Silence implies consent vs acceptance of what is

[Jade]

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?

Of course harmony is achieved by what we are going through. I guess the question is, how much responsibility does each individual have to helping contribute to this harmony? Is it okay for people to come in with the intention of causing disharmony?

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.

How can you say that? Obviously there are mixed opinions on this subject of acceptability/unacceptability. I'm not going to take my opinion and roughshod it over the community in an authoritative action. And we did act, we removed the post because to us as a team, it was obviously not conducive to the community we are trying to create, and a clear violation of the (rather lax) guidelines we have in place to attempt to keep this place on track in what can be the gravity well of the internet. And someone reposted the text in full, and we left that. So was anything actually censored? Is there really any hint of authoritarianism in our actions as it seems you may be trying to insinuate?

I know it's ironic to label behavior as "unacceptable" but the fact is that Ra states that "It is not within the limits of possibility to cause disharmony in any way" in fourth density so it seems to me that as we move out of duality and into fourth density positive, there are certain things that are "unnaccepted" as a consequence of the shift. Of course unnaccepted in the sense of a paradox. I accept what earth_spirit said, I accept entirely (and have my whole life!) that there are plenty of people who feel the same way that he does. There are lots of places where he could go talk about these things and feel supported, and loved, and accepted. He even got plenty of that here! Just, sadly, not from me. And maybe that's a failing in my application of the Law of One, I'll admit defeat.

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.

We have had this discussion before. The goal of this community isn't advanced Law of One - although that is how many of us use it - the original goal of this community was to be a place for lonely Wanderers to feel at home.

Again, I mean, it would be cool if Bring4th was just a free will free-for-all, but I think it can also be very productive to have a stated communal goal that is consciously worked towards by all members. This isn't out of the realm of possibility, is it? Is chaos the ONLY path to enlightenment?

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.

Well, I also agree that I wouldn't state that I believe he wasn't punished. You were asking me why I didn't punish him further/ban him. It's hard having this moderator name and being held to a different standard, I understand that's a responsibility I carry, but I definitely attempted the light touch until I felt completely and thoroughly insulted, to which yeah, I had to react from a real place, which I am allowed to do.  And that insult didn't just come from earth_spirit, I feel like in your staunch defense here of him you are missing some real subtleties of what transpired in that thread after what he said was posted.

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?

I don't agree this is the right way to look at things, Jeremy. Are you saying that people aren't allowed to stand up for themselves to an attack? Someone pulls a gun on me, and I try to defend myself - it's my fault if I get shot, because I was engaging with them at all? I mean the implication here is that if I just hand over my wallet, "no one gets hurt". Okay.

No one challenged his membership in the forums, in fact most people who were insulted were ready to leave and let him and the rest of the culture of the forum be (myself included). But the lack of conscious discussion about this "problem" is what drew me back in, because I felt like certain viewpoints weren't getting the articulation they deserved. I think the idea that because someone stands up for themselves/others against what is essentially a bully is victimizing themselves is seriously one symptom of what I see as an issue in the ideology interpreted from the Law of One. This is third density, not sixth. We're humans, not full embodiments of our higher selves.

I guess I am confused, because you say if you want healing, don't engage in fights, but in the middle of your posts, you advocate for an adversarial environment because this is how we learn. You said "The way to harmony is disharmony". So, which is it that you truly believe? Do fights heal or does avoiding fights heal?

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).

That is hardly what I've been implying and such an oversimplification of everything that I've attempted to say, that I feel like you haven't heard me at all.