Passing on learning, and the in-group
I'm feeling besieged on the internet, and trying to adjust without firing the flame thrusters. Yesterday and today, I'm handling panic and all week, there's been general worry about belonging (such as feeling like I need to defend my life before I can write about masculinity) and whether those we admire return our regard in equal measure. That whole social acceptance level of Maslow's hierarchy. I'll go at it for an hour or so in comments, all day if I care about the people I'm talking to directly, but eventually I have to just give up. Some of the people I think are my constituency, aren't. Some of my friends can't see what I can see. Also, trolls will troll. I'm conscious of the publicity of my internet life and it constrains my actions. Yay, ego.
I've been thinking in terms of the tricameral psyche as popularized: animal id, thinking ego, mediating superego. It's been a useful way to think of what I can do and change, and what checks and balances are built in. I have a different understanding of what it means to be ego-driven. It means not appreciating the id.
I poked the group who are working on the commercial kitchen, and got a response. My response to their response is that I want to snark back about how I've clearly challenged their visceral senses' limitations on decision-making, since they now feel the need to formalize the process by which new core members are admitted. Once again demonstrating their cart-before-horse mindset, but I can't actually say that they're not going to get things done this way. They appear to be doing it, so far. But I don't want to do any more volunteer work for them until I know what their relationship to power is going to be like. I'd already spoken out at my initial meeting with them, about the necessity of keeping things open, accessible, and transparent. They seem focused on keeping power, while talking about employing the structures in which power is shared. Equality for everyone, and extra heapings of equality for the core group, was a refrain. Too "Animal Farm."
Which is probably what informs some of my other feelings today about inclusion. It's a given that any group that forms now has to be inclusive, whether that is good for the group or not. Do you need everyone to join your club, or just certain people? How do you know who belongs? For starters, they know where the meeting is and how to introduce themselves when they get there. They know how to put an item on the agenda, and bring a multimedia presentation. This is why there are "old boy" networks. People prefer to work with their own kind, and people who know how to get things done their way. I'm older and the wrong gender for this group I met with on Monday. It pushed their buttons. They're reverting to their pre-revolutionary values, getting more Robert's rules about it. It's all so transparent to me when people behave like this, now.
Kevin thinks I'm in some new phase where I'm giving advice a lot. He says it's not bad, just different. I do feel bolder about telling things as I see it. It's not a simple "why the hell not," although there's that; anyone can voice an opinion, and anyone who can do it well enough that others will want to read it, well yay, us. I'm a snob. I discern. I think other people should, too, but I get why they don't. I know some things, and my goal is to be able to explain what I know well, so that it can help other people: help them empower themselves, or feel relief, connection. I was raised by books: they have passed on to me their values of sharing knowledge, and not being afraid to have a passion and learn all I can about a subject, or to get interdisciplinary, or surprised, or to learn from religion or fiction or other areas that are not science.
I got all shibbolethed out of this conversation on a blog I want to write for. When someone I admire joined in, it upset me. He wrote something better, later, so maybe it will resolve itself. I'm cautious, though. It's an incestuous sort of place in the comments of these sites: even when the essays are excellent and reflect a broad range of experience, you can't keep the language police or some other counter-revolutionary force from cracking down on thoughtcrime. I might not belong there, either. On the surface, I think I'm just perfect for a cooperative commercial kitchen in my town, or a blog about being queer where they talk about trans stuff a lot. Then I get in deeper and find out, oh, no, I'm the wrong class, or gender, or combination. Something integral to who I am that I don't think is bad and that I can't change and don't want to, that I thought shouldn't exclude me but as it turns out, does. Oops.
I've been thinking in terms of the tricameral psyche as popularized: animal id, thinking ego, mediating superego. It's been a useful way to think of what I can do and change, and what checks and balances are built in. I have a different understanding of what it means to be ego-driven. It means not appreciating the id.
I poked the group who are working on the commercial kitchen, and got a response. My response to their response is that I want to snark back about how I've clearly challenged their visceral senses' limitations on decision-making, since they now feel the need to formalize the process by which new core members are admitted. Once again demonstrating their cart-before-horse mindset, but I can't actually say that they're not going to get things done this way. They appear to be doing it, so far. But I don't want to do any more volunteer work for them until I know what their relationship to power is going to be like. I'd already spoken out at my initial meeting with them, about the necessity of keeping things open, accessible, and transparent. They seem focused on keeping power, while talking about employing the structures in which power is shared. Equality for everyone, and extra heapings of equality for the core group, was a refrain. Too "Animal Farm."
Which is probably what informs some of my other feelings today about inclusion. It's a given that any group that forms now has to be inclusive, whether that is good for the group or not. Do you need everyone to join your club, or just certain people? How do you know who belongs? For starters, they know where the meeting is and how to introduce themselves when they get there. They know how to put an item on the agenda, and bring a multimedia presentation. This is why there are "old boy" networks. People prefer to work with their own kind, and people who know how to get things done their way. I'm older and the wrong gender for this group I met with on Monday. It pushed their buttons. They're reverting to their pre-revolutionary values, getting more Robert's rules about it. It's all so transparent to me when people behave like this, now.
Kevin thinks I'm in some new phase where I'm giving advice a lot. He says it's not bad, just different. I do feel bolder about telling things as I see it. It's not a simple "why the hell not," although there's that; anyone can voice an opinion, and anyone who can do it well enough that others will want to read it, well yay, us. I'm a snob. I discern. I think other people should, too, but I get why they don't. I know some things, and my goal is to be able to explain what I know well, so that it can help other people: help them empower themselves, or feel relief, connection. I was raised by books: they have passed on to me their values of sharing knowledge, and not being afraid to have a passion and learn all I can about a subject, or to get interdisciplinary, or surprised, or to learn from religion or fiction or other areas that are not science.
I got all shibbolethed out of this conversation on a blog I want to write for. When someone I admire joined in, it upset me. He wrote something better, later, so maybe it will resolve itself. I'm cautious, though. It's an incestuous sort of place in the comments of these sites: even when the essays are excellent and reflect a broad range of experience, you can't keep the language police or some other counter-revolutionary force from cracking down on thoughtcrime. I might not belong there, either. On the surface, I think I'm just perfect for a cooperative commercial kitchen in my town, or a blog about being queer where they talk about trans stuff a lot. Then I get in deeper and find out, oh, no, I'm the wrong class, or gender, or combination. Something integral to who I am that I don't think is bad and that I can't change and don't want to, that I thought shouldn't exclude me but as it turns out, does. Oops.