What's in a Real Community?
A real community is where no one really cares about mistreatment of others and just lets injustice continue, right?
Or is there a limit? If it's just one person being wronged and mistreated, does it not matter? What about if it was 2? Or 10? When does it start to matter?
Someone wrongs another person, but does anyone really care do help them and right the wrong? Or to stop the wrongs from continuing to happen?
Imagine a society or "community" that always operated this way.
Something wrong happens, and no one does anything to help the person that was wronged. There is no justice. Whatever happens, happens, and everyone just lets it be.
As long as you're not the one affected, it doesn't matter to you, right?
Sounds like a great place, right?
That's where you want to spend your time, right?
It's a great place to invest your time and energy so that you can develop that society/community, right?
Boy, who wouldn't want to live there and keep getting wronged and mistreated compared to other people in the community, right?
As long as you aren't the one being wronged... as long as there weren't injustices against you... would you even care?
What happens when people live like this?
Well, when you eventually get wronged, no one will care about how you were wronged, no one will care about your injustice.
If people in a community don't care to stand together to fight against wrongs and injustice, then those who get mistreated, wronged or are victims of injustice, will simply be marginalized and ignored by everyone else who are too concerned with their own lives to bother to get involved standing with others for whats right.
Real communities are few and far between, where people actually care for upholding principles of right and justice, to change the status quo, etc.
Some people do care, and some people are paid to fight against wrongs, but overall most people don't bother getting involved to stop injustice, wrongs, abuse, etc. from perpetuating against someone or some people in a society or community.
Daring to speak up will put a target on your own back, so it's "better" easier and more self-serving to be quiet and not rock the boat to draw attention towards yourself.
Not standing for common-goals, means people stand for different goals and remain separated when issues arise.
Do you stand for morality? Do you stand for what's right and try to battle with injustice?
A community is supposed to solve problems together by sharing knowledge and common goals. When this doesn't happen, and people let wrongs and injustice pervade, the community is a farce with fake people going along their own personal lives while things deteriorate around them.
Source:
What community do people on Steemit want to create? Do we as individuals stand together against wrongs and injustice when we aren't individually affected, or do we keep ignoring the issues because it doesn't touch us directly?
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
References:
- Our Universal Duty and Privilege
- Barriers to Change: Fear, Being a Victim, and Not Saying No is Automatically Saying Yes
- Until we get it, we just don't get it... truth takes time, I learned that reality
- Keep Your Head Down, Don't Rock the Boat!
- Standing Up for What is Right, Good and True, is Standing Up for Yourself
- Standing Up and Standing Out - The Fear of Ostracism is Worse than Death
- Seeking Truth and Morality Comes from the Core of Who We Are
- Changing Minds is Hard, Especially When Identity is Attached to a Belief
- Understanding What is Right, Good, and Moral is Our Responsibility
- When Will the Tyranny and Corruption End? When We Choose to No Longer Support It
- My “Freedom”, My “Truth”, My "Life" and My "Survival"
- Caring for Truth and the Responsibility to Learn
- Raise a Little Hell - Fight for What's Right!
- Speak Truth to Create Change
- Motivating Quotes to Take a Stand and Speak Up
- Do we stand in truth together, or stand alone?
- Psychological Material for Standing Up to Create Change
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2017-03-26, 1:10pm
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I think there are more people standing up for what is right. We see more whistle blowers and even voters are taking a look at the people they are voting for and not just the party. It's hard to stand up for what is right when you stand alone. Sometime you lose family, friends, jobs, money, home and more. I don't know if one is born to protect and do what is right but I know as a child I suffered for it. Even from all the suffering I know it's made me stronger. I have, even, gained a family member back after many years. By the grace....? I don't know where this courage comes from but I know it's not me. I feel like such a coward most of the time but when the battle cry calls to fight for someone in pain/abuse I feel something within quicken. I am happy to say more people are getting this spark for justice. Miracles happen when people do the right thing. Treasures in hell.
It's great to have people like you here, putting steem to good use.
Very well said!
We just need to treat each other with respect and communicate. We can build a positive place for everyone but mistakes will be made.
Keep your head down and don't ask questions 😜
My ideal community would be a community of leaders. People who take responsibility and accountability for their actions, and believe that this is THEIR community. If people take ownership of THEIR community they will not stand for injustices, even on a small scale, because even if it is not affecting them, IT IS, because it is THEIR community, and if injustice strikes anywhere in the community it affects those who have accepted ownership.
I prefer LEADERS over RULERS. RULERS force their rules upon others. LEADERS are people that we can choose to follow or not follow as we will. They lead by example rather than by force.
exactly!
Personally I want everyone to be a leader and take their own initiative in working together. No followers. This could be out of laziness though or an inability to comprehend that some people are unable to take initiative; from what I have seen of "not-smart" people is that they don't exist, in that they just have a "I can't do this" mentality (I've seen so many times people say they can't do things, only for someone to stand over them and say "so what do you do next?" and then the person does it all by themselves, only with the aid of someone asking "what do you do next?"). Everyone needs to realise their true unlimited potential. I believe everyone can empower themselves to lead.
I'm a reluctant leader, and only take up leadership positions if no one else is up for it, or capable. That's my sloth showing though. Last year I directed several theatre productions and would tell the actors "I don't know, you tell me" when they asked for direction and help (I did run a few workshops, but left it very loose so the actors would have to take control). The actors performances were amazing. I think everyone should be a leader and lead themselves as well as each other.
I don't like the idea of only a small percentage of the population having leadship skills, such as shown through the Myerr's Brigg's personality test. I shift between INTJ and ENTJ, but believe that anyone can adapt to their circumstances or change their thinking with the right training or stimulus.
Be willing to follow others when you do not have own way , but Be a leader when you see the path that others have lost !
Resteemed. I agree.
I am also fine with @riskdebonair's reply, but I do think there is a fine line between leaders and rulers. They are used interchangeable in some cases but a RULER is someone who can force their will upon others. This is not necessarily true of a leader. Leaders can occur naturally. We choose who is going to lead in most endeavors. If I am fixing a car with some friends then the friend with the most experience in fixing cars is likely going to lead, and it will likely happen without us saying "You're the leader". Then when we go inside to make dinner someone else will likely naturally become the "leader".
I prefer the term "Lead by example". A leader should be voluntary. A ruler is involuntary.
Good ideas do not require force.
I do think you are right though and people need to stop cowering if they think something is wrong and think "someone else will deal with it, I'm not going to make myself a target". People become a target only when they are left alone standing against the would be "rulers". It is difficult to target anyone when a lot of people stand together.
Sure there are exceptions... if you are a government you can try to nuke them if they are concentrated. Yet in these days Come together does not mean we are clustered and easy targets. It simply means we are working towards a common cause.
Indeed. Those who have money don't really care about qualifications when a system is built around them holding all the power and control. They can just ignore qualifications, standards, and do whatever they want since don't accept the rules for whats right, or there aren't any rules in the society to apply punishment when they want to violate those rules of whats right others agree to. No rules, no standards, no criteria, just free for all madness. Only a united front of people can combat such corruption. But when money is leading the way, people are happy to let whatever keep going so long as their money keeps coming in, and they certainly don't want to become a target for the corrupt power either hehe. The people in a society are the ones that can change the corrupt rules and get things back on track, if they want to invest time and energy to act towards that end.
Community ? What you speak about .......... is not a community , here is the land of the bots and ignorance :)
Happy steeming !
LOL. Well said!
Anytime I see this (very worthy and important!) debate, I always want to go back to the start... which, for me, is whether humans are inherently selfish, or cooperative.
Of course, that question is further clouded and complicated by looking at "the state of a society." The closer the majority feels like they are to the abyss of nothingness and dereliction, the greater (most likely) their inclination to worry about individual self-preservation (selfish) than communal well-being. And this varies by society and community.
For example, somewhere in these comments, @lasseehlers comments on the "market" balancing itself... and I have to remind myself that his lens of perception (to some degree like my own) is shaped by being from Scandinavia, where "common good" is a more widely accepted social value/norm than in the USA, where I now live... and where "individual rights" are valued more highly than more collectivist approach.
Timely that you wrote this... I have been working on a piece examining human greed as a mental illness rather than a "sin." I bring up here because of the need (I feel) to bring the greed factor into community building. This doesn't just apply to the microcosm known as Steemit (although we do have the opportunity to create a new model for "community," should we choose to), but the world in general. How do we create a better model for community when we have a starting point that involves great inequality? We may have whales and minnow, but we also have a world where CEO's give themselves $50M annual stock bonuses while employing 10,000 people who need to seek public assistance just so they can feed their kids. Outside of the "greed factor," does that $50M make one whit of difference in the CEO's overall happiness? Nope... but spread out among 10,000 getting an additional $5,000 a year, a whole lot of benefit could be derived.
So yes, part of strong and just community building involves standing up and pointing to things being wrong or out-of-balance, even if we're not the direct beneficiaries of a change. But it all becomes very complicated because the intersection of "ideology" and "functional reality* tends to involve some treacherous waters...
I see the same has been done to try to polarize people towards "are people inherently good or evil", etc. The answer is that we are both good and evil, it depends on our actions. We create it into being. There is not really an "inherently" one way or the other. We are also both selfish and cooperative. We have these capacities within us. Understanding what is of greatest benefit to us as individuals, is to understand the need for optimized survival through reciprocal cooperation. Those who are still stuck in a myopic polarized view of one at the expense of the other don't "get it". Why? Most likely time has not bee given to learn about such complex issues of life from the grounding of reality itself. They just read or get influenced to accept toxic ideologies that serve their self-serving ego-personality-identity constructs at the expense or exploitation of others.
Individualism is not at odds with cooperation and community. It's integrated into it. Myopic focus on self at the ignorance and expense of others is why corrupted individualism stands against community. Real individualism recognizes the benefit of cooperative optimized survival. "All in it for myself" mindset is a failure at all levels of living with others in a society. Only living as a "man as an island" would benefit from self-ostracism and ignorance of reciprocal cooperative living. I don't ascribe to the polarized dichotomy of "individual rights" or "collectivism". Collectives are bad when they don't maintain individual rights.
People need to unlearn the BS of polarized individualism, selfishness, greed, "I can do what I want, I have the power/money", and start from the grounding of reality to understand how societies and communities form from foundational principles. i.e. MORALITY. But, I've been told by some, like a whale, that my work on morality and consciousness (that is all about getting to a more moral social setting) is essentially "worthless" to Steemit... So no wonder these money-obsessed greedy power-dominating thugs can't understand, because they don't want to understand how a real true community forms and thrives! The level of ignorance and arrogance is hilarious and pathetic at the same time!
Indeed, we need to unlearn the pathological extremes of individualistic selfishness. If I had to characterize my perspective (and yes, we each have elements of both greed and selflessness), it would be described as "collectively selfish." That is, if I support the community in thriving and doing well, I will thrive and do well by extension.
On the other hand, if I just worry about my own advancement and don't care about anyone else, it just feels wrong-- exploitative, somehow. Besides, the fruits of inequity eventually seems to come to the inevitable end of "villagers with pitchforks" attempting to slay the giants. Which is bad for the community, at the best of times.
Personally, I believe your explorations on morality and consciousness not only have value, they are also important in raising the overall level of consciousness of the community. However, the "TL;DR crowd" can be found everywhere, conditioned by 140-character tweets...
True> Greed is a mental illness. A fear of poverty > Get it, NOW, before someone else gets it > There's never enough so I do what it takes to take more than my fair share. Protect the precious . . . and on it on it goes the cycle with no end in sight to enjoy. . . until one day you become . . . like this man
Indeed, greed is a mental illness... but it is mental illness on a societal level, not just an individual level.
When someone collects thousands of old newspapers or take in 200 cats we call it "hoarding" and label it an "illness." Yet, when someone keeps "collecting" wealth after they already have enough to feed 200 families but keep it all for themselves... we label it "ambition" and their collection "success." There's something seriously effed up about that...
Ah.... I see what you mean. Thank you.
I'm very poor and insignificant, but....
I choose very carefully what I buy into, products, ideologies, friends. Plus, a very big plus for someone like me, the way to change the world for the better, is to first heal myself. I can't help anyone if I can't help myself. If my heart is screwed up, my view is screwed and anything I do will be screwed.....Great article @krnel.
I always say everything has to be judged on its own merits. In a perfect world everyone would basically start out treating everyone else with respect regardless of simple disagreements. It's when someone starts acting the fool that they should start gettting treated accordingly.
What I see is that there is a growth in conservatism in society, and we have to take this shadow away from the emerging "blockchained" communities because it should and was created as a refuge from fear and centralized power.
In the blockchain, we have to take away the Fear that is the actual foundation of conservative authoritarian power to generate insecurity and instability as a justification to reinforce their power and creating "false escape goats" for the actual state of problems, that they created in the beginning and pretend now to be the saviors.
Fascism destroys people or groups as a form of unifying their followers that give an unrestrained and autocratic use for their self-centered authority, and kill all the messengers that do not bring their news."
This a have started a long time ago and it is growing and made me remember a quote from the band Bourbonese Qualk in a concert in Lisbon in 1987.
"We can see the future as a global suburban, what is already happening.The seeds of new conservatism were sowed and they are producing a mentality of suburban.Mass acceptance and conformity became a norm now more than ever."