From: Nightstar Area: Metaphysical To: Drui 13 Apr 94 14:04:34 Subject: Re: all'n'any UpdReq Interestingly enough, while you have been away from the echoes, so have I. However, my reasons are somewhat different. I use to be one of the very early members of Magicknet. Back then, it was a single echo. I remember the first machine we used, a brand-new IBM-XT with a CGA card, a Herc card, and a 1200 bps modem. The board was called Solsbury Hill and I was the assistant sysop. The machine belonged to my room-mate. I'd be lying if I said that the discussions were all intelectual or highly informative. We had a sense of community amongst us back then. When one member was forced off the echo by lack of a computer, we all chipped in and bought him one. It was easy to remember the names, there were so few. But the topics were mostly new to us. How times have changed. When I set up SOURCERY, I started picking up echoes I thought I would find interesting, where the conversation was relatively intellectual despite being on spiritual matters. I was looking forward to stimulating conversations on a wide range of topics where new and interesting ideas would emerge. I am still looking forward to it, but alas, I do not seem to be finding it here. Virtually all the ideas I see here I've seen atleast a hundred times before. They are no longer new, nor are they particularily interesting anymore. Only on the very rare occaisions do I find something worthwhile. BBSing is not my life. I have many things I enjoy doing and if I do not find what I am doing worthwhile, I tend to quit. I tend to like highly-concentrated leading-edge information-intensive magazines and intense topical discussion groups. I tend to think the two go togather. However, I am not finging this kind of thing here except very irregularily and as a result have seriously contemplated quitting all echoes except for a very few. I use to belong to an APA and found that more to my liking. The idea of the BBS was to make an electronic APA. It has not turned out that way. The mailing comments have taken over the articles. As a note, I have found the discussions with you to be amongst the very few I have enjoyed since SOURCERY came on-line. You have shown yourself to be knowledgable on the topics. I suspect we will only converse in the future via netmail. Please keep in touch. Nightstar 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Nightstar Area: Metaphysical To: Drui 13 Apr 94 14:46:36 Subject: Re: quotes UpdReq Regarding your commments on quotes, I do actually agree with you. In the old days of MAGICKNET (when it was a single echo and had possibly 60 people on it), quoting software didn't exist. We couldn't quote and so we didn't. But back then, it was relatively easy to follow a conversation because there were so few people. The idea of quoting only holds any value when the forum is large and public and everyone is trying to talk at once or where there is a short hold time and a long lag time. Back in the old days, the BBS I was on ran on an XT with a 30MB hard-drive. That was considerred top of the line at the time. Space was always a premium and evey message was one file. PODS wasn't carried on the newly-formed Backbone and so messages were relayed from one board to the next, usually spending the day on each board before moving to the next. Because space was at a premium, old messages were deleted regularily. The result is that by the time a reply arrived, you might not remember what it was you did say and couldn't look it up because it had been deleted. Quoting did have a value and sometimes still does. However, quoting is too easy and too often abused by it's users. BTW, I hate having people read over my shoulder. If I some guy on the bus read over my shoulder, I'd turn the page on him. If he wants to read the book, let him buy his own copy. Nightstar 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Nightstar Area: Metaphysical To: Drui 13 Apr 94 15:23:12 Subject: Re:PATH EVALUATION GUIDE UpdReq I know the Greek story of replacing each board of a ship with another. What I tend to think of as creating a new path would be more in terms of tearing down a house and building a boat out of the pieces. This might also include taking the remains of some other structure and converting them to a new use, possibly through reforging. None of the material is new. It has simply been reworked to make something "new". Think of it as recycling. My comment regarding the Evaluation guide and mixing and matching is along these lines. If I take a door hinge off this house and mount it on the stern of the boat I am making in order to hold the rudder, I have not changed the hinge itself. I have found a clear use for it in what I am building. The guide does not make a clear distinction between this kind of application and simply mixing and matching for no real reason than personal whimsy (although it could be argued that building a boat out of pieces of a house is personal whimsy, I would argue for Noah.) As for the comment regarding change and stagnation, perhaps you are right in that we should never have come down from the trees let alone out of the ocean. However, I suspect at the time, the desire to survive prompted us to make these dicisions. When I spoke of change, I really should have used the word growth. The message has since been deleted but I think I did as well. When I speak of change(growth) and stagnation especially in terms of a spiritual path, I tend to think of maturity and understanding. It is not possible for us to not move forward for time does not stand still but forever passes by us. But it is possible to move forward in a backwards direction. This requires desire, knowledge, and understanding. Otherwise you will find yourself being carried headlong by the currents that be towards the fall that must surely come. In refrence to the Evaluation guide, I commented on a person changing in their path. As a solitairy neo-pagan, I have grown and matured over the years and as a result have quite drastically changed. But this is change as a result of growth, not because others on the path (which in my case are none) say I should change. My comment to you earlier was that it is not always easy to clearly differentiate between changes as a result of growth along one's spiritual path and changes forced upon you by others. They may look the same on the surface, but it is what's inside that counts. Nightstar 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718