Dealing with 9/11 Madness (argumentum ad hominem veritas), page 5

If I understand this thread's posts correctly, the owners and operators of the site seem to be fed up with the "me right-you wrong-and your feet smell too" level discussions, and are making a big effort to clean house, and push the forum towards becoming more scientific and research based.

As a long time reader (and a relatively new member) of the forum, I feel I know where they are coming from and greatly sympathize with the effort. And I am curious (and hopeful) to see where this slightly heavy handed steering takes things.

However...

The events of 9/11 threaten such core values and concepts like trusting one's own kind (in this case, Americans and their own government), one's perception of self and the world he/she lives in, as well as all the spoon fed values that we acquire at home, school, and in general, life itself...

In this context, there is so much more to "9/11 conspiracies" than just a big and nasty game of whodunit. The social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the events, the conspiracy theories about the events, how people consciously or subconsciously choose to deal or not deal with the knowledge or the lack thereof, etc. (I could go on but won't) This is a once in a century (hopefully) phenomenon where a nation is forced to heavy duty soul searching and self reflection.

My hope is that, while facts and research can do their part in our quest for truth, there should be some room to discuss the "human" factor of what is happening... From the actual events to our reaction and feelings about it.

Although I doubt that it would happen, my suggestion is the separation of this forum in to two separate categories:

One would be reserved strictly to research, facts, science, and elevated standards for presenting and discussing them. I truly believe that the very valuable efforts of the relatively few who investigate all the facts and leads with dignity and integrity, are being buried and paralyzed under the barstool water cooler level banter... So much so that, by the time you get to the middle of the second page, most threads become indistinguishable regardless of their topics. This "serious" section would have to adhere to strict guidelines universally accepted for orderly, ethical and scientific investigative research, most of which ATS already follows, at least in principle.

And for the rest of us, maybe there can be a forum to discuss the whys and whos. I feel the pain and frustration of most us here with the undesirable behavior, arguments, antics, etc. But, I would argue that these people have their own valuable place in exposing the spectrum of thoughts, emotions, beliefs.... They expose how huge populations that they represent think... At what level they see these events. How they are affected by them. How much they care... Someone's slandering session with high emotions exposes his/her truest feelings which need to be learned from. This group can use the serious 9/11 forum as a wealth of knowledge to understand and learn from all the illusions being exposed one by one. And to feed our philosophical banter of course)

So, for those of us who are learners of life in search of reality, no matter how ugly, there can remain a site where we sometimes tolerate some one saying "and your mouth smells, too" every now and then.

Respectfully,

may_be_true

[edit on 13-12-2007 by may_be_true]

[edit on 13-12-2007 by may_be_true]