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This is why Zed describes _why as a good person currently being a dick. He is explicitly very supportive of the notion of destroying parts of your life that are causing you suffering, but what he is calling out is the unnecessary harm he has caused to others, and Resig's mischaracterization of it.

Resig is well-meaning, but he's abusing the analogy by relating _why's work to a sand mandala. A sand mandala is not just symbolic--it's ceremonial, it's expected, and nobody gets hurt when it's destroyed. _why's disappearance was not ceremonial, was not expected, and did hurt people. It reflects the notion of impermanence, but that that is neither the totality of Buddhism nor an idea exclusive to Buddhism. Absent the notion of karma (or some other check), impermanence implies Nihilism, and it's a gross distortion of Buddhism to suggest that any suffering you cause for others in the name of impermanence is ok as long as you grow individually.

Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to, which is to point out that even though we all love _why and can all agree that he had the right to do what was good for him, it's still a dick move to hurt people in the process, and he could have handled it better. _why could have accomplished the same thing without hurting anybody. That might have rightly been called a Buddhist act, and fit for praise. But what is actually happening is that people forgive _why for the trouble that his exit has caused because they like him.



Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to

Rush to judgement? Yes, I'm unwilling to do that, especially publicly and without any reasonable justification for my own self-involvement with the issue.


Where is the "rush to judgement"? Zed's post is mostly in response to Resig's "eulogy", which itself assumes that _why pulled his stuff deliberately. He's only agreeing with that premise (with praise) and disagreeing with the all-positive conclusion wrought from that premise. Again: the only unconfirmed assumption here is one that most people including the author being responded to have made.

Also, we're talking about something Zed posted to his own personal blog. Is Zed not allowed to post what he thinks to his own personal blog? What "reasonable justification" is required to publish your own opinion on the internet?




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