Word Games: Tolerance or Acceptance?

I'll be the first person to admit that I use my blog for purely selfish, cathartic reasons.  Sometimes I use it to hold myself accountable (if I say it outloud, I'll do it).  Sometimes I use it to celebrate something wonderful in my life, first and second.  Sometimes I use it to work through issues that are bugging the hell out of me, or simply beyond my grasp.  This posting is the latter.

Tonight my youngest son was attacked.  I'm struggling with this for a lot of reasons, including the obvious ones like not being able to protect your children from things no matter how well you think you've prepared them.  I've got another monkey on my back tonight because my son was -where- he was -when- he was because of me.

He called this evening to ask if he could stay at a friend's house much later than planned and if I would then come and pick him up.  On asking a few questions I found that he'd not been entirely honest with me this morning when he went there.  He rode his bike to the other side of town, requiring that he cross a number of our city's most dangerous intersections, and he's lost his bike helmut.  My rule was no more arse on the bike until the noggin' is covered, but he rode in spite of this.  He went both where he was told not to, and how.  I was angry when he called because I felt manipulated, and the car wouldn't be home until much later in the evening, so I told him no I wasn't able to pick him up and that he could not stay any longer, and to come home straight away before it got dark.  I also told him to expect to sit down and have a talk with me when he arrived home.  My last words to him were "please be safe!".  He hung up.  I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it was in worrying that he might have an accident on the way home and that he wasn't wearing a helmut.  For almost an hour I sat fretting, feeling guilty as hell that I'd put him back out there on that bike to come home.

When he walked through the door, I nearly passed out.  He was covered with cuts and scratches, had a black eye, stomach stripped raw like sandpaper, head hanging down and walking with a limp.  He'd not been hit by a car.  He'd been jumped.  Because he knew I was angry he took a shortcut home -- one where there wasn't a lot of heavy traffic, but it was one of the roughest sections of town.  As he crossed the bike path on the train tracks to go into the park, two boys jumped him and beat the living hell out of him.  They yanked him off the bike, got him down on the ground and started kicking him repeatedly in the stomach, face and head.

As we sat talking to the police, it was all I could do to keep from falling apart.  He was someplace he shouldn't have been because I was angry, and he was more afraid of getting into trouble than he was of going through a dangerous section of town.  That almost killed me.  I don't lay hands on my kids, but they do know when I am angry because of that "mum tone of voice".  I'm lousy with discipline -- often too soft -- but my kids know when I am seriously disappointed in them and they hate it.

So what the heck does this have to do with tolerance and acceptance?

It's been hours since the police left and in that time a recurring theme has presented itself again and again, first in one of the questions asked by the police: "do you want to press charges?".  Why did I feel guilty about that?  Later when my son was safely in bed and sleeping, I turned on the tv to watch West Wing to try to settle myself down.  Two separate storylines wove back and forth, both underscoring age old conflicts between both countries and peoples because of labels, dogma and just plain stubborn human nature.  At the end of the show, I snapped the tele off and picked up the "Developments" magazine that arrived today.  The first thing I opened to?  An article dealing with those same age-old conflicts between cultures and people, and the seemingly insurmountable nature of quelling them.  A glaring fact in the particular issue dealt with by this article?  That one of the main reasons there was so little impetus to change was the almost "inexhaustible supply of slaves".

Of course, this lead me back here, thinking about the very emotional conversation we've been having as we've planted our elbows in this virtual kitchen table.  I've been sitting and thinking for some time on this.  There are a handful of things I keep coming back to again and again.  Conflict happens for a host of reasons, but there are some that are well within our control to change right now:

1)  We can choose to listen actively and without judgement to our peers.  In meetings I often catch myself "tuning out" the person speaking, waiting for them to hurry up and finish so it can be my turn to speak and I can present my own point of view.  I'm not really listening at all, and I'm certainly not interested in being swayed to their point of view.  In joining a discourse if our goal is merely to hammer other people over the head with our own position and spin, we're already in trouble.  Taking the time to share our thinking, especially when it's emotionally charged, should include a commitment to find some level of mutal understanding, whether we agree with each other or not.

2) We can choose to put issues in the center of the table, not people.  I'm the first to admit I've had a good rollick coming to the rescue of a friend or two who'd been bashed by the fashionistas on various blogs.  I was full of righteous indignation, and on some level felt justified in doing a reverse character assassination on people I felt desperately deserved it.  Regardless of motive, when attacks become personal, they are damaging, rob us of our integrity and make it almost impossible to get beyond position and spin.  One of the hardest things for me to choose when I arrived in Second Life was "acceptance", not "tolerance", and there is a difference.  About 5 years ago a friend of mine gave me a sound kick in the arse for not groking that.  Tolerance implies that we are merely "putting up with" people who are not the same as we are, or who have a different point of view.  Acceptance means celebrating that we can have different beliefs and opinions and still have common values and common ground.  Working to find those things provides an awesome foundation to build on.

3) We can choose to practice non-violent communication.  This is not an intrinsic part of my nature when someone messes with my kids!  Nor is it an easy thing to practice when someone shares an emotional point of view that just plain pissed me off.   A few years ago I met a woman who introduced me to the idea of this.  When I became profoundly ill again last year (one of the more unpleasant symptoms of my illness was not only depression but rages) I chose to actively seek out the principles of non-violent communications because I hated that my words were hurting the people I loved most.  Most recently a lovely woman introduced herself to me as a colleague not only here on Vox, but also as a Second Life citizen and someone from yet another online community that I care deeply about: omidyar.net, and she too teaches NVC.   I suppose it's not a coincidence but rather serendipity that keeps presenting the notion of "non-violent communications" in my way.

Not only does the net at large throw us into one massive bowl of raging diversity, it gives us places like Second Life where it is in our face in all it's glorious colours.  Gor, furries, gender-benders, age play, mafia, violence-based roleplay groups and a veritable buffet of issues-based rp that may or may not synch up with our personal values.  We can react in fear, shield ourselves with indignant epithets and absolutes, or we can choose to say "fuck it -- I'm going to open up and actively listen, and while I may not like everything I hear, I'm going to allow myself to expand the personal context that I have in which I relate to people".

Two things lingered when I sat quietly tonight and had to deal with the very mixed emotions I've had today, some because of the loaded language here in the slavery thread which at times makes it feel like a minefield, and some because of two young men who chose to hurt my son and the fact that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time because he was worrying about my being angry with him.  The first thing I kept thinking about was something that my brother said to me when my mum was dying a few years ago.  He tucked a little book about compassion into my hand and paraphrased one of the most important parts for me, and the thing I hung onto most was this:  the more anger we fill ourselves up with, the less room there is for the good stuff.  The second thing I keep thinking about tonight is this:  that whether or not we agree with the notion of slavery as part of active roleplay, the entire concept of freedom is based on the right to choose.

Yes, there are people who enforce their will on others.  Yes, there are people who are not well equipped to make healthy choices and will fall prey to people who will exploit them.  These things, however, are not the entire picture anymore than I am representative of all women in Second Life.  On the issue of slavery in roleplay, as I continue to see unfold more and more throughout the course of the very thoughtful discourse before this, there is also a healthy, informed choice made and exercised by smart, compassionate, healthy people who find in Second Life an outlet to explore an aspect of themselves they might not otherwise be able to choose.  This is not synonymous with sexual exploitation or lack of consent.  It's the right to choose.

I don't just tolerate it, I accept it, and I continue to want to learn more because of the immense respect I have for the people who have stepped forward to continue to talk.

How entrenched are we in pushing a personal agenda?  Do we have the will to ditch the position and spin long enough to actually listen to an uncomfortable point of view?  Is it possible to have an intelligent dialogue with a diverse group of people and not only -not- kill each other but learn something along the way?  Based on the "slavery" thread before this and how it seems to be unfolding, I'd say "hell yeah!"

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a nice way of summing up the challenge we have before us:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the abilility to function".

Not on the crazy train just yet ...