A New Online Defilement?

I have been thinking lots about how things can get in terms of online communities like forums. They are funny places because they are like amplified societies, where peoples beliefs and efforts to defend their beliefs are much more exercised than in this mundane real world with its physical and temporal restrictions.

There was a show on telly recently where someone killed someone else after an ongoing feud in a Buddhist chartroom, actually, It might have been "World of Warcraft" rather than Buddhism But the point is, how can it get to that point?  From an online chat? Bonkers.

From a Buddhist perspective I think it is it is quite easy to see why. Egos become entwined in some issue/conflict and the more they struggle against each other the more the conflict, the Dukkha, grows. This feedback cycle continues without end, until something external ends it.

In the real world where we have real lives with vastly more important issues than the beliefs of people we will probably never even say hello to, let alone meet. It just doesn’t matter what Francis33 believes about  Cornish Independence in the real world.  But online, with raw and unrestricted egos out,  it all seems different, as if a few words of ASCII text can represent someone’s entire illusionary ego. And once the egos sees itself in action  it attracts more mental attention, it grows because now it is out there, in public, in the primal gladiator pit of self versus others.

Why is this?

As Buddhists we try to break negative mental and moral states into their causes and principles so we can better eradicate  them; this is a part of the dharmic practice.  Since on-line communities have arisen there is at least one new, emergent, mental defilement with a Karmic payload. It is  like greed, sloth, conceit  or jealousy, but only available online.  I am not sure of the Pali Translation but in English it comes out as something like "taking oneself way too seriously online."

Whereas, in the real world, the root of suffering is ignorance, online it is not so much ignorance but "taking oneself way too seriously online." One might be the world’s biggest expert on something, yet still find that online they are  afflicted by "taking oneself way too seriously online."

Typically we can see the dependent origination of this online defilement in Karmic sequences such as:

• You believe x
• Someone online believes y.
• Online, you discuss x and y, because you are interested in the discussion.
• As you argue for x against their arguing for y, your viewpoint, from which you argue, starts to become your current Ego.
• It becomes important to you, and more to your Ego, that they at least understand why you believe x and at least acknowledge your criticisms of y.
• Ideally, if all goes well, you hope that they will end up believing x not y.
• Charged by the debate, invested in the debate, you find yourself afflicted  by "taking oneself way oo seriously online"
• All is Dukka:)

Incidentally, I have never suffered from this online defilement, I suffer from the karmically equivalent  "not taking anyone else seriously online." That's a joke. I love you all!

Stephen Fry is reputed to have once taken himself way too seriously online.

Peace! +:)=:):):)