A Lack of Integrity in List Managers
One of the things that happens when parts of ourselves that we feel deeply emotional about are silenced by the protocols in the environment, is envy. "Other people get to have their voices heard. The people who want to list garage sales are 100% served. The people who have nothing to say but a few sentences are served. These people get what they want. But I want to be seen here, and the message is: "We don't want that around here." Where then, does one go in a culture like America to talk about sensitive feelings as a man? I have no objection to a garage sale list and an announcement to deep heart-shares that tie into local action list, but that list does not exist. I am asked to fit into a box that does not fit or not exist.
The hostility with which I anticipate this statement to be met by the non HSP majority who has been fitting into weird boxes their whole life is intense. And that is part of the envy I feel. I do not know a place within HAI or America where the grief of having the sensitive and artistic side of who I am silenced is and can be empathized, rather than exposing this side of me to the hostility, scorn and rage that this culture directs and has directed towards this side of me since birth. This is massive abuse that hurts everyone, though most people are out of touch with the part in themselves that the same message is hurting.
This leads to envy: The longing for acceptance as one is. And unrequited envy leads ultimately to the poison of not wanting others to have what they want because I'm not getting what I want. I'm using "I" statements here, but it's key that we distinguish between what is deeply innate in human and animal biology and psychology and what is something only one individual feels for no apparent reason. We are willfully maintained in a state of emotional illiteracy in our culture, in which the average person cannot even name the full vocabulary of their emotions and sensations, let alone be connected to their inner ages, body and heart enough to use the vocabulary to paint an accurate picture of the full range of emotions and what they are symptomatic of in a given person's life. This is as crude as saying "girls don't need to know how to read - they are just mothers." People don't need to know what they feel or how to communicate their emotions - they are just vehicles for sex and workers in our machine culture of making and spending money.
I mention this because while I understand that as a statistic suppressed need, honor and respect leads to envy in every human being as a statistic, I am also aware that envy is one of those "taboo emotions" that individuals are judged for feeling in a culture that wants to punish symptoms of pain rather than address the pain - consistent with our habit of executing "juvenile delinquents" in the electric chair who externalize the physical and psychological abuse of their culture and parents (I'm a gardener and I can tell you that 99% of nature's seeds grow healthy and strong when given a nourishing environment) rather than address the pain inflicted on our children every day, by government, parents, peers and teachers alike.
I remember feeling this envy when the list managers would publish things by the facilitators that were as long and rambling as they wanted. When I challenged this discrimination, the list managers just made up stuff on the spot. But the message was clear: rules, even very unintelligent rules, are reserved for participants, not facilitators. Perhaps if facilitators had to obey their own rules, they would realize that they were not conducive to the intimacy they were teaching?
Concern: When leaders of any structure do not need to and consequently do not apply the rules to themselves, it makes them out of touch with the state others are in who do live by those rules. When leaders are seen not following rules, it sends a message "what we have to say is more important than you." This may fly in corporate autocracies that pay people enough to put up with it, but it does not create the culture of community in which people must pay money, volunteer and give to participate in. These nuanced messages damage a community's viability.
Suing For Best Practices at HAI
