Not at all angelic one.
Far to often there is not enough kindness exhibited to others, and in this case in particular, the mind view is spectacular.
Wonderful thoughts. Simply lovely. An inspirational gift.
Interesting assertions you make about my existence, especially from such a distance … ?
My family is important, because I placed myself willingly into a fold where I was responsible.
At work, I associate with no one. If these people walk out of here today and fall off a cliff, get hit by a bus, become the victim of a drive by, drop a toaster in the tub while bathing … it will matter not to me.
As far as the use of the word “friendship”, it is ill defined, and all too loosely used. I have had but two actual friends in my entire existence … one in youth, one in adulthood … one perished, the other went walk about to rectify his spirit.
If necessary, my spouse can explain the level of antisocial lengths engaged by me, to expressly avoid contact with other “humans”. There is no need of them, in the greatest, most expansive perspective … their hinderance is unwanted, and unnecessary.
I refute your claim, for myself, my watercourse is that of the great rivers and the unceasing dome of the heavens … continuous and solitary, except for the occasional visitor.
I still fail to see socializing as “necessity”, in all but the loosest terms. Community, as I see it, is a fallacy … or at best, resource reciprocity.
Yet you find yourself here in communi-cation.
A
Mas,
I make no assertions. I simply made observations based on what you have written in ILP over the last several months. Read my post carefully. The word “friend” was never mentioned. I never claimed community as a “necessity”
The fact remains, whether you call it community or resource reciprocity, you interact daily with others. As LA points out, you are here.
Mas, our interactions are our learning tools. I too treasure my solitude away from others, but to deliberately avoid others is to create an imbalance. Or perhaps I’ve missed something?
Perhaps I am being too liberal with my claims, my apologies tentative.
In my perspective, “community” only has two logical outcomes … weeding out unwanteds to generate an inner circle of like individuals, i.e. friendship … or resource sharing/gathering. Am I wrong?
My approach from your perspective certainly could seem unbalanced … until you take into account one of those innate virtues of my entity … mistrust which leads to anger. From that inspection, it is clear why I avoid to a fault.
I am here for lack of another place where some semblance of common ground is obviously absent. If we all had “community” where we were located, would there really be a reason to be here? I think not, but then, that’s just an unfounded opinion.
I am going to be brutally honest here, and please don’t take personal offense to this, but assume a logical posture:
We share momentary digital blips here, we toss ideas like laundry, and then off into the really real world to actually deal with animate humans.
Will you, tentative, Bessy, Kriswest and I ever actually sit down, break bread, look into the eyes of one another? I seriously doubt it.
If we did, would we still communicate effectively, expansively, and progressively towards a common understanding? I still have doubts.
Would we leave the meeting as more intelligently perceptive unified entities, or just shove off to continue mindlessly in the mundanities we do day in or out, without any real change to our life or our unity? My guess is the latter.
Community requires trust. I am close to bereft of that, regardless of how perfidious that may sound.
Mas,
In many ways, we are here because of the lack of community elsewhere. You’re right. If each of us had a collection of RL “friends” with whom we could share, we probably wouldn’t be here. BUT. Here we are.
We’re all a collection of words in this venue, and yet, sometimes that is enough, or at least it is the best we can get.
Is there trust here? Most of the time. I’ve had one BIG surprise since coming to ILP, and I suppose that leads to a certain amount of distrust, but in the main, the tiny group or ‘inner circle’ does form a supportive community. I only hope I return some support to others.
Does any of this change my perspective? Is there any growth? From my POV, there is no way that I can avoid it. To the extent that I remain awake and aware, to not grow is impossible.
As long as we remain curious about life, we will grow. I’m all for having fun in the process. The one sure thing we can know about life is that we won’t get out of it alive. Might as well enjoy the company of a few people why we’re here.
Tentative, you’ve made me think of something that’s been on the tip of my tongue for sometime. That is in my opinion, that we are not here by accident. You and I and the others, we interact the way that we do because it is our karma and affinity to do so.
We do not have common goals, our outlook on life is totally different, our age differs, our jobs, the clothes we wear, the types of people we encounter in our day to day lives, the food we eat, our interests, our perspectives, our choices, our awareness, the vegetation in our environments, the scenery, the temperature, our accents, our cultures, the colour of our eyes…but there is something common between us. And what is common is that we look out there, you look at the words on the page that I write and you have the opportunity to observe how you are moved by them. How you react, how you behave, all these things help you determine how well you know yourself and of course visa versa.
This is most certainly a community in the way that Dogen describes. The key lies in how we use it or not.
A
LA,
I suspect that most of us arrived here by accident, but we stay by choice. Why? Our commonality? I suspect that is our prime motive - to find an epistemic community no matter how large or how small. Some is a need for confirmation, some is a need to explore different ways of seeing, and I suppose that the list of ‘needs’ is an endless progression.
It is a curious enterprise, attempting full communication with words. It fails as much as it succeeds, but words can evoke affective intuitive understanding, and that is what we look for. It is looking past the differences to what is heart that creates the interactions important to our growth. Words are just fingers pointing.
I’ll be bold. There are no accidents!
A
no accidents? hmmmm, sounds a bit deterministic to me. I’m one of those that see sponteneity and novelty at work in the world. The opening and closing of the gates may not be accidental, but they are beyond our knowing…
But if your right, I’d like to place an order… 
Beyond our knowing tent? Mighty presumptuous of you. It’s not deterministic at all to say that there is a reason for everything. If you don’t know the reason, doesn’t mean that nobody knows the reason.
I know I know…this is where you and I separate. If you’ll excuse me, I have some bruises to tend to.
A
Oh, sorry. didn’t mean to bruise you…
Na, had a bike accident. You’re a pussy cat.
A
This is exactly my point angelic one.
It doesn’t appear that we do “use” anything here, cynically speaking.
Myself included, we just continually toss symbols, imply special knowledge, contradict, and move to the next topic.
That’s community? 
Not so sure about that one. It seems to me we are just present, and placated, because we probably don’t know another way to be “communally”.
Even though you and tentative both ignored it, go back and think about it for second … what is the likelihood that we will ever be more than digital blips to one another? Nil.
I think this is why solitude works in superior fashion to community. Take what community is present in the moment, then move on, it’s more fleeting than thought itself, because it only exists in presumption. It is likely none of us will stay here for long. What then? Stillness.
Mas,
I still believe that interaction with others is important. Solitude allows us introspection and from that our greater understanding, but I would agree that one must choose carefully. You are right and I am wrong. This isn’t a place for having the sort of community either of us have in mind. A line from a poem I’ve often quoted: “The weddings of the soul occur as they occur.” Souls aren’t words.
Grrrrrr.
I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT IS THE POINT JT. That’s what pisses me off. I should be dead wrong about all of this … seriously wrong.
I realise what you are saying, the meeting minds occurs regardless the medium, but the interconnectivity of spirit requires intimate knowledge of others, and that is what community is supposed to provide … and always seems to fail. But what do I know …
I should be wrong, and I should be able to break bread with a new mind from Idaho. Period.
Mas,
But we have my friend, and we have a community of two. 
But this is serendipitous. You and I intuit each others understandings about as closely as is possible. I would say almost past possible given this medium. But how many others? Touches here and there, but community? Hardly. We take what we can get and be grateful for that.
Expectations Mas, we have to watch our expectations…
Then I would say to you tentative, your inclination towards reproaching my method of social avoidance is incorrect, logically.
If expectation is harnessing desire to acquired social need, and community is a tool for hinderance and corruption, feeding off the perfidy of social expectation; we are left with naught else but solitude.
And humanity slips even further, and the slope has no end.