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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jun 30, 2018 - 07:06am PT
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^ ^ ^ ^ Hey great to see ya' post FlipFlop, missing ya brutha!
As Ive been wont to do many times on subjects from housing to climbing I cupeth thee nads sir!
If you think Trump and his supporters are gonna play nice if we all hold hands and sing kumbaya you are more naive than I thought.
Standing up to Nazis and Fascists and White Supremacists and Racists and Misogynists and people who hate everything about the minority populations in this country (of all kinds be they POC or LGBT etc) is nothing I am ever gonna back down from, ever.
Trump is hijacking every fear of the "other" that isn't White FOR CORRUPT PROFIT, is trying to destroy the EU for Putin and he and anyone that supports him is what stands between Humanity and real civilization.
F*#k them and anyone that supports them. Trump's main advisors are Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon...2 white supremacists that would look nice swinging from a rope before they cause any more damage to the nation.
You don't play nice with people who play with other's lives to gain power and tell any disgusting lie about good people to make it happen (Trump 3000++ and counting since inauguration).
Its a divide alright, between Good and Evil and Trump is pure Evil. You don't play nice with Evil, ever. If you can't see that, I pity the fool.
There is nothing wrong with detesting veritably Evil people and calling them out for what they are: Its called having a backbone
some where this picture is tagged "The Idle Rich" The base of Ringwrath, SkyTop, Mohonk (1978-9?)
(those two in front ?,It would shock me if R Perch, on the right in yellow, leaned "red" as much as it would shock me if that other rich clune leaned "blue" but you never know DMT)The 3 of us, given the glaring guilt we must suffer under the burden of, ya' know all that white Anglo guilt? are certainly those who stand to gain & loose the most.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 30, 2018 - 07:29am PT
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DMTA desire to truly address nutagain’s question is a personal one and must come from the individual. Frankly most heartfelf and vocal partisans seem utterly incapable of it. DMTSo you misjudged me. But good news, I didn't misjudge you.
Asshole. Hmm...
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 30, 2018 - 08:55am PT
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A peaceful society requires people on the bridge no doubt. These people tend to be the leaders and adjudicators in well functioning Democracy. They are pivotal to our ethical standards and should be held in the highest esteem. We all have these people in our families and communities and they make great climbing partners.
However, when leaders and adjudicators arise from one side of the bridge with the intent of tearing down the bridge; it becomes incumbent that people on the opposite sides of the bridge vigorously confront actions that are indisputably harmful to masses and designed to eliminate checks and balances.
There is an effort underway to consolidate power with the assistance of just a handful of well meaning bridge dwellers (see moderate Republicans and red state Democrats). This is not hyperbole as evidenced the exodus from the party of Lincoln by many stalwart, Reagan Republicans. The alarm has been sounded by conservative commentators, National security experts, Constitutional lawyers and those who have served in law enforcement for past Republican Administrations. Many are not going to the center of the bridge to facilitate a dialogue, but have openly and privately stated that they intend to cross to the other side of the bridge to help form a battle line.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jun 30, 2018 - 09:30am PT
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 30, 2018 - 10:32am PT
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I don't think you get it, Kingtut. Tolerance begins at home.
Be the change in the world you want to see.
Or, perhaps you think it's time to pick up a gun.
Anger hardly got anybody anywhere.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jun 30, 2018 - 10:34am PT
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On the contrary. Tolerance will bring you no-where you want to be when you're dealing with strategic kleptocracy...
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 30, 2018 - 11:03am PT
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AristotleThe most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
It's important to debate the relevance of dialogue and moderation- I'm a centrist Democrat and was routinely berated by Craig because I saw Hillary as a crass opportunist.
I'm curious about a couple of things- did dialogue and accords play a central role in our Revolution? Was the grey area then, so profound as to create a safe haven for non action or even compliance? Grey areas tend to give way to flight or fight when predators reveal themselves. No you must not choose a side but to deny the relevance of confrontation and dispute is disingenuous. Working from grey areas in the pursuit of dialogue in those times would quite possibly have resulted in the nonexistence of the greatest experiment on earth.
Justice must arch to the center yet, the center it's self is not necessarily the mechanism, it's often just the result. We are mostly creatures of reaction not anticipation.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Jun 30, 2018 - 11:11am PT
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Im curiousOr, perhaps you think it's time to pick up a gun. what's the intended purpose of statements like this?
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jun 30, 2018 - 11:24am PT
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Ask your self, when in history was there a time when an entire right leaning population did nothing as the government separated children and put them in "Camps"?
The thing that some fail to understand On the contrary. Tolerance will bring you no-where you want to be when you're dealing with strategic kleptocracy...
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Jun 30, 2018 - 12:10pm PT
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That would be great if we could do it without a Civil War. We haven't seen this much vitriol since that era.
???
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Yury
Mountain climber
T.O.
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Jun 30, 2018 - 07:42pm PT
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xCon:
before a bridge worth a damn can bridge the divide between good people doing right and good people doing wrong
we need a mighty pile of the bodies of conservative leaders and the scum who go to bat for them sitting in plain sight
tore to pieces
rotting fetted and telegraphing what the guilty are due Thank you xCon for providing a nice example proving that what NutAgain! is looking for is not realistic right now.
Apparently social situation in the US is not that bad yet.
We need to get into much deeper sh#t before people and politicians start cooperating.
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perswig
climber
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^^
But there can be value even in vitriol, as long as it's honest. Without a forum to allow positions to unfold, we might not get to see from whence they come.
Well, I didn't mind, as long as it kept these people talking, for nothing is more revealing of a person's mind than a person's anger. - Paul Theroux
Good thread as usual, NutAgain!
Dale
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Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
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First, I'm a lefty socialist
Second, the Dems ( mainstream conservatives to my mind), caused the refugee crisis in Syria and Europe with our Regime Change Plans (for oil and banking) in Libya and Syria (Yemen etc.). And Obama ( my guy) deported so very many latinos and separated families.
Besides ignorant finger pointing, what are the democrats offering? Where is the moral high ground?
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Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
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I suspect that Bernie is controlled opposition. I hope that I'm wrong but he seems content to keep losing. He's the soccer flopper of our political theater. I hope that I'm wrong
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Trump
climber
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An eye for an eye makes the whole world see. As long as it’s not my eye - mine already sees!
We humans reap what we sow. I hope we like the taste of it.
Ricky Bobby is not a thinker. He is a doer! Let’s go knock some heads, we righteous human doers!
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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we need a mighty pile of the bodies of conservative leaders and the scum who go to bat for them sitting in plain sight
tore to pieces
rotting fetted and telegraphing what the guilty are due
as a backdrop for those left alive on that side with some agency to contemplate before they dare to think that their going to survive to fight another day
f*#k them!
So bring it already! But first, thank you for providing a clear example of why "your tribe" is unfit to lead. A history of bodies and purges and blood.
Well done.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Second, the Dems ( mainstream conservatives to my mind), caused the refugee crisis in Syria and Europe with our Regime Change Plans (for oil and banking) in Libya and Syria (Yemen etc.).
So if NATO hadn't ever been involed in Libya, Libya would be a model country that didn't send any refugees to Europe? It is funny that the only northern African and Sahel countries that send refugees to Europe are ones that NATO have bombed. In all the other countries in that region the population is absolutely content with their security and economic prospects.
And of course George Bush's decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with the chaos in Syria. Or rather, I guess it is the Dems fault because Hillary voted in favor of the war resolution.
And if only Obama had just kept his mouth shut, Assad would never had had to bomb his own people. No doubt, Obama will be tried for war crimes some day because of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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we need a mighty pile of the bodies of conservative leaders and the scum who go to bat for them sitting in plain sight
tore to pieces
rotting fetted and telegraphing what the guilty are due
as a backdrop for those left alive on that side with some agency to contemplate before they dare to think that their going to survive to fight another day
f*#k them! please indicated the address of your 'innocent' loved ones and the appropriate response will be on the way...
Surprised this type of nonsense is tolerated by the moderators here. You should be a lot more careful, amigo. Advocating violence is bad enough--but internet threats, well, they be actionable. Comprendes?
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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the only people using chemical weapons in Syria were on the US dime...
Bashar Assad was on the US dime? That would explain some things.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 2, 2018 - 03:12pm PT
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Sorry for chiming in late here gang, I've been out absorbing the good tidings of the range of light! Trip report forthcoming. But first....
kingtut said:
Standing up to Nazis and Fascists and White Supremacists and Racists and Misogynists and people who hate everything about the minority populations in this country (of all kinds be they POC or LGBT etc) is nothing I am ever gonna back down from, ever.
You don't tolerate Evil. And only White Americans even consider "tolerating" racist beliefs because they are not the victims of racism.
I better have anger and hatred in my heart for con men and racists.
xCon said:
before a bridge worth a damn can bridge the divide between good people doing right and good people doing wrong
we need a mighty pile of the bodies of conservative leaders and the scum who go to bat for them sitting in plain sight
tore (sic) to pieces
rotting fetted (sic) and telegraphing what the guilty are due
as a backdrop for those left alive on that side with some agency to contemplate before they dare to think that their (sic) going to survive to fight another day
f*#k them!
and f*#k you bastards who think a better world is only a product of treating them with kid gloves...
First, I want to caveat my response with this: my reply is not how to handle every interaction with every individual. There are some people and groups that need to be contained, and physical violence may ultimately be necessary to achieve this. But my focus here is on how to bridge the divide between people along spectrums of an ideology, normal people whom I presume are not inherently good or evil, people who are just trying to survive and prosper if possible in a crazy world. A premature focus on automatic opposition and violence contributes to problems we want to solve, and delays their meaningful resolution.
Here's what I think. When ideologies and world views are in opposition, a war of ideas must be won in discourse, or a mutually satisfactory compromise must be achieved, before a physical war can truly be won. Otherwise, if a physical war is won in the name of an idea, then the idea is destroyed and perverted in the process. You are simply left with repression and violence facilitated by the token of an idea. This seems to be where the promise of many revolutions die- the original idea becomes sacrificed to the lust for power, being right, and winning.
Many folks are expressing righteous indignation and anger over world views and actions they find repugnant. This is very understandable- perhaps the most natural and normal and human thing to feel and to do.
But this seems to lead to a predictable repeating cycle. What got me thinking to start this thread was how to break out of that cycle. It involves subordinating our immediate impulses to a longer view of how to create sustainable change. Let's be more specific with an example (and please don't get too hung up on my personal belief here; I'm just using it to show one side of an ideological divide as a starting point to demonstrate a process of how we might achieve reconciliation).
1. I personally believe that USA immigration problems are in large part the fruit of our historical interventions in other countries. Our past political/military interventions in support of producing cheaper products for USA consumption (and more profits for USA companies), and subsequent involvement in drug trafficking to create off-books budgets for covert military operations... these had short term benefits for some segments of USA society and power brokers, and now some of the consequences to USA (even if we completely ignore the terrible damage we have unleashed on other countries) are showing the folly of those historical (and probably ongoing?) actions. Most of these interventions were framed in supporting an idea ("capitalism vs. communism"), but that token of an idea of a healthy market-based economy with informed buyers and sellers willing and able to walk away, that idea was completely lost (and never honestly was an impetus for the USA interventions in central/south America). Instead, the slogan of capitalism was the cloak for economic imperialism and subjugation. The legacy of the violence and USA tipping the scales in favor of societal oppressors is that many people in central and south America have not benefited from the advancing "civilization" in the world- they do not experience protections under law, freedom from daily violence, economic hope, and in general they are raised in survival-mode with fight or flight being the main options. Some stay behind and remain immersed in the violence, and this creates a sort of exponential growth in violence. Some run away, and here we have our immigration problem. Rather than acknowleding these and other roots of the problems that immigrants are running away from, USA is creating more barriers and ugliness to discourage immigrants. But how far are we willing to go? Will we start systematic raping of women in detention centers? Arm the children and make them shoot people crossing the border? Make them starve to death? The idea of discouraging immigrants is either completely ignorant of the circumstances they are fleeing, or completely lacking in human empathy and decency if the idea is to make illegal immigration to USA be a worse alternative than living with no economic hope, daily physical violence, and death.
2. I recognize that many people do not share my view, or perhaps have not thought about it and don't care. Perhaps they just don't want people from somewhere else competing for the same limited jobs; they don't want comfortable shared societal values and norms to be shaken/adjusted; they don't want to be scared for themselves, for their families, walking down the street. Probably other stuff too or instead, that I don't perceive.
3. Now consider a spectrum of beliefs that underly different ideologies and world views. On one end we have "fix everything in the world so life is great everywhere and we don't have a problem with human suffering and mass immigration." Of course, this gets messier and messier the deeper we delve into problems and reveal more and more layers of unsolved and difficult to solve problems. On the other end of the ideological spectrum we have "the world is unfixable and the best I can do is try to survive for myself and my family and sorry but F everyone else." I mostly find myself closer to the "make everywhere great" pipe dream, but I have spent time in the midst of horrendous widespread suffering in India, and I hardened my heart in the face of it as a basic survival mechanism. I quickly perceived that I could give away everything I had and the sea of suffering would not abate. What was the point? I would just add myself to the sea of misery. Having this perception is not the same as being evil and wishing harm on others. I suspect that most of the "evil" in our society is enabled by a large sea of people not seeing hope for meaningful change and then focusing on survival of themselves, their families, their friends. In distant removal and reflection I might perceive my India situation differently now, trying to look for the little respites, safe islands in the sea of misery.
4. How to consolidate an array of opposing ideas/ideologies into a widespread supported direction? How do we get a vast majority of Americans to unite behind a plan for addressing illegal immigration? Without this, we will have political parties flip-flopping in power and nullifying the efforts of their predecessors, while the roots of the problem grow and the future consequences become more dire.
4a. So... let's start with really understanding what are the fears of people from different segments of society in USA? If we ignore these, then whatever rational/intellectual efforts we make to construct a policy will be ignored. Fear overrides reason. What are the fears? Lay these out on the table and figure out how to address them before we try to talk reason! And THIS is the part where accepting and validating the emotions that other people feel, especially if they differ from ours, is sooooo important. Start by building an honest foundation of people's emotional realities before trying to "root out evil" and "punish the guilty." If fear and punishent is associated with perceiving things in "the wrong way", then people will hide their true feelings and act outwardly as society expects, but undermine it at every moment when it can be done without consequence. This was the state of society at the time Trump was elected, in large part what led to his election. Hating hatred begets hatred. It spreads like a virus. Having compassion and understanding for the people who succomb to the disease of hatred is the solution. NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS APPEASING BABY KILLERS! IT IS A STRATEGY TO PREVENT BABY KILLERS FROM COMING INTO POWER!!!! Rather than a head-on frontal assault on the current leaders who espouse an ideology we find repugnant, the idea is to win the hearts and minds of the people who support them. This is a long and arduous process, harder to win than a physical war (which is probably why we have so many physical wars- people take the easier seeming way out). So let's start with removing the fear of reprisal and letting people share what they are honestly feeling. In terms of immigration, maybe some of these apply:
 "They stink"
"Their food stinks and the whole area stinks when they cook"
"It sounds ugly when they talk."
"They are willing to live like rats and work for cheap, and I can't live that way."
"Whenever they move in, the neighborhood goes to hell. My kids are not safe at school, it's not safe to walk down the street, my family is not even safe at home"
"They are a bunch of murderers and rapists."
4b. OK, so now we have people feeling emotionally supported to say things we find repugnant. Yuck! How does that help the situation? It helps because we start with a solid foundation of individual honesty. We can start to untangle the core feelings and fears (which are neither right nor wrong) from the perceptions and beliefs (which may or may not be true). We need to remove reprisals/consequences from expressing our fears, because that is the only way to address the fears that override rational consideration.
EDIT: The idea here is to validate the feelings people have, but not the conclusions or rightness of what we perceive and what we believe! It is possible to hear a person say things like the above, to validate their feelings (and perhaps coach them to express their feelings in terms more about themselves than about other people), without validating what we perceive as wrong beliefs embedded in what has been said.
4c. OK, now addressing the fears. The first point is, fears are fundamentally valid. They were absolutely true and made sense at the time they were implanted in our brains. It is a survival mechanism. Fire is hot, don't touch it. Those people are dangerous, stay away from them. Maybe we put our hand in the fire once and we learned that our parents told us the right thing. Maybe we never got to learn for ourselves whether those other people were dangerous. Our parents told us, and they try to protect us, so it must be true. And maybe, we had a specific traumatic experience (a fight at school, victim of a crime), or someone we personally know, and it jump-starts our fear and protection mechanisms. And with more information from media outlets, we add more and more energy to those patterns we acquired when we were young.
How to fix it? We start by embracing this reality, and at some point we can develop more maturity, to process ideas apart from what our parents, or even apart from unfortunate direct experiences that we remember and apply in incompatible contexts. We can learn to diffuse the negative energy associated with experiences in our past, and create space for new ideas to take hold. This can be a daunting task. In the process of learning to deal with my own anger issues and trying to save a marriage that did not survive, I sought out a way to undo the emotional baggage that I recognized was subverting my logical intents. I went to an 8-day retreat that was a safe place to be vulnerable, to identify and reexperience old wounds that are formative in how I am triggered in different situations. The format enabled me to use my adult intellect to guide a reinterpretation of these old events in a way that drains the negative energy from them. It is a way of reducing the automated behaviors I have in response to different situations, and it frees up space for me to consciously choose how to act, how I want my life to be, what I want to believe, etc. I did this about 16 years ago, and I still think it was the bravest and most loving thing I ever did for myself. I wish there was a way for this type of emotional education to be a part of our society without folks screaming out that it's brainwashing or infringing on personal freedoms. Fear of change is a weapon of the dark parts of our inner nature, fear of looking at all that scary stuff inside us that shapes our fears and beliefs. So this I believe is the weak link in my vision for a better world. It requires individuals to overcome their fears of self-examination and embrace a willingness to change. Society can have a big role in this, but ultimately it is an individual decision whether or not to embrace the inner journey.
4d. OK, now addressing the beliefs/perceptions. These are the layers of meaning that we add to the bare facts of sensory inputs we receive. Truth is compiled from all of these sensory inputs and the layers of meaning we add, and it functions as a rule book to predict how things work and what will happen next in a given situation. Something that has been deeply ingrained through early repetition and exposure takes a long time to root out, because newer data does not erase the foundation of prior data. We each assign different levels of trust to different sources of truth based on our past experiences and how well it reconciles with other things we hold to be true. So obviously, the situations we have experienced have a big impact on our truth. Two people can be present in the same situation and perceive completely different things out of it, and reinforce very different personal truths out of it. I just saw X, and anyone who sees it differently is obviously an idiot! I just saw the truth with my own eyes! Oops... I also "saw" it through the lens of of my life experience, much of it based on what I absorbed from my parents and caretakers before I had the ability to evaluate information and make decisions on my own. It's like taking a pair of distorted glasses and putting them on a baby and never ever removing them- how messed up is going to be the sense of perception and truth of this baby? We are all that baby!
Now we've reviewed what beliefs and perceptions are... how to address them? These also need a safe space for expression without reprisal. We need a safe space to sort out our beliefs, examine them, keep the ones that help us, and dump the ones that don't. If we demonize beliefs that we belive to be bad/wrong, then we take away opportunities for people who hold these beliefs to change. As I write this, I'm wondering if it makes sense to distinguish fears from perceptions and beliefs... it all seems wrapped together with similar ways of healing the bugs/flaws in our original programming....
Remember the goal is to bridge the divide between people with different ideologies. Idealists might see this as a goal toward creating a better world for all, and pragmatists might see this simply as a way to make their own lives better by making more pleasant interactions with the people around them. So. Safe spaces for believes to be expressed. But all of our beliefs might be wrong! That's ok! By publicly sharing and discussing them, we can choose which make a better world that we want to be a part of.
As for those beliefs that are NOT a part of the world we want to be a part of... how to respond? Imagine our society as a bunch of infants and toddlers walking around in adult bodies. Emotionally, this is not too far from the truth. I include myself in this- not all the time, but more often that I am probably willing to face. So the idea is to focus on teaching, not punishing. We teach people a framework for us all to understand our emotions/beliefs/triggers and their origins, all of which made sense to acquire when we did, but many of which don't serve us as adults. This is the LANGUAGE OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY. Kids need continual exposure to examples to learn a language and to learn a behavior. For adults it is even harder, because we have all the old crap to clear out first to make room for more useful stuff, and we have become too good at filtering out information, processing as little as possible from the infinite streams of input we receive. So we have to have more patience and more compassion for adults to make mistakes and learn from them. When an adult writes something on an Internet forum with which we disagree, imagine that we are a parent of a 3 year old. Is it going to be helpful to just slap them or call them names? Or maybe explain to them a simplified version of how what they said is hurtful or not conducive to a world we all want to be a part of? Maybe in the act of doing all this, we learn that it is we who are acting like the 3 year old and the other person is in the role of the parent at the moment? So we need patience and compassion to be a teacher, but also humility to be a student.
OK, I drifted off pretty far into the self-help/spiritual/touchy-feely mushy idealistic realm that is alien to many people. If that is you- I invite you to take a look into that place that you are afraid to look. That is who is in the driver seat in your brain! What you think of as "you" has to take a back seat to the commands issued from that place
So... bridging the divide? It is about creating a safe public space for us to honestly reveal ourselves, to heal ourselves, to be the change we want to see in the world. It is about belaying others up to the point we have reached, rather than cutting the cord because they are holding us back. Belay on!
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