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From: [email protected] (Lisa Walton)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: psycho (psukhe)
Date: 31 Oct 1995 02:58:07 GMT
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI), Portland, Oregon
Lines: 122
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: blue.cse.ogi.edu

In article <[email protected]>,
Sweet Poly wrote:
[...]

>Yes, I agree, based mostly on my own personal experience and that of my
>friends. For example, I have a really hard time writing offline at this
>point. I don't know if it's because it's easier to write online because
>of the sense of the 'audience' on the other end, or something else.

*sigh* Before computers I wrote neatly and eligibly - now its a
scrawl, and writing on paper seems so tedious and unnecessary. It cost
me some computerless friends though... Email is _the_ way to go -
more immediate and intimate than snail mail, less confrontational and
demanding than a phone conversation (one-channel real-time).

When you're online, you can add the flourishes that create an illusion
of multi-channel communication - gestures, carefully crafted verbal
pictures...

[...]

>Well, I've never been to a Revival meeting, but I know what you mean.
>Ross, I am glad you posted this. I agree that there are some
>"interesting" phenomena taking place, but it's so personal, and difficult
>to describe, that there is very little (if any) discussion of it in
>public. Nobody wants to be laughed at. I don't know how deep this thread
>will go, but I think it's important to talk about this, so here it goes...

Very true. Wish I understood it better, so I'll contribute my .02 even
though this thread seems to have become a bit turbulent since this
post...

>Everything in my life has been changed because I spend time here, in
>cyberspace. Being online has been so powerful an experience for me, that
>my 'clarity' has been completely blown out of the water -- it's been quite
>extraordinary, and in more ways than one. I was once a rational person,
>who believed that anything not able to stand up under the rigors of the
>scientific method was not to be taken seriously. My personal life was
>afflicting, and I was *very* unhappy, without really seeing it. One day
>in August of last year, I logged on to usenet for the first time, and
>nothing was ever the same. Lord only knows how much money I saved myself
>on therapy , by being here -- it was the strangest thing. Everything
>about myself that had no room to exist in RL, came pouring out through the
>connection, as if connecting opened up a little chink in the wall that
>shut me in.

This sounds like a spiritual awakening (I do not equate spiritualism
with religion btw). Belief in (or reliance on) the scientific method
can coexist with an awareness of a different "spiritual" (non-RL)
reality. People who have only one seem to me to be only half alive.
Without the former one is lost in ignorance and delusion, without the
latter one stifles to death in the prosaic banalities of daily
existance.

Rational thought is necessary, but so (as you once said) are stories.

We need the creative outpouring of writers, poets and other artists
and to listen to those urges within ourselves. Participating in the
collective creation of special "places" such as the ranch, is like
wending through and gamboling in the dreams of many souls.

>Unfortunately (or fortunately), there was *still* no room for
>'Sweet Poly' in my RL, which created an appalling tension --
>"schitzophrenia", or split-personality are the words that first come to
>mind to describe the feeling. This is one reason I think it's folly to
>try to view usenet as "just pretend", something not to be taken seriously
>as being 'real', BTW. I couldn't keep 'Poly' within the bounds of
>cyberspace, and the chink became a huge gap -- but she was not acceptable
>at home. Now, that home is gone, and I have all the room I need.

But what do you do if being many people in one (having many personae)
is the way you feel in RL, and that the appalling tension is that no
one person seems to be able to deal with all of what you can be? If
they were masks you could shed them, but if what they really are are
different facets of the same soul, hidden and revealed in complex and
subtly shifting patterns, what then?

I understand about expanding beyond the bounds put around you, and
facing the tensions that arise... From minor things such as being
irreverently whimsical in a group of "serious intellectuals" to more
major contentions such as having a 'spirituality' that does not
conform to any religion or philosophy that is "acceptable" to the
questionner.

Having 'room' is very necessary. The one time I tried to build a
'real home' it became a trap. Home is now a space that I create for
myself, spiraling out from the place I feel most safe at the time,
extending across time and space to places and people I care about -
both present and not, both living and dead.

(No, I'm not a believer in spirits or ghostly communications, its just
that sometimes internal advice comes in the guise of someone who is
not present, as in wisdom that comes to me in dreams about my
grandmother).



>At this point, all I know to do is trust my instincts, to trust my inner
>authority, which grows more confident with each passing month. Nobody
>has ever been here before, and it is truly uncharted territory -- and we
>are all so caught up in *experiencing* it that it's difficult to stand
>back and look at it objectively, to see what is happening here. I'm just
>taking notes as best as I can, to refer back to when I start to gain some
>perspective from the passage of time.

Some of us are not so much caught up in experiencing it as caught up
in trying to understand -it-. This forum seems to either be teeming
with inane or scurrilous drivel, or to have so much going on that
there is no time to encompass it in time to particiapate. The ones
that do dive in fully get thoroughly pummeled, at least occasionally
(some frequently) lose their objectivity, but have a wonderful time.

I do not consider myself to be in that category, because I rarely post
to anything occurring outside The Ranch - The Roof spirals from my
Safe Space, and intermingles with the harmony/cacophany that is The
Ranch.

Speaking of which, Sym and I are about to go visit Zeitgeyser, who is
in serious need of some PB&Brimstone, on the porch...

Lisa

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