Theos-Talk Archives (July 1995 Message tl00028)

(This is from a post by Lewis Lucas.)

> I would like to express support for your attempt to offer a
critque of Paul Johnson's books.  I have to agree with you.  It
certainly does appear to me that Paul is the one who keeps moving
the discussion to the emotional level.

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but does anyone know if
Paul Johnson's career is writing or teaching? I might be quite
emotional myself if I were attempting to earn a living writing
books (as opposed to participating in entertaining discussions or
being occupied with my favorite pasttime or hobby).  He seems to
be a middle-aged student of theosophy whose book contains enough
research to make me believe that he is researching and writing
full-time.  What kind of work, Paul, did you do when you were
young (or before your first book on theosophy)? Did your talent
in writing come from university study?

Have any of you ever received a review or critique or performance
evaluation at your place of business? The hospital I once worked
at became very peevish in lieu of a licensing inspection of the
facility.  Those people had devoted their life to making a
hospital run and couldn't entertain lightly the thought that it
might be shut down because they weren't prepared with proper
guidelines in place, etc..

How many people actually make a career out of theosophy? Joy
Mills did.  Shirley Nicholson did later in life.  Dorothy and
John Abbenhouse did.  I don't know of anyone on our list who made
theosophy a career, unless it is Paul.  All of these people wrote
books except for Dorothy and John.  They were camp managers.

> I subscribe to all the lists, so it makes no difference to me
on which list your comments are posted, but I think since many of
those on theos-l are not subscribers to the others your comments
should be posted to theos-l.

> Last I saw there were over 100 subscribers, most of whom don't
post comments.  In a large group like this there are bound to be
discussions on topics of less interest to some than to others.
There have been a lot of posts about the Tarot and the Kabballah
that held little interest to me, but others found very
interesting.

Lewis, there is currently only one exception that I know of to
what you mention above.  When I advertised the theos-l group on
the WWW, making it simple for browsers to subscribe and
participate, I neglected (on purpose) to mention the other three
theos groups, hoping that we could still write with some privacy
if necessary there.  I haven't heard any comments one way or the
other about theos-l being open for passers-by, but like myself, I
would imagine that many people would try different lists, but not
enjoy the content and then unsubscribe.  I unsubscribed almost
immediately from skeptic-l and set-l and religion-l, just keeping
a second alternate, buddha-l.  It's very geared to eastern texts.
Thought I might learn something.

> As in any group there are some dominating voices on the list.
If you allow a few to force your discussion off this list I think
you do a disservice to the all the others.  If they find your
comments boring there is always the delete key! Oops....used that
exclaimation key.

I like this idea, Lewis, but I wasn't here for the first "heated"
discussion.  I was on maternity leave.  (ha ha) So maybe people
did become insulting.  Some are good friends in spite of it.  We
may all become called upon to express our forgiving natures and
our endurance or at least called upon to strengthen virtues.
What could be more theosophical?

If you may be flashing back to my own particular case of trying
to censor this discussion at one time, I did think I was
strengthening a virtue by leaving, the virtue of non-attachment.

Brenda