Re: Good God, What Happened to this Group?

Dear Cabbi,

I share your frustrations and have tried, like you, to point out how
destructive this is. Many times. It never works, all parties insist the
others are the problem, and refuse to let the ancient issues that keep them
at each others throats alive. They are so intent on revenge and keeping the
hate flowing that they never take a second to look in the mirror and ask
themselves what they might be doing to fan the flames. They can't see it,
being so involved with petty arguments. Those who refuse to join the fray
are, in their minds, blind or at best, fools.
This has gone on a long, long time. Some of the recycled flames that have
been reposted are from the mid/late 90's. A whole decade damn near gone by,
wasted on hate. It's a shame. It is also cyclic, with peaks and dips. It is
not as bad as it has been, though that's little comfort.
I would imagine, if one were interested enough, they could Google back to
the beginning and see who threw the first punch, but what good would it do?
It's not a fight until someone punches back. After that, there are no
innocents, anyone joining the fight is as much to blame as the one who
started it. But revenge won't permit that point of view.
Don't misunderstand, great wrongs have been committed here. Posting of
personal information, demands for proof of death from participants
survivors, untold numbers of scared and agonized people being chased away.
It should not be tolerated, but in this type of forum, the only effective
tool is to choose not to read, not to participate. It makes you wonder what
would have happened if the first person to have their "real life" vitals
posted here had just ignored it. Or replied with a "You're way off" and
given it no more attention. You would think a posting of one's vital
statistics would call for a reply with a great deal of thought behind it.
Then again, none of us are in a position to judge unless it has happened to
us, so who can say?
Even in the midst of all of this flaming and hate, there have still been a
few success stories that have flourished and outgrown this group, no longer
needing pain advice. Those few still outweigh all the crap, and all, even
the feuding parties, contributed to those success stories. When it works it
is a beautiful thing, a worthwhile endeavor, and fills you with a kind of
high no medication can give you. You may not be saving a life like a doctor
or EMT, but you saved part of a life, helped your fellow man and no matter
how worthless you felt before you hit the on switch of your computer, you
did something worthwhile before you turned it off. Where else can you go and
make a difference in somebody's life like that? It's worth wading through
the muck. The more folks speaking support, staying on message, the less
volume the mudslides have by comparison.
Just hang in there and don't bother opening what you can pretty well be
certain is a flame. If you're bored one day, fine, but you can be sure that
most of it is the same stuff over and over. If you read a half a dozen,
you've read them all. There's no rights, only wrongs. Keep the volume
cranked on the support, when the opportunity presents itself, and ignore the
noise.

Hang in there--og






"Cabbi" <cabbi@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11lokt0p720cv57@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Look,
> I have no creds to criticize anyone. I'm no one's idea of the ideal
> moderator or leader.
> But I have a question. What happened to the "support" part of this
> group? It seems to me there is a lot of type spent on attacking one
> another, a bit of type dedicated to spreading helpful news to pain
> sufferers. Yet most of the posts are attacks on other sufferers. When did
> it become vogue to attack one another regarding their pain, whether it be
> physical or emotional, in responding to this group? I'm all for more
> personal posts, but I can't abide blind items of attack from one member or
> another, simply because we may disagree. That renders this group impotent.
> All I'm seeing these days is constant sniping and bitching, blaming others
> for our own short comings. What kind of improvement can we expect from
> this type of conversation? If we continue to tear away at one another, we
> won't have an ASC-P. I'm beginning to think that is not such a bad idea.
> How sad.
>
> Cabbi
>


.

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