Steemit and the ideals of Non-Violence

Since joining steemit on the 5th of july (a date I shall never forget), I have been reading about the platform. On steemit and off it. Having aquainted myself earlier regarding blockchains and cryptos, I wanted to know what was the technical difference between this and the other platforms. I also wanted to know how the coin differs from others, was it inflationary, or deflationary etc.

A few days ago I came across an post which was not only full of technical stuff, but also contained an insight into the visions of the founder, Dan. I presume he is the same @dantheman we have here. I was really happy to learn that one of his primary convictions was to solve the problems of the world using non-violent means. Having had the same opinion for a long time, I was instantly drawn towards this medium as I would like to contribute in anyway I can to such a cause. And this thought may have guided him while steemit was being developed and I wanted in.

But it also set me thinking about how steemit can go about propogating the principle of non-violence. And I realised that though people may not have noticed, we do have a form of violence going on here. Verbal violence. And if I may coin a new phrase, down-vote violence . Unfortunately, it seems to be growing if you follow the comments which are starting to appear on certain posts. I have seen people not only being rude on posts they do not agree with, but some are using their power to flag as a weapon to hurt someone. This is violence and is indeed scary. but it is also a real threat and it needs to be confronted before getting out of hand.

I live in a country where the ideas of non-violence are taught from a small age due to our culture, but also because of Mahatma Gandhi, who has been one of the most outspoken advocate of non-violence in modern times. We have learnt now that violence breeds violence and is not an end to anything. But how do we go about stopping it in steemit? Well the only way I can think of is to bring about awareness, and make sure that any form of verbal violence is discouraged. Use of the down-vote should be judicious and the community should castigate anyone who crosses the line by using it to hurt someone. Basically we need to drill the idea into everyone that violence could be verbal also and if the community wants to flourish, then we better start learning to use language which propagates this idea in a subtle way.

If we do all this as a community, we will start showing the world what a great world it would be without violence of any form. And we would have also stayed true to a founder who seems to have have held this vision for a long time, incubated it, created it and bequeathed it to us, the citizens of this world! The ball is in our court now.

"My religion is based upon truth and non-violence. Truth is my god. Non-violence is the means of realising him" - Mahatma Gandhi.