Deconstructing the impossible...

The day before yesterday, I received a private email from a member of a Yahoogroup. The topic of the group is basically Buddhist community building.

The group is comprised of primarily western-style Buddhists, those who have worked the philosophy around to allow them to ignore the uncomfortable parts. I read the posts and don't say anything. I don't challenge them, even though there are some things expressed there that need to be challenged.

I got an email from another member who noticed my login name (thailandchani) and wrote me about Thailand. This individual also happens to be a transsexual. She has remained silent on the list about that fact as well as her draw and affinity for Thailand. In her, I may have met my match. We talked about the place on the phone for 8 hours! We said things we knew that no one who doesn't have this experience of feeling like an exile in our country of birth would understand. It's a kindredness. We talked, remembered, said the things we really think and feel with abandon, used every last little bit of Thai language known between the two of us, and generally felt the comfort of freedom to speak openly.

This would not have been okay on the email list itself. The risk of being ostracized would be high, not only because of our affinity for Thailand but for my open acceptance of transsexualism.

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I've noticed it on blogs as well! Someone says something controversial and people disappear. That is why most people are afraid to say too much. Social consequences. We see it in our site meters.

I can mention Thailand here. I can say nice things about it. I can wax poetic about it and write beautiful word pictures of my experiences and my life there. I can even talk about the real reasons why I took such a radical step. Let me talk about how life in this culture sucked the soul out of me until there was nothing left? Even that's okay.. but... let me express my anger? My hits would be down to zero within the next two days. BTDT.

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I remember one time, a really long time ago.. probably 30 years now... I went to a meeting of a religious-based women's group .. just to see what was going on and knowing I should have something to be involved in. It went great at first.

Then I disagreed about how the Palestinians were being treated by the Israelis. (This was during a particularly rough time over there... terrorism, wars, etc.)

Well, I was ostracized so fast, you would have been able to feel the wind!

The phone stopped ringing, people stopped associating with me.

I was shunned for expressing an opinion that went against the dominant opinion.


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Just a few days ago, I deleted a comment on Julie's blog on the topic of political correctness because I was afraid it might be misunderstood or had been misunderstood. The content of the comment escapes me at this point because my memory matches my attention span. I deleted the comment because of the uncertainty. I didn't know whether it might be cause a problem and, yes, decided to not take the chance.

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Consequently, everyone sits on their hands and no ideas of substance are exchanged. Nothing changes. We sit... stasis.

And I am not certain how to solve the problem, either. Even with my training in sociology, I don't have a bloody clue! This is a dynamic we never examined in college!

It's sad. Really sad. And such a waste of our planet time.

It's sad that we can't trust each other more, be just a bit more civil and really understand that, as the Desiderata expresses, that everyone, even the most ignorant among us, have something important to say. It's too bad we can't move beyond the notion that different opinions than our own should be annihilated.

It infects everyone and every thing. It has poisoned our ability to trust in each other's inherent willingness to accept contrary views. The group dynamic has silenced far too many voices, voices with something important to say. It has caused us to be overly cautious and overly fearful of the pack mentality reaction that often takes place when someone expresses an opinion that is not the dominant view or expressed with the dominant use of language.

At some point, I believe it's important to examine this, not only in terms of the costs to us as individuals, but the cost to us socially.

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