Theos-Talk Archives (September 1999 Message tl00003)

At 11:16 AM 09/02/1999 +0200, hesse600 wrote:

On Tue, 17 Aug 1999 09:36:43 -0500 M K Ramadoss
ramadoss@eden.com> wrote:

 I hope so. The bottom line is making theosophy accessible to the world. Its
 effect on the world is what counts and not through which channel.

 There is the long standing organizational mind set which seem to pervade
 all through the various sections around the world which seem to indicate
 that none of the elected national and international official are seen on
 the Internet maillists or newsgroups interacting with the theosophical
 community.

[Well, I am an elected secretary of a small lodge in
Holland, does that count? ]

	Yes you do count a lot. I hope those at national and international levels
follow your example.

 What we see is static web pages (which is mostly one way
 communication, akin to print publications) and pictures of some of the
 elected officials in some web sites -- I do not know if those pictures are
 meant to send any subliminal messages to inquirers?

	[I am also preparing a website, but without any pictures. I
think the people in the top seates have a lot on their
minds and they are still learning about what the best way
is to work on it. We had in Naarden, this summer, a meeting
on practical theosophy and the work, for workers, (whith
Radha there)and a lot of the discussion was about the
internet. I think there should be e-mail-discussion-lists
in all vernaculars. But time will surely bring these, I am
absolutely confident. The only thing is that organisations
are slow, because big, and therefore they change course
slowly. But the discussion is alive in TS-Adyar and
eventually it will all happen.]

Glad to know about the interest in Internet.

Academic discussions ok upto a point.

What is needed is action. Time is rolling past and opportunities would be
missed unless one is thinking in terms of manvatara rather than hours and
days.

Either there is lack of understanding of e-mail etc or not willing to
change how business of communicating with membership is done.

For example, in the US, TS tried to set up a maillist which is almost dead
or is on life support. Why? Because the organization wants to censor all
messages and censoring is not considered acceptable by most on Internet.

Take another example. While we have several elected national
officers/officials, only the e-mail address of the president(general
secretary) and secretary who live at the national hq are published. While
some of the other elected officers do have e-mail, none of them is
published. Why? Is it because of the desire of the HQ to control the flow
of info between the membership and elected officials or is it because as a
policy TS does not want the directors/officers directly communicating with
the membership? We do not know? Also TS has not used e-mail to keep in
touch with its membership? Why? Do we need to go Tibet and ask our Real
Founders (if we can locate Them) to find out.

Like they say house is on fire, with the dwindling membership, not using
Internet does not make sense, at least to me an ordinary member with no
inside information.

Hope some light will shine and help TS use internet/e-mail effectively.

...mkr