Silence implies consent vs acceptance of what is

[rva_jeremy]

I'm not saying an opinion becomes punishable. I'm saying an opinion can be unpalatable and destructive to a group of people who are trying to harmonize with each other.

So should earth_spirit not have said how he felt?  Is your problem what he thinks, or merely that he said it, or that he said it in the way he said it?

Is harmony a formula that just requires the right people and right opinions, or do we get to harmony through stuff like what we're going through?

And I felt the call for help in both of Glow's posts, mostly when she said she felt no point in contributing to the discussion anymore. Because this is the state that women are put into when they are told, again and again, that they have nothing valuable to contribute to society: they become defeated. They feel like their voice doesn't matter, who's going to listen anyway? Why put in the effort? This is what I felt in her post, and why I felt a call.

OK.  I appreciate that you recognized that.  But I didn't, and it's hard to see how I would have behaved differently having not recognized that.  Since I haven't had those experiences, I didn't feel the triggers that you were able to feel and recognize.

I made the analogy earlier for you to decide when you would feel like you were receiving a call: What would your wife have to say or do for you to feel like she wanted your support in an issue? How much outrage would she have to show about something that was said about her, before you felt like you should comfort her?

To be quite honest, I think my wife would share your criticism of me.  This topic comes up not seldom between us.  I get really confused when I think there's an argument between two people, they're participating vigorously, and all of the sudden one party just needs to be supported and it's not about the argument anymore.  That's definitely what the situation with Glow looks like to me, and while you were able to catch the subtlety of the shift, I have a really hard time with that.  It's a known issue for me.

Has Bring4th ever banned anybody? Certainly not while I've been on the mod roster, and likely not in the almost 4 years I've been posting here. I feel a little bit like you're being disingenuous by asking this. Do you really think this is the way to harmony? Do you really think that the mods default to this action to bring harmony? I guess by opening up the discussion, we are asking people if that's what they expect from a forum: If someone seems bent on sharing a hateful ideology, do we just censor them occassionally or tell them they are totally unwelcome?

I should not have said "banning"; I'm just wondering why moderator action was not seen as needed.  It's not disingenuous; I'm not actually calling for him to have been moderated.  Instead I was trying to get a sense for just how urgent you see this problem.  I totally appreciate that you're trying to open up the discussion and not simply moderate unpleasant stuff away.

I'll just put it on the table: a moderator is telling the rest of the group (those with no moderation role) why they should have checked a member who was behaving badly.  If the behavior was that bad, seems like the administration should have handled it.  If it wasn't that bad, seems like everybody should be entitled to engage with said member as they see fit, no?  It's not that what you're doing is wrong or anything, Jade; I just don't understand how both can be the case.  Either it's unacceptable behavior or its not.

There's this undercurrent to the conversation around the topic of what kind of community we are.  Situations like this are how we find out, I think.  For example, achieving harmony is really important to you, so it makes sense that you would see B4 as a safe space where people shouldn't possibly be triggered.   I value harmony too, but to me it's more a byproduct of other fundamentals: honesty, listening, compassion, etc. and not something we achieve in its own right.  The way to harmony is through disharmony.  So I kind of expect hateful ideologies at some point or another; as I said earlier, I don't consider B4 some island in the internet but part of the continuum.  What differentiates us is not what we talk about but the way we do it, in my opinion.

For what it's worth, most of the time, Bring4th protocol is to put a person who is abusing their posting privileges on "mod status", which means they are free to make posts, but a mod has to approve them. The fact that e_s just decided to leave after we removed the post prevented us from taking any more punitive action, because it actually isn't about punishing people for having opinions. I think this is our attempt at "the light touch".

I think I'd have a hard time looking earth_spirit in the eyes and saying he was not punished for his views.  That said, I agree that moderation at B4 has always aspired for the light touch.  That's why I've been sort of confessing about how I emotionally reacted to the different actors in this thread: because I realize that anything heavier than a light touch comes from a real place.

And I saw her reaction as one of pain and shock that someone would actually say something like that to her, on this forum. I felt it too.

Yeah, we saw a lot of similar reactions on the Trump threads.  "How can people who believe in the Law of One possibly like Trump?"  I get it.  While I think this mindset of "everybody who agrees with me about X should agree with me about Y" is a little entitled and presumptuous, I get it.

Did you see earth_spirit's post as the one initiating the throwing of the gauntlet? Because I feel like that's a point that's been missed: SMC and Glow were being blamed for the "escalation", when the original statement was so incendiary from the get-go, that I couldn't believe they were being blamed at all for the reaction they were having.

I saw earth_spirit as posting inflammatory stuff, definitely.  And I saw folks get inflamed by it.  All parties are equally implicated.  But I do want to point out one thing: everybody was trying to combat his beliefs, to change his mind or tell him why he wasn't welcome.  He wasn't being given any out.  Nobody told him that it's ok for him to think these things but that maybe he shouldn't share them.  No, everybody was preoccupied with changing him or his membership.

You can't have it both ways.  You can either fight the other side and take the emotional toll, or withdraw and be protected.  But you can't get in the fight and claim that you're the real victim.  That's the thing that gets me: when I see Glow and SMC and you taking him to task, I assume that you're choosing to do that and that you accept that it could get messy.  If you want help, ask for it.  If you want healing, don't engage in fights.  And if you're confused about all of this, I think it's unfair to assume that I would have some better read on it than you do!  You see what I mean?

Have you read this Q'uo, Jeremy? http://llresearch.org/transcripts/issues..._0204.aspx How do you feel about what Q'uo has to say about the work we have to do to balance the societal imbalance in gender perception? Do you think you are outside of it? Do we believe Bring4th has risen above this already? Because Q'uo seems to think it's a big deal, and encourages any effort we put into it.

I thought that was a tremendous reading and very valuable.  I think we are doing this work of correcting the imbalance right now, through discussions just like this one.  I think it's precisely because we're not outside of it that it's naive to come to B4 and expect that it would be any more enlightened than the rest of the planet.  No, we have not risen above it at B4 -- that's the whole point!

That said, I think how we play the cards is a different question than what cards we're dealt.  Quite frankly, we should expect to encounter crazy here.  What should distinguish us is how we handle it--our responses, our reactions, our love.  

That doesn't mean anybody handled it wrong here.  Like I said, everybody here did the best they could.  I think integrating Q'uo's insights would entail us appreciating how important these dustups are, and how we should be careful to listen to all the viewpoints.  I don't conclude from Q'uo's sentiments that "earth_spirit = wrong" and that that's the end of the matter (though I disagree emphatically with his views).