Policy
Posted by parhad on July 18, 2001 at 10:19:05:
There is only one: whatever the moderator du jour feels like.If you think I post too much or too long...out they go. It's a matter of style over substance. Do you just
not want to hear some things, see some things, think about some things? There isn't a foolish or ignorant scrap of writing you'd remove, not a one. Unless there are
worse ones we don't see. But anything that challenges you personally, anything YOU can't come up with an answer to, anything over your own head...you can't bear
to leave up there for others to read and consider on its own merits...as if your readers were rational, intelligent beings with minds of their own which might welcome a
new idea or a challenge.
How can a community prosper if it plays to its weakest part, to its fear and ignorance? This is how any number of people have been driven away...this is how you
intend to keep them away. It wont work anymore...you shouldn't WANT it to work if the rest of the things about unity and "just demands" are all true. You can't go
asking these things of people with only the practice you guys get around here by stroking each other or never engaging in anything challenging.
If you were allowed into a courtroom somewhere to plead the Assyrian Case before a hostile public, with prosecutors from Turkey, Syria and Iraq, in a setting
where no holds are barred...wherre no one will protect you by smoothing things over for you, where you can't simply turn your backs and refuse to engage the
opposition cause you would automatically lose your case...what in god's name would you DO?
It is because most of us can't even imagine such a thing...are desperate to avoid it all costs...that you have these kinds of "rules" and policies. It would serve the
community far better if you set up mock debates on just these sorts of issues...and see how well our "intellects" could handle themselves. Instead you remove all
serious obstacles, all opportunity to learn and grow and test by being CHALLENGED, as we surely would be if we actually entered the world and engaged in
action....leaving us all the hollow victory of saying whatever suits you personally with no opposition...leading these guys to believe they're ready for anything. A high
school debating team would make mincemeat out of any of our leaders and intellectuals. They have had NO practice at any kind of debate or reasoned argument.
Most of us think "Democracy" means our "right" to a place at the table NO MATTER WHAT. We all simply say what we think, and if that doesn't work we go off
and start another club with three members who think exactly as we do.
This is no way to prepare to take any kind of a place in the world. This is a clubhouse, a treehouse far removed from reality. How much math would you learn if you
simply turned away from what baffled you at first? This kind of thing makes us weak, makes us look bad in our young people's eyes, kids who already know better,
know there's something drastically wrong with these sorts of a "forums". This is why so many dropped their identity...it was too embarassing, it kept one too
backward, to think and behave like
this. Those Assyrians who decided to take on
learned so much along the way...these kinds of people CAN'T put up with these sorts of definitions for "patriot" and "leader" and "intellectual". The two worlds don't
exist anywhere near each other.
A person CAN'T think rationally or coherenttly out in the world, then come to his community and be welcomed ONLY if he checks his mind and abilities at the
door. When you run from things, you learn to RUN as a coping mechanism. You will remove this post...why? Have I offended anyone...have I insulted anyone? I've
simply posed a question you don't want to consider. The world does that all the time...is this the response you would recommend to an engineer among us, or a
research scientist? Would you tell them to hang in there until they meet a challenge, then punch out and go home and conduct "research" there, where no one knows
or can bother them?
Any serious piece of research or essay or thought MUST be subjected to "peer review"...to being doubted, being challenged. It isn't until after an exhaustive
examination, that any idea can be said to have merit. With us it is the reverse...an idea must NOT be challenged...if it can be, then the challenger must be
removed...or else how will the "darling little idea" survive? This is where our "journalists" and "historians" and "intellectuals" fall down badly. They RESENT it when
they are questioned...so they publish in our own barely coherent magazines where, as with zinda, it turns out that friendship with the editor and the "gratitude" of
members of the community determines what they call "editorial policy".
This post is already "suspicious" and unwelcome because it is too long. Just that condemns it in most of your reader's eyes. They can't help but measure "theirs"
against "mine". Just the fact that theirs are shorter seems offensive, "not right"...and they become hostile without bothering to think that maybe there is a lot more to
be said about us...if we are to actually DO something in this life about our deteriorating Heritage.