I have not followed very many threads of late, so if someone has already made the same observations I'm about to make, I apologize for my redundancy.
I admit it: I'm part of a highly secretive, highly elite group. (We have to drink two quarts of fresh Yak blood and get a tattoo of a Pentagram on our butts as part of of the initiation.) And I also freely admit that our elite group is not only bent upon seizing this board from Simon, but also taking over the entire Universe as we now know it using as our weapons, anaerobic organisms currently being developed in our secret network of labs on the planet Zolotone.
That being said, I will also say I am only speaking for myself in this thread. I've concluded that this board and everyone on it is part of an immediate family, like it or not. We spend more time together than many real families and as a result, fights, squabbles and name-calling is inevitable. I've lost it more than once, and I'm certainly not alone in doing so. I've said some vicious things I've later regretted saying. On the other hand, while we were growing up, my sister and I did some of the most vicious things to each other that can be imagined. Same is true with people I consider to be best friends. Face it, just like any normal family, we will have our moods and bad days and our hot buttons. When those buttons are pushed we will react. I doubt that much of the acrimony we've seen would've ever happened if we were just casual acquantances, but we aren't just casual acquantances. We LIVE together in this little piece of cyber-space. Some accumulate grudges, some jealousies, and some enjoy pushing hot-buttons. I enjoyed with a fiendish glee pushing my sister's hot-buttons when we were kids.
It would be bad enough if we were just a normal "family" here, but we're not. We're all screwed up. We're all dysfunctional. After all, almost all of us were dubs. One cannot be a dub without being screwed up. One cannot live and breath and pray and yearn for the greatest genocide in the entire human existence without being screwed up. One cannot hate and despise people who aren't in our religion without being screwed up. One cannot easily cut the bonds of family ties and treat a family member as "dead" because three people (who are screwed up themselves) sat in a closed meeting and announced that we were obliged to do so.
Face it, I'm screwed up, you're screwed up. If you refuse to admit that, then you were never a "good" dub and you were never "Spiritually Mature(tm)." One cannot be a "spiritually mature" dub without being totally screwed up.
As a result, we have to constantly recognize what we have in common (being screwed up) and deal with it and not fret so much over what we don't have in common, IMO. We have to show more tolerance and respect for our differences, and we constantly have to work on developing that "love" for each other that we never had as dubs. It is our duty, no, it is our OBLIGATION to rise above our sordid pasts and let our lives be the examples of compassion and understanding that we never had as JWs.
You'll have to excuse me now. I have to get back to my secret group. We have a Universe to conquer, you know.
Farkel