There is a categorical difference between "diminishment" and "dissolvement" [sic]. You keep asserting that the ur-comment's point is the removal of a "self". We're suggesting, instead, that there's value in a lessening of it (a notion which is actually rather well supported, if you take "self" to mean some of the egoic structures that people carry around, but which end up being more of a hindrance to a richer, more connected and fulfilling experience of life, as I do), to which you respond with, "Yeah, but why would you want to be a rock?" or, "You don't even want to exist!" You're missing the point, and your tone reads as disdainful and dismissive.

Even in this very comment: "You may be new to this kind of thinking, but some of us have explored this thought space fairly exhaustively." I studied philosophy of mind in university, which subsumed cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and more. I've also explored this question from the spiritual side, having spent time in Buddhist temples in India, Nepal, Thailand, and Tibet, as well as here in the US — and with shamans in the Amazon, where I've taken a profound amount of psychedelics. I'd ask you kindly to refrain from making assertions about what other people know or understand on the basis of a few sentences exchanged on a textual forum. It's rude, and it's often factually wrong.

On that point: no, I'm not 'dang. But I do hang out here rather a bit, and I do want this to be a place where discourse is civil and substantive. 'dang has a sometimes terribly thankless job, and he gets a lot of flak for it — including, as above, from you. Given all of that, I think the community could do a better job of self-policing.

He's free — encouraged, even — to come along and ask me to stop, or tell me I'm out of line, in general, or in specific, and I'll defer. Until then, this is my community too, and as a member in what appears to be good standing, I have a say in the tone of the place, and I'm going to use it.