User talk:Dark Goob

Hi, me again. You're doing a huge amount of writing. I'm still a bit concerned at how you're arranging things - what you've put under the heading 'Etymology' is mostly not really 'Etymology' but historical analysis. For a better idea of what this word means, see Etymology. Etymology is specifically about the development of words, spellings, pronunciations. e.g. the word hi derives from 'how are you' via heya. That's etymology - keep it simple. I find it quite daunting that you're making such huge changes to the article, because I'm not convinced that you're being quite careful enough to make your writing supportable (with references), NPOV, and succinct and well-organised, and someone like me spends a lot of time going through and trying to edit it into shape. Unless you've got a great deal of time on your hands and a good library sitting at your disposal, I think it's unlikely that you could write that much and keep it really good quality. I'm sorry I've kept being so negative about your contributions, but I'm trying to impress upon you that we're attempting to write a scholarly encyclopedia here, and there are some fairly important requirements (please read these Wikipedia policies): I reckon these ideas you're writing have been put forward by others. They're valuable ideas worth mentioning, and if you can actually find the authors who said these things, and present their ideas with citations, then they'd be a great benefit to the article (or to other articles on similar themes).
 * The first is NPOV. I still detect a strong derisory tone against those who 'misuse' the term esotericism, and a strong antipathy against Christians and other mainstream religions. That's just not acceptible for a Wikipedia article. Your language is very emotive (e.g. 'bastardized').
 * The second is No original research. Your ideas feature very strongly here, but they are clearly your ideas, not someone else's. You mustn't include your own analysis in articles &mdash; it must come from a reputable third-party source (e.g. a well-regarded author or perhaps an authoritative website if no such information is in print). Also see Verifiability.

I also have things that I know and understand, that I would love to write in some of these articles. I could clarify and improve several articles hugely... except that I can't, without using other references to do my talking for me. If I just write what I think then the article will look amatuerish and unconvincing, and someone will mark the article as Non-NPOV or stick 'fact' tags all through it, or just delete all my work. So I have to work slowly and deliberately and do a lot of research to write a small section (even when I already know the subject matter really well).

My guess is you've got plenty of good contributions you could be making, you've just got to take a step back and realise that yes, the quality of research has to be a whole level better than what you've previously been aiming for. And please don't be too offended by me, I'm trying really hard not to come across as judgemental or patronising. I am trying to preserve all the valuable parts of your edits, and it takes hours to do a decent job of editing the amount of stuff that you've contributed. I've been putting it off for days...

Oh, and on a final note, PLEASE put comments on your edits so we can see simple summaries when we're looking through the page history. Fuzzypeg 17:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

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> > > I still detect a strong derisory tone against those who 'misuse' the term esotericism, and a strong antipathy against Christians and other mainstream religions. That's just not acceptible for a Wikipedia article. < < <

And I still detect a strong derisory tone against esotericism in your comments. This derisision against esotericism that has gone on for centuries simply CANNOT be tolerated inside Wikipedia. Any unbiased description of esotericism must explain why the "normal" definition of the term has been derived from the beating that it has taken, and in doing so, must acknowledge that beating and who did it.

In an article about slavery, would you try and ommit any reference to the United States, because it derides the United States to say that we used to practice slavery? Similarly, why would you seek to remove references to the FACT that Christianity has essentially demonized esotericism for hundreds of years? This is neither "my opinion" nor is it "derisive". It is "descriptive" and it is true, it's not up for debate.

The etymology of a word whose meaning has so been shaped by history, as the word "esotericism", cannot be simple. Many words have extremely complex etymological histories. I think that you are trying to enforce your view of what an etymology SHOULD be upon this article. This is not the O.E.D., where an etymology is simpy "what Latin root" it came from.

How can you explain why it is called "esotericism" and then equate that to "occult" in the etymology, without explaining how that equation came to be, and why the words' original meanings are so completely different from one another? You propose to merely gloss over these things, with no attempt to explain it at all.

I'm all for succinctness and brevity, and for creating an encyclopedia that is scholarly. So I will make a greater effort in that regard in the future. Perhaps there is some better way of organizing this. However, the "esotericism" page that I first came across on Wikipedia was totally biased, completely ridden with the mainstream Christian point of view, did not explain the full range of meanings that the word has or the history of its origin, and so was direly in need of revision.

While Wikipedia is "sort of" an encyclopedia, I do not think we should make its articles read like what stodgy, business-oriented, mainstream encyclopedieas read like. In general, Wikipedia does not read like this, but this esotericism article sure did. I'm trying to fix that.

If you think there is something I have added to the article that is not factual, or is some matter of my own opinion, then what is it? And how is "bastardized" not a valid word? Tone is relative, and I think you're "projecting" a tone onto what I've written that simply isn't there, objectively speaking. By freeing the word from the meaning forced onto it by oppressors, you think that I am attacking those oppressors, or their modern-day counterparts; that it is somehow polemical. This is not the case, at all.

The way that a word becomes "bastardized" is that its original meaning (its father, if you will) is lost, and it becomes ophaned, as it were, with some new meaning that has been tacked onto it. This is what happened to "esotericism," and it is very clear why it was done. It's accepted history. You don't need a source to say George Washington was the first president of the USA, and you don't need a source to say that Christianity oppressed many other forms of belief, burning people at the stake, calling heretics evil Satanists, etc. This is fact.

That said, I'm open to suggestions about how the article might be better organized. If you have any specific thing that you think is "biased" or whatever, then what is it? Be specific instead of making such vague comments, if you really want to help. Which areas need more citations? What do you feel is an unsubstantiated claim? Etc.

-=DG=-


 * Hi. First let me reiterate that I agree with much of what you say. I am an esotericist myself, so If my comments (and edits) come across as "derisory" of esotericism, that is not my intention at all. I also agree that the article needed a clean-up.
 * Ok, Wikipedia is not "sort of" an encyclopedia, it is an encyclopedia, and thus requires a high standard of scholarship. It is open to editing by the general public, but it is expected that edits that aren't to a high standard will be cleaned up or removed by other editors, so that eventually the article will end up being of high quality. I was simply asking you, since you were contributing such a bulk of material, to try to keep the quality as high as you could from the outset.
 * Now, much of the material you've submitted repeats themes that are touched on elsewhere in the article (for instance, your discussion of the meanings of eso- and exo-, and the section 'origins of the term "esotericism"', which both are largely dealt with under 'Etymology'). Ideally you would enlarge the appropriate pre-existing sections rather than just add a completely new section. That would make things much easier for other editors. If your intention was to completely re-arrange the way the article was sectioned, you would need some pretty good reasoning - I think the old division of sections was pretty good. I don't mean of course, that new sections shouldn't be added for new material.
 * In some places, a block of information should not be in this article, such as with the 'Influences on the man who coined the term "Esotericism"' section: this needs to go into Martinism or perhaps a new article on Jaques Matter. Where there is detailed information given elsewhere, avoid repeating it, but provide a wikilink to that information, with some brief wording summarising why it is important. I think the second paragraph of the Etymology section as it currently stands covers most of what you've said in the influences section. I haven't checked the Martinism article yet to see whether any of your info needs to be added to that page.
 * Now, in terms of things that need verification: Most prominently, your division into Esotericism as 'inner', 'selective' and 'secretive or occult'. The way you have worded things, it sounds as if this is a conventionally understood system of categorising esotericism. The wording either needs changing so that it is clear this is not the case, or there needs to be mention of when this convention was developed and by whom.
 * Another questionable idea is that the term "occultism" has gained its pejorative quality due to the term's use in warning against heresy: no, the main reason is that the practices associated with occultism are commonly considered dangerous, un-christian, leading away from God, or downright satanic. Remember also that "heretical" is a quite specific term, generally connoting "against the teachings of the Catholic church". This wording, with its over-specific implication that the Catholics are responsible for making 'occult' a dirty word, is one of the reasons I read an antipathy against Christians in what you had written. Factual historical information may be damning against the Catholic church, but if it extends to non-factual items or matters of opinion, you're overstepping the mark.
 * Now the term 'bastardized': look it up in [www.thesaurus.com thesaurus.com]. You should find plenty of synonyms that don't have strongly negative connotations. Explain its etymology to whatever detail you want - it doesn't change the fact that it has strong negative, pejorative connotations. If you don't want to sound polemical, then choose words without such strong emotional weighting. I suggest a word like 'misused' might be more appropriate.
 * Now again I say please, don't be offended by what I've said or done regarding the esotericism article. You should realise that I've taken a 'lot' of time and put a 'lot' of care into cleaning up what you've posted, and explaining my edits to you. I work two full-time jobs, basically, and I have other commitments as well - please take this as an indication that I'm not treating you in an off-hand way.
 * My intention from here in is to continue to rearrange what you've edited, so it goes in appropriate sections, is succinct, and is NPOV. It's taking me a while, I'm sorry - there's a lot of text to work through. Fuzzypeg 00:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)