Yes Constance that is true, but the modern world increases the alienation. When people tended their front yard with a push mower, & a spade they actually talked to & me their neighbours, & friendships formed. Today over the noise of the motor mower & the brush cutter they merely wave, if that.

People chatted as they walked or rode pushbikes to work, to day they struggle for car space on the road, with each other.

When I first went sailing, in the 60s, there would be a hundred yachts anchored in Coasters Retreat in Broken Bay at Easter, Christmas & some long weekends. People talked to other yacht crews as they rowed their dinghy to the beach for a swim or a walk. Invitations were offered for a coffee or a drink, & in a few years I had a number of new friends & a host of acquaintances.

You can't talk over an outboard. As they became more common people merely waved. The noise level drove many off to smaller quieter anchorages, & motorboats took over the area. I never saw many of those people again.

Again when there were few yachts in the reef waters, you would anchor near any one you saw, & share your knowledge & experience. Later with fifty or more in the regular anchorages, you would look for somewhere less crowded.

The search for quiet & privacy has overcome the desire to share common interest, & is generating a society of isolated individuals, rather than a community.

spindoc, perhaps "big picture" was the wrong term for what I was trying to do. Not quite sure what I should have called it.

In regards to 3 players, I'm not convinced that Islam is stable enough to be considered a single player. I get the impression that it seems to be at a crisis point where there is something of a battle going on creating opportunity for reformation or for it to go in a far nastier direction. Reformation is a risky business for those within seeking to drive it and it's often a matter of baby steps and cautious tactics.

From what I understand of it persecution tends to make religious bodies stronger as people feeling threatened stick more closely to a group identity. Hence the combative wide spread approach taken by some in my view plays into the hands of the extremists.

Somehow we need to find ways of taking the pressure off the drivers to extremism without surrendering our own values and freedoms.

R0bert

Hasbeen,

That is so true. We are more and more losing any real community (face to face). And people are escaping the noise for more seclusion. People walking around with ear plugs. When I'm looking for directions in the street sometimes, it can be hard enough just trying to find someone to ask directions who hasn't earphones on.

It's funny, lately I've been meeting some young people who are like, technology exhausted and want to escape elsewhere away from it. Like leave their office job and go into something completely different. This young man actually said that he envied me for what he has missed out on, having only grown up with technology. Another one had pretty poor social skills, very quiet and had escaped the city realising all that technology (he hardly did anything else) wasn't healthy for him.

I was told that there have been 6,000 articles written about the detrimental effects of Wi fi. It has been banned in some schools in Germany and the USA.

I'm finding in general, many people are unhappy.

Enigma - Age Of Loneliness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APW_QwzGg2o

‘morning R0bert,

It has nothing to do with stability of Islam, we already know Islam is not stable, if it were we wouldn’t be having this conversation would we?

As an exercise just try this.

At the very highest level there are just three entities interacting in the world on this topic, Islam, the PC left and the electorates, that interaction is difficult enough to analyze without taking on more complexities.

So try taking just ONE of those entities, Islam, down to the next layer of granularity and see what happens. The instant you try to do this you end up with hundreds of different Islamic groups across 56 Islamic nations and all their permutations.

Now try to sort out the relationship all these permutations have with the other two entities, even without breaking them down beyond single entities? You will go nuts trying it.

Like I said, try to work out what has to “give” between just the three entities identified before you even go near even more complex permutations.

I’ll give you a clue. One group contains protagonists, one group contains enablers and the third group contains all the victims and potential victims.

Robert, I've been thinking about your post on use of real names.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17030#300452

To be honest, I simply can't see that most of your arguments have validity.

I haven't seen you discuss anything that might fall under the rubric of the Family Law Act privacy provisions. If you wished to, then perhaps it might be worth using an alias for the specific purpose. On the other hand, if it is merely a vent, then it might be worth reconsidering whether there may be a better way to approach things.

Similarly with work-related matters. If you don't feel you can say at work the things that you might wish to say here then perhaps you're not in the right job or you should reconsider comments here.

Interpersonal violence as a result of saying something on line is covered by the Law and once again, it reflects as much on a commenter as the listener if a comment creates bad feeling to such an extent.

The threats of legal action by that particular group of kooks were stupid on the face of it and you may know that I called their bluff at the time, passing on my personal details and inviting them to do as they had threatened. They didn't. Stand up for what you say or don't say it.

Whether someone who uses a real name is a 'grubby' poster is not exactly relevant, is it?

Bottom line for mine is that the use of aliases should be permissible, but the use of real names should be encouraged.
Anonymity is too much of a 'coward's castle' and although I used to use it myself, I was never comfortable with it.

Craig "To be honest, I simply can't see that most of your arguments have validity. " then we will disagree on this. Perhaps your life is different to mine and the impacts of somethings are less relevant.

R0bert