, JanH, Norm, Ginny, and others--participate on this board. There weren't many of us ex-JW internet participants in those days, and we all formed friendships that endure to this day. We all wrote each other so often that we finally started a cc list, which evolved into a listserve that we named philia. For a while it was a delightful place. We have lively, interesting discussions. No one attacked anyone else. We allowed each other our foibles and differences of opinion; we were able to discuss controversial subjects without calling each other names or making personal attacks. But then philia started to change. We lost control of who joined, and soon the list had hundreds of people on it. People argued and sniped at each other; it was not a pleasant place. Eventually, every single one of the founding members left the group.
For some reason, this seems to happen in every large internet community, and it happens here. That's one of the reasons I don't participate much; I don't like name calling, judgements, and personal attacks. For that reason, I've limited my participation in this forum and will continue to do so. I prefer to get to know people on a one-by-one basis. I've found too often that internet personas aren't a true representation of people's personalities.
