Greetings to all (The Path Without Resistance)

Actualism
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126

Hello everyone,

The moderators have decided to take the step of permanently banning @PWR from the forum. This comes after a lengthy private correspondence between PWR and one of the mods that shows his behavior here has no sign of stopping or changing.

All banning decisions are made “on a case-by-case basis” (FAQ) with the overarching goal being to enable the forum to fulfil its purpose, which is “to further peace-on-earth via enabling sincere discussion of and experiential engagement with actualism” (Terms of Service). After stepping back it’s clear that PWR’s participation has consistently worked contrary to this purpose and is ultimately detrimental to the forum.

The overarching cause of the ban is their persistent false claiming to be actually free, first made ambiguously[1][2] and only made explicitly over 70 posts later[3]. From this self-constructed perch of false authority, they then continuously misrepresented actualism and actual freedom[4][5] and, rather than sincerely engage with the multitude of raised points, questions, and contradictions pointing to the fact that they are not actually free[6], they deflected by labeling good-faith questioning and fact-checking as “censorship” (#93, #95) and attempts to “dogmatize” (#60), refusing to provide evidence for their claims[7], resorting to condescension[8], and engaging in semantic games[9]. This refusal to engage sincerely and productively derails productive discussion and works against the forum’s purpose.

They further made serious and unfounded accusations against moderators, claiming an “invasion of privacy” and “threat of revealing my private address and compromising my security” (#95) via tracking their IP address. A clarifying post (#121) showed this to be completely false, with no private information revealed or threatened to be revealed.

Their conduct even crossed the line into unacceptable abuse when they compared actualists taking due and appropriate care with facts, definitions, accuracy, and a sensible approach to actualism with “a sophomoric fundamentalist wing ready to engineer the next holocaust.” (#99) This type of rhetoric is grossly offensive and has no place in a sincere discussion forum dedicated to peace-on-earth.

In short, from the counterfeit authority of masquerading as actually free, they promoted a self-proclaimed superior[10][11] yet contradictory[12] and ill-defined method[13][14][15] replete with unsubstantiated claims[16], all the while denigrating the actualism method[17][18] and those practicing it [19][20][21][22][23][24] whilst also engaging in provocative and often abusive communication (as detailed above).

This conduct is incompatible with the forum’s goal of fostering the sincere exploration and experiential putting of actualism into practice. That they have been doing this while simultaneously claiming not to be[25][26][27][28][29] is just a demonstration of the depths of their insincerity. As the FAQ states under Moderation guidelines: “However if somebody is simply intent on “disproving” actualism and/or has no interest of applying it to their own life, to the detriment of the other forum-goers, we will eventually suggest they spend their time elsewhere.”

After taking all the above into consideration and putting it into perspective, the decision was an easy one.

Although the moderators do not want to set themselves up to be an arbiter in general of who is actually free or not, in this particular case there is ample evidence that PWR is neither actually free, nor virtually free, nor even has had any experience of actuality in a PCE that they can currently recall clearly. This whole episode can be taken as a case study of how to approach somebody claiming to be actually free and what are the ways to find out that they are not, whether it stems from genuine confusion or malicious intent.

Best regards,
Claudiu & the mod team

P.S. Although the above is sufficient for a ban decision on its own, a few points are worth voicing with regards to the theory that PWR is Chaz/Sky/Skye/lexej etc. (see Richard’s confutation for context), as to be forewarned is to be forearmed:

  1. Chaz did come onto this forum in March 2023 as the sock-puppet @lexej (as exposed by @rick in 817/#9, so we know he is still recently active.

  2. Chaz is capable of orchestrating long-term sock-puppet campaigns, as he admitted to in 2001:

  3. The moderators have uncovered some evidence that Chaz has pre-seeded the forum with various latent sock-puppet accounts that he can press into service when needed.

As taking advantage of a ban such as this to play the victim and stir chaos is very much in line with Chaz’s modus operandi[+], this note is merely presented here such that people can be on the lookout for accounts without much participation here starting to post and vent about this moderation decision. This note alone ought to be sufficient to forestall any such campaign from gaining traction, hence the reason it is being included.

[+]: For example, in October of 2014, on the Yahoo! actualfreedom group, Chaz, posting as synaptic.cleft, spoke out viciously against then-moderator Claudiu’s decision to “turn this place into a forum dedicated “to those in alignment to what is actual”” such as to “disallow people who criticize with a demonstrable history of having no intention of being in alignment to what is actual” such as by doing “nothing but find imagined faults, ignore responses, refuse to follow logic and reason, simply deny facts without any evidence” (#18121), on top of the obvious outright verbal abuse, and insults and such that was prevalent at the time, noting that if someone chooses “to repeatedly troll and derail discussions, then it has consequences, and there’s no reason for us to have to put up with it or allow it” (#18126). Here is a handful of Chaz’s replies at the time:

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  4. For example, they falsely equated pure intent with personal willpower, stating ““Pure” intent… what is the reason for such a superfluous adjective? If the intent is not pure, then it is not intent. And no intent arises when there is not enough willpower to sustain it. Intention and willpower, two sides of the same coin.” (#95).

    When this was pointed out in no uncertain terms (#96, #98), they went even further, dismissing definitions and descriptions of the actually-existing and vital-to-success pure intent as "dogma", "one of the sacred cows of [Richard’s] actualism" and mere “poetic metaphors” (#99). ↩︎

  5. As another example, they misrepresented the qualities of the actual world, calling the term “universe” an “insidious term” comparable to “God,” (#99) and denied its fundamental, experientially-ascertained-by-those-genuinely-free characteristics like infinitude and stillness: “There is no infinite matter and much less immobility/stillness in the universe…”. (#119) ↩︎

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  11. Implying they have “better explanations” and that any rational person would follow their method and not the actualism method:

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  12. it is called a path “without resistance” and yet there is “resistance to be overcome” (#72) ↩︎

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  17. Grossly mischaracterizing the actualism method – the consistent enjoyment and appreciation of this moment of being alive – as “a frantic search for happiness”, viz.:

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  18. Calling virtual freedom a “no man’s land” and “plateau”, viz.:

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  20. Calling virtually free people intellectually poor and incapable of/uninterested in independent critical thought and taking pride in being dysfunctional, viz.:

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  21. Impugning actualists as distorting their words and being biased (ie engaging in bad faith), viz.:

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  22. Denigrating actualists as having a lack of intellectual integrity:

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  23. Maligning actualists as trying to prevent and hinder the spread of peace-on-earth:

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  24. Slandering actualists as bullying and being malicious, viz.:

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