I keep getting comments from people who either too clueless to make up a pseudonym or, quite often, simply don’t want to insert a name because their comments are rude or offensive. As I mentioned before, given the plethora of comments from “Anonymous” people, who can’t be distinguished one from another, I won’t post any comment not associated with some kind of name. All “anonymi” will be deep-sixed.
And, as always, I prefer (but don’t require) that readers use their real names, which I firmly believe helps promote civility and rationality on the Internet. Finally, if you ever want a reply or if you think I may want to contact you, it would behoove you to also put down your real email address, which of course I will never disclose.
Keeping the living room clean, thanks!
Hi, Jerry: I’m new to your site. I hope this is how I send you an email. I was trying to figure it out, and then—FLASH—I tried hitting the REPLY icon. Duh (maybe, I HOPE this works). Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask you something that I don’t think was addressed in your book (F vs F), and that you even said at the beginning you were NOT going to address. Namely, I am interested in what you think about the widespread phenomenon of Americans engaging in spiritual practices. I live in Eugene, Oregon, where everyone seems to be gluten-free AND on a ‘spiritual path.’
I myself was on such a path … for years … ye, DECADES. I’m 74 now, so I’ve HAD many decades to take up the likes of TM, Zen, Vipassana, etc., and to become a devotee of various gurus (Rajneesh, Da Free John, Ganga ji, Papaji, among others). I cannot tell you how MUCH I believed in all that stuff and had as my sole GOAL in life to become ENLIGHTENED. During all those years, I read about a million books—old, new, Eastern, Western. I know it ALL. In the end, I went to a spiritual enclave here in Eugene called “The Center for Sacred Sciences.” I would give ANYthing if you would visit that site and tell me what you think. Especially, this section: A New Worldview | Articles | Publications
| | | | | | | | | | | A New Worldview | Articles | PublicationsA New Worldview Why We Need a New Worldview | | | | View on http://www.centerforsacreds... | Preview by Yahoo | | | | |
My POINT is that while I was NEVER in any mainstream religion and had been an atheist since age 11, I believed that with the right practices (meditation above all), I could pierce the veil of ILLUSION and become a proverbial NO-SELF, privy to THE capital T mystical, gnostic Truth of ages! In my time at the Center for Sacred Sciences, about six students supposedly got Enlightened. I knew them all. I knew the guru, Joel Morwood (also E’d). As an aside, while nice enough—all of them—none of them struck me as particularly special, either before or after their respective trans-self-ing (ha ha, I just made that up; I like it). And as we know, gurus of all stripes, everywhere have turned out to be no better than politicians when it comes to sex, power, and money.
I know that SAM HARRIS (whom I adore) is a big fan of meditation. I have no doubt that the human mind is capable of going in many wondrous directions. I myself have had quite a few “varieties of religious experience,” some on drugs, some while meditating, and some out in nature (hey, I even had one in a laundromat).
FINE! We don’t need Stephen Spielberg or Walt Disney or the Bros Grimm to travel in wild and mysterious places in our imaginations. YES, we can have that fabled “it’s all ONE” experience. We can have a profound insight that “LOVE is all there is” (granted, THAT one isn’t so easy to hold on to if one spends a nanosecond of time listening to the news). I need to get to my real POINT, which is: I no longer think there is any such thing as Enlightenment. AND, if there IS, it doesn’t seem to have reduced one whit the evils enacted by humankind. In short, the whole Enlightenment Enterprise now strikes me as being as MUCH hooey as any mainstream religion.
It is SO deceptive, because many people who throw themselves into the E’ment project are so smart, so educated (look at SAM). Even so, for ME, it was as if the veil lifted, and I could see that the Guru had no robes. It was like an AHA moment, and actually rather shocking … like people describe how it is when they cease believing in their chosen god. I, of course, have no PROOF that E’ment doesn’t exist or that there aren’t E’d beings treading the earth. On the other hand, there’s no EVIDENCE that they ARE E’d. It’s only THEM saying so. Well, anyway … if you are willing to read the piece referenced above, I would be beyond happy. I would love love love to know what YOUR thoughts are on any or all of this. I love your blog, your cat, too! I originally got onto you when you did that dialogue with Sam Harris a while back.
Thanks for restoring my FAITH (wait … confidence) in humanity!Vaya con Otis Redding, Karen Fierman
Hi, Karen, and welcome.
No, as you have no doubt already realized, hitting a ‘reply’ icon only posts a comment (though I can’t figure out why it didn’t post you under someone else’s comment, but not important.) If you want to send an email to Jerry you have to google his name, find his faculty email on the university site, and send to him there. It’s a bit complicated.
Jerry would never disclose your email address — but unfortunately you did. I just emailed him about removing it. I rather hope it’s okay if your post stays up because it’s interesting.
Jerry and the rest of us have often discussed Spirituality and the fact that in many cases it’s simply religion repackaged in pseudoscience. I’d say more, but since you hadn’t planned on putting it all out there for the hoi polloi in the comments section, I’ll drop it for now.
I have removed the email address. Karen, to get in touch with me just Google my name and university, and my university webpage, with email address, will come up.
Karen, since we are of the same generation, I think you will understand what I mean when I say bullshit is bullshit is bullshit.
Gurus, preachers, glib talkers and writers all–they just want to get into your pants/pockets.
As Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself–all the others are taken.”
And the Psalm that says, “Be still–and know that I am God” in the King James version, if translated directly from the Hebrew, (or even the Greek) actually says “RELAX, and know that I am God.”
Go outside when the snow is gently falling heavily, with big, big flakes, and stand alone in the woods, say, right at dark, in the gloaming. You can hear your heart beating . . .
To be–that is the answer.
Karen,
I have to say, though I do hope it doesn’t cause you any problems, i.e hecklers abusing your address or something like that, I am glad that you mistakenly posted your comment here where I could read it. It was very interesting, Thank You.
This was very interesting, and I enjoyed reading about your journey.
Ironically, it seems to me that you are now enlightened. Although it is not in the way that you originally intended.
Welcome from me as well, Karen. And congrats on finally seeing the spiritual crap for the razzmatazz it is.
Unlike some, I can live with a secular sense of the word “spiritual,” to name the experiences you describe from drugs, nature, etc. No matter what one wants to call it, rationalists are not bereft of such moments of exhilaration, happiness, or whatever. It’s too bad so much of humanity still has to interpret these experiences as outside the normal realm of our cognitive functions.
If it’s in the name of civility and rationality, I shall try to remember to use my real name from now on. No promises, though – I have a bad case of falling back into old habits.
I fully understand the concerns about civility,but I STRONGLY recommend NEVER posting under identifiable real name.(This is a key reason why I will not sign up to Facebook or other ‘legal name’ sites.)
Many years ago I posted a lot of stuff under my real name. I’ve learned not to do that.
Too much information leaks out, accessible from a simple Google search. As you post comments and opinions to a variety of fora, it gets worse. A lot of information can be pieced together. Under some circumstances this can be used against you (even without your knowledge).
Jerry, I actually appreciate that you do allow pseudonyms, frankly I wouldn’t post on sites that require a ‘true name’. I also don’t use services like Disqus’ which allow pseudonyms, but the same pseudonym appears on every site you post… almost as bad as using a real name.
I won’t even go as far as attributing more civility to real names than to pseudonyms.
Civility lies within the words, not the name. And since you can fake real names very easily in the open net, I somewhat find pseudonyms more earnest in that regard. You know they are pseudonyms.
Motivated by this discussion I looked up my real name yesterday and I gladly found one hit from more than 15 years ago (horrifying as this may be in this regard), although there must be a handful more from some honorary work I did in the past years. (My work apparently didn’t make that much of an online impact. 😉 )
I like it this way not just since the era of data mining.
It’s different if your job demands or results in online presence, but then I most likely would still use pseudonyms privately to separate my digital occupational identity from my private one.
Don’t forget that personnel managers can and do make name searches for years now. 😈
BTW, it makes me sad that trying to post under my real name placed my comment under moderation…
That will only happen the first time. Your following posts will go through directly.
I shall cry no more.
love the mousies in the equations;-)
Although I understand why some out there who are into twitter and face book and others, might want to use a phony name…it’s like the public bathroom to me, I don’t use it, don’t have the time. But why you need to hide a name on this site, I don’t know.
I use the nym I started out with on IRC way back in the 90’s. Only a fool would have gone into a chatroom using their own name. Over the years I’ve used it on various science/skeptic/atheist/humanist sites and forums. At this point I consider it my internet identity, one with far more recognition, reputation, and responsibility than my other name. There’s a lot of travel, drift, and overlap between websites, blogs, and listservs. Suddenly using my “real name” here would probably make me more anonymous, rather than less.
My “real name” by the way is Sue Strandberg (S.A. Strandberg, get it? “Sastra” is also a word in sanskrit meaning “sacred literature” or something like that: “The sword of truth which cuts through illusion,” a Hindu once told me. Sweet.) I’m not worried about revealing it here. A fair number of people already know.
I also go to a lot of conventions.
“I use the nym I started out with on IRC way back in the 90’s.”
Haha, same here!
““Sastra” is also a word in sanskrit meaning “sacred literature””
And rtkufner actually means “fire breathing lizard from the northern mountains” in West Frisian!
Or so I tell myself.
For anyone who is interested, my real name is Abe Eastwood, but I assume most people who know me could have guessed that from my nym.
LOL, actually I’ve always seen that as “a beast wood…” 😀
Me too, but I wasn’t going to say so. Abe’s nym only has one ‘e’ in it…
Me, too, Diane. Sorry, Abe…not that you ever came off as beastly:-)
Well, I actually like the beastly version. Thank you all for pointing it out!
After all, look at all the positive connotations in Urban Dictionary (too many to repeat here!):
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beast
That’s brave! I would not have cared to bet on the result of looking up ‘beast’ on Urban Dictionary. Well, actually, I would have bet, but on this occasion I would’ve been wrong.
cr
Oddly, the results were more or less what I expected. Maybe I’m hipper than I thought. 😀
Any time I click a link to Urban Dictionary at work the censorware goes bananas.
cr
That’s hardly surprising.
😉
Well, hello! It is nice to see your real name. I am one of your admirers, but of course ‘Sastra’ is perfect for you.
Because you could find me in about two seconds if I did. It’s not really the you I worry about though. It’s everyone else. Hold me tight, Randy.
I try not to give Jerry a reason to ban pseudonyms, and hope no one else does either.
Ditto
Btw, my nym should have had a ‘y’ on the end of it but WordPress cuts it off, every time
cr
I figured that out all by myself!
😀
The curious thing is, it doesn’t do that to longer names like Gravelinspector-aidan… so why does it do it to mine?
cr
Wonder what would happen if you tried putting a hyphen between infinite & probability? (Maybe WP thinks one ‘word’ can only be so long…)
No, whether I put a hyphen or a space, it just cuts off the ‘t’ as well.
(I did think of that explanation, btw).
Thanks for trying…
cr
I strictly use various pseudonyms on the net to avoid easy connection between my digital personae, except when I want to connect them.
I also find pseudonyms more personal than the name that’s part inherited and part chosen from your parents, since you usually didn’t have any say in the choice. So from your perspective it’s pure random. Pseudonyms may not tell others much about how you really are, but at least how you see yourself and want to be perceived (let’s say, as “Professor Ceiling Cat” 😉 ).
In my personal environment many people are known mostly or only by their nicknames or pseudonyms, so using a pseudonym may be more natural and familiar for me than for other people.
Wunold is also not my real name, but carefully chosen and relatively near to it. It literally means “the one exercising cheerfulness” in Old High German. My real name means “famous among the people”. 🙂
Professor Ceiling Cat knows my oldest still used pseudonym from my email address.
Yes, using a synonym (or worse, someone else’s name) allows one to commit atrocities without retribution, but using one’s real name on the Internet also opens one up to all kinds of crazies too–it can even be dangerous.
But I don’t worry too much about the issue either way; I use my real name because I think I should be responsible for my remarks. I wish others shared my view, but using pseudonyms to “attack” me says a lot about the pseudo. I have figured out who some of them were by clues they slipped out, but it doesn’t make any difference to me. The bigger problem is when participants refuse to participate, letting a discussion die just as it’s actually going somewhere (or when it’s getting too “hot” in the kitschen).
But what’s most unfortunate is when “notables” beg off because they “don’t have the time” to respond to (or otherwise pull rank on) the non-notables on the merits of a given issue. What’s even more unfortunate is when they won’t finish what they start.
Snobbery doesn’t bother me either, but I am astounded–ASTOUNDED, I tell you–that “political correctness” is so rampant among people intelligent enough, wise enough, well-educated enough, to stick to the issue rather than taking personal offense to an statement with which they disagree.
Finally, it continues to be my hope that this particular blog could be more of a place to discuss evolution than religion.
sub
I don’t see much attacking or bad behavior on line here at this site. That is because the owner does not allow it but also because the standard is a bit higher far as I can tell. Kind of the opposite of Fox news or reality TV shows. I don’t see that as snobbery so much, just a different taste. It is for adults only and that has nothing to do with age.
Some of the topics might be over my head but that is the way it should be.
I love the way Professor Ceiling Cat handles anony-mouse.
I think this rash of Anonymous is due to some browser updates. For years, Hempenstein has always loaded automatically in the comment post box, and I don’t even look at it. But not that long ago it got booted out and a post of mine (actually two) showed as A’mous, which is apparently the WordPress default. I caught it the first time and alerted PCC, but, still running on force of habit, didn’t the second time. I suspect that some don’t notice at all.
Same happens to me occasionally, if I post from a different computer or even just a different browser, my name doesn’t get loaded automatically and then I wonder why my comment hasn’t appeared.
I did it once here, recently. But that was because I had cleared out my cookies and browser history and I did not notice that my i.d. did not auto-load when I commented here.
It’s happened to me, and others have posted the same experience. So I worry a bit that we unintentional anons will have our comments tossed.
(Not that mine are that earthshaking to begin with…)
Yes, they will be tossed. It’s happened to me several times. Usually I immediately refresh the page to read the comment I just made and start wondering where it’s gone before the penny drops. So then I just have to re-type it.
Which is a royal PITA if it was a long comment.
Why I don’t use my real name – have you ever Googled yourself? – it’s disconcerting, some comment you made 10 years ago on some random topic in some forum you’ve forgotten existed pops up completely out of context. Googling ‘infiniteimprobabilit’ produces every comment I’ve ever made on WEIT but that’s OK because some person I’ve met in reality, looking for me, won’t see them. e.g my wife’s family, some of whom are religious.
People with common names don’t have this problem.
As a compromise I’ll start signing myself with my initials, CR. It’s what I’m universally known as in my circle of friends anyway, to the exclusion of my real name, and it has the great advantage that anyone Googling me is going to find 888 million results, 887.999 million of which are not me. 😉
cr
> People with common names don’t have this problem.
A friend of mine with a name as common as “John Smith” regularly jokes that he doesn’t need more anonymity than that. B)
How does he get on with policemen who ask him to identify himself…?
He shows them his ID card like everybody else.
(There is nobody else with his exact name and date of birth living at his address as far as I know.)
“have you ever Googled yourself?”
Yes, and one of the first entries is from a news website about some painter with the same name as me who was arrested for stealing chocolate bars from a grossery store. How about that.
Curses! I am no longer King of the Typo/Misspel.
But being a fan of gross, I’d like to know where that store is. Maybe I’ll start one in my neighborhood.
To me, Walmart is kind of a grossery store…
I used to go by various synonyms, in part to reduce any chance of retribution but also because I liked them. But for some time now I just let it all hang out since like the human race I am ‘mostly harmless’.
I must confess that I use a pseudo-name on another site because the owner is a friend of mine, and this way he will judge my material on the basis of merit rather than who I am to him.
He may have figured out who the trouble-maker is after all these years, but if so, we’re both keeping up the pretense.
Very few people know who the hell I am anyway and I presume that nobody gives a damn anyway. A nobody by choice.
Years ago, I used a pseudonym for a time to comment the Blog of a remote friend I had a falling-out with in the “real world”.
But in all fairness I openly admitted there that we know each other, but that I didn’t want to be recognized because we had some fierce disagreements elsewhere. One time he wondered if he wronged someone in real life because he liked my comments. 🙂
A mutual friend later recognized my wording and the subtle clue I left in my pseudonym. But I already had stopped commenting a while then and the distant friend didn’t hold a grudge as far as I know (I didn’t meet him personally since then).
Most of us don’t automatically tell their names to any random acquaintance they talk to in the street, on the train, or in the pub. So I don’t see any moral duty to share one’s real name with millions of random people on the net. It’s like running around with your ID card attached to your collar.
But I do recognize the courtesy of respecting the wishes of my host, especially if expressed as polite and clear as by Professor Ceiling Cat. 🙂 So I support your decision to block anonymous comments, Professor.