Last week, and unbeknown to me at first, I got dragged into the discussion on the Rick Ross Cult Education Forum. Apparently people on the board were uneasy about some of our regular contributors. It was implied that maybe I'd been duped somehow, put under the spell of the covert Byron Katie loyalists here on SHAMblog. Perhaps I'd even been conscripted into the service of cult interests by people who'd used their advanced neurolinguistic skills with surgical precision to bypass my usual defenses; presumably they'd reached deep into my subconscious and ingratiated themselves with me, thereby softening my skepticism about BK in particular and psycho-charlatanism in general. To some people on the Ross board—reading between the lines—this concern was further magnified by the fact that I'd never delivered on my long-ago vow to blog about Katie. (I mean, clearly, if I don't blog about someone, what other conclusion could there be except that I'm now a boot-licking sycophant, right?) If nothing else, the suggestion seemed to be
that I wasn't doing a very good job of policing my blog or protecting my dumb, gullible readers from the evil intentions of the BK riff-raff.
In fairness, it was also theorized—in my defense, I guess—that I might be quietly preparing a book on Katie, or at least a major magazine piece.
Given all this armchair speculation (to which I was finally alerted by another of our regulars), I thought it was time for me to appear in the flesh on the Ross board and set the record straight about (a) my blog and (b) my approach to blogging/intellectual discourse in the first place. And yes, I'll admit, I figured I was entitled to do so as well as to offer my 2 cents on some of the attendant issues. And in light of the nature of some of the remarks on the Ross board, I figured I'd be allowed some leeway in making my point.
I figured wrong.
You can read the evolution of the thread yourself by clicking here,* but the upshot is that I ended up recusing myself from the board—and then being banned—after I committed the unforgivable sin of trying to (a) point out that I value fairness and the free exchange of ideas, and (b) bring in some contextual examples that I thought helped clarify the point. Evidently that kind of heretical thinking is unwelcome on the Ross board. I got the impression that if you're not there to witch-hunt, to participate in a gleeful savaging, well, don't bother.
But here's the best part. Not content to simply ban me privately or at worst to post some generic notification that I'd been banned, the moderator felt compelled to chastise me (on the board itself) for being too self-centered, implying that I'd come to the board for the purposes of "self-promotion." As exhibit A in this line of reasoning, he offered this gem:
"Count how many times he used the word 'I' in his last post.
Very telling."
Naturally I was not allowed a rebuttal, as that would've been the fair-minded thing to do.
I've said it before, but I'm always amazed that those who cry the loudest about "brainwashing!" are often the most philosophically tyrannous in their own activities, insisting on absolute and unwavering loyalty to their point of view. Free speech begins and ends with them.
Anyway, I thought my final comment to the moderator—which, of course, will never see light of day—was worth including here, unedited. Yeah, I was angry. But I basically stand by it nevertheless:
Hey...dickhead...first of all, I use "I" because, unlike some people, presumably including yourself, who have the apparent benefit of being omniscient, I like to introduce my opinions as my opinions, not universal truths. Secondly I do happen to have some bona fides in the field as a result of the years of research that went into SHAM, so I think I can say certain things on my own authority without having to footnote them. Thirdly I never viewed this board as "self-promotional." I got dragged into it by people who suspected that I (oh, damn, there's that offending word again!) was being "duped" by some of the folks who post on my (am I allowed to use my?) blog. (Wait, let me amend that: "...some of the people who post on Steve Salerno's blog." There; that better now?)
Bottom line, maybe you think you're very clever to allow yourself that coup de grace in explaining my banning from the blog [sic], but I've been dealing with pompous assholes like you my whole life—people who present themselves as "reformers" or "truth seekers" but in fact are every bit as didactic and closed-minded as their philosophical targets, the only difference being that they come at the subject from the other pole in the discussion. So go ahead, have some fun at my expense. Maybe it'll make you feel a little bit less inadequate (i.e. the equivalent of rhetorical Viagra)?
P.S. I think I'm going to take this up with Michael Shermer, too—"the tyranny of the reformers....", i.e., how skepticism sometimes gets perverted to an agenda all its own. I don't know how he'll feel about it as an overall topic, but maybe there's a good article in it, if I can frame it properly.
* Scroll down to the first comment from "iwrotesham," which is me, then go forward from there. The whole thing unfolds over just two pages or so.