Ah-HA!

[threadwalker]

The SCA has fully become high school. Not sort of like it, but just like it.

I feel like between math-club geekery and the service club where I help the elderly that I missed the big blow up back at school where the jocks and the cheerleaders had some sort of internal war. Now when I walk into the cafeteria everyone is sitting at different tables, they aren't talking and they are either pretending to ignore each other OR they are glaring at each other over their bright orange lunch trays. I didn't have time for this drama the first time around in high school and I don't have empathy or sympathy for it now. It's hard to respect the boundary lines and avoid getting dragged into it when you can't see them and you really don't understand why they are there. So I've been a bit bewildered for over a month with the rising tension. I even got LJ-unfriended and I think it was related to this. I could be wrong since no one sent a note saying why I was unfriended, but I'm guessing it's related to the political food fight in Hobby Land.

I respect that others are emotionally invested in their turf war, but I'm not emotionally invested in it and I expect my disinterest to also be respected. I spend my day making medicine that saves lives. Period. Then I go home and put my energy into my health and into my family. There is no room on this list for food fights in Hobby Land.

I finally got some of the scoop on what's been going on. I'm disappointed. I'm sure there's more because there always is. No doubt people are also already rewriting history as they start to look back and realize they've been behaving foolishly. Regardless of who threw the first banana slice in this crazy food fight, Hobby Land is supposed to be fun and I resent turf wars in Hobby Land because they ruin my freedom to socialize with all my friends without being labelled as a member of someone's camp. It also hurts everyone who doesn't want to get involved, especially new comers. Because believe it or not, some of us don't care about the turf war and are capable of having a fulfilling experience in Hobby Land without ever going to a football game. Believe it or not, the turf war makes going to Hobby Land less desirable and it makes hanging out with the people who are perpetuating this undesirable. It makes Hobby Land less appealing to new comers as well and that's a huge loss to Hobby Land. When the food fight gets this big and goes on for this long, everyone is hurt and there are no "good guys" or "bad guys", just selfish people who think their turf war should dominate everyone else's experience and whose egos won't set differences aside nor (frankly) grow up. I feel like I'm being bullied by someone else's agenda and I don't like it.

Looking down the lense into the future, I wonder how many more private events will start to spring up like Erinwood. As those of us who don't buy into this food fight throw up our hands and walk away, we take our energy and creativity with us, looking for new places to play. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't need or want it or want to be near the political ugliness of it. What changes will happen to Hobby Land if everyone who resents the food fight just quits going to Crown events and coronations? The gate count at June was abnormally low. Fifteen years ago the Guilds were active places that drew in newcomers and used that newcomer enthusiasm to create fabulous gift baskets for the royals to hand out and at that time there used to be a lot of pride in the giving of hand-wrought items to the Crowns; times have changed and the Guilds aren't as active nor bountiful. Perhaps the exodus is already happening and we mistook it as the fall-out of a weak economy.

Does it matter who wins the food fight if the only ones left in the cafeteria are the jocks and the cheerleaders? Have fun with that.

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" -Ghandi

Comments

[sarahbellem.livejournal.com]

What's that saying? "Be the change you want to see"?

Thing is, there's no single drama here. There's many dramas, most spinning off of an underlying cause, and you know, we've been vaguely addressing this on LJ for well over a year now and nothing has stopped it. It's like we all go to an event, see shit getting flung around everywhere, perhaps engage in it ourselves to various degrees, and then we come back home and fire up LJ and write about how we should all just get along. And yet, nothing changes.

I've been asking myself why hasn't anything changed if we're all aware that something's rotten in the Kingdom of the West, and I think it boils down to this: When shit gets stirred, no one stops it -face to face-. I know I fail at stopping shit stirring because I am highly emotional and when I am incited to feel anger about something, boy howdy, I go for the jugular before I even know what it is that I'm pissed off about. So, I need to be really on top of my game to not react before I think, and sometimes, heck, often times, that is hard for me.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that if nothing is appreciably changing in my SCA experience, then the issue isn't with anyone else, it's with me. I need to stop, think, delay my reaction and if that means walking away or telling someone to stop talking to me about whatever rage-provoking thing they are telling me, and risk hurting their feelings or be seen as the opposition, then so be it.

Also? Talking about it on LJ doesn't do squat. It's like screaming into a giant, sucking void, and at the end of it, you've exhausted yourself and nothing has changed. You start to look at the SCA like it's the problem, when really, you have to make it what you want it to be. No one else can do that for us.

I'm hella stubborn and I refuse to let the West Kingdom go down the toilet.

[answers-within.livejournal.com]

I personally give you a gold star for hitting this square on the (un)funny bone. We all tend to talk about what "they" are doing or failing to do, rather than talk about what we are doing or failing to do that's contributing to the situation.

I guess the challenge is what to do when the people who need to change their behavior to stop contributing to the situation won't. No one can be forced to change when he or she doesn't want to, or doesn't believe it's necessary or appropriate to do so, and we've all been that person at some time or another! Telling other people what they should or shouldn't do is problematic at the best of times and rarely works no matter how correct the direction may be.

So I guess it comes down to whether each of us can live with doing the best *we* can to alter our own behavior even when others don't or won't and their choices have a direct impact on us. It's a tough thing to sort out, I think, and further hurt and misunderstanding can result from the differences in how people need to respond to the "foo" in order to take care of themselves - isolate, participate more, get into the foo to try to solve it, pretend the foo isn't there, etc.

No easy answers, but you make a lot of really good points that go in the right direction, I think.

[sarahbellem.livejournal.com]

Yay! I get a gold star! :D

(I've also had a glass of wine, so I'm feeling wordy)

It is *very* hard to address these sorts of things, whether you're the person who wants to steer the offender on the right path, or the person who is being steered. It's not fun for anyone, and experience has taught me is that direct intervention really doesn't work, nine times out of ten. Hypothetically speaking, if someone has an issue with me, and won't talk to me about it but instead goes about talking about the issue with what seems like everyone but me, and I try to intervene with that person and say "hey, can we talk about this?" but I get shut out, nothing has been accomplished and I walk away feeling further hurt. Some people just don't WANT to talk about it, or they want to just talk about it with their friends because confrontation is icky. So what happens next is I feel like they're all gossiping about me, because clearly there's a problem and clearly no one wants to deal with me directly. I've been marginalized, and I walk away feeling bitter. So now there's two issues... The person who has an issue with me, and now I have an issue with them. And so what do I do? I go off and talk about it with MY friends, and it gets back to said person that *I've* been gossiping about *them* and so they run back to their friends and... The cycle continues. Everyone is talking, but not to each other.

I know enough some of the various dramas in the kingdom right now to say that this is essentially how things went in most of the instances. The issue now becomes how people can reconnect and either clear the air (which may not be possible after a couple of years of mutual banana throwing) or just to stop engaging with the drama and refocus on what brought them into the SCA in the first place. Drama needs people to fuel it and it can easily become the all-consuming force in people's lives, no matter how much they think they're above it or not interested in it, so it's really hard. I totally know how hard it is, believe me. But I want to play in the SCA, and I want my friends to stay in the SCA, and yeah, I want an SCA that is low on drama, but like trystbat said upthread, that's probably not going to happen. So, what can *I* do? Well, for starters, keep going to events and rocking my bad self. And to try to be a little more present in the here and now and stop giving so much energy into the drama vortex.

[answers-within.livejournal.com]

Hey, I don't even have the excuse of a glass of wine, so I guess I just get to fess up to liking words and people who use them well. :-D And of course you get a gold star - you're shiny and awesome and you still care. That's worth a constellation at least. We can blather until thread_walker kicks us out.

Your description of the vicious cycle was SPOT-ON, and it captures a key point - even when resolution is attempted, it often fails because there's too much hurt combined with not enough skill and/or desire to achieve resolution. Conflict is horribly, horribly hard to deal with fairly and constructively, which is why the entire human race still deals with each other about like angry six-year-olds. Many people can't even try, and when we do try it often fails and we do precisely as you described, keeping the cycle going. I've an embarrassing list of those moments myself, nursing my perception of having been done wrong (sometimes even correctly) and flogging that with everyone I knew. I've also been on the receiving end of it more than once. You beautifully captured the irony of how we engage in the very behavior that wounds us when others do it!

I think the worst of it is that often there really *are* wrongs done, so it's not able to be dismissed as mere vaporing on anyone's part. Intentional or un (and usually a mix of both), the hurts are real. But again, when resolution isn't attempted or it fails, the wrongs are compounded and magnified and twisted so that it really starts to feel impossible to just "let it go". Whether it's Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, or the current West Kingdom, the scale changes but the experience doesn't. So much hurt flies around that when less-involved people say, "Can't you just let it go and move on?" the principals either look at you like you're insane or just put a bullet in your head and get back to wailing on each other. You're absolutely correct that it takes people to fuel drama, but the sad part is that it doesn't take very many - just a handful who are REALLY UPSET is enough, because it doesn't take long before it's impossible for any "side" to put down the guns first for fear of annihilation. Then everyone else is living in a war zone, and while we've seen that people can survive anywhere, no one really wants that.

*pause for sadness that it's so hard for so many of us so much of the time*

I guess you're right that all any of us can do is decide not to pick up a gun and join in, and to try to stay as far away from the firefight as possible. Shifting to that point of view, letting go of the feeling of "I've been wronged and need to fight back", is something each of us has to find for ourselves, if we even do. I know I'm more willing to seek harmony than to be right than I've ever been in my life, but being a person who has been *deeply* invested in being right, I still get stuck in it. "But, but, SHE did....HE said....THEY started it....I'm the VICTIM here, I should just roll over and take it?!?!?" It's so, so hard to walk away from that and try to find a way to deal with the situation that doesn't involve being in the "food fight" but also doesn't leave you feeling like you violated your own integrity, either. Sometimes it's just letting go, sometimes it's "nonviolent opposition", sometimes it's seeking help to find compromise and resolution even when you still feel like none of it is your fault. But you have to want the solution more than you want to be right, and I think that's just brutally hard for most of us.

I also think it's harder to stay engaged, to stay in the environment that's triggering us, *without perpetuating the cycle* than it is to just disengage and walk away. In the end I think more good comes of it, but only if those people hanging in there can truly stay on the high road out of genuine desire - sometimes people have to walk away to save their sanity, and if you can't stick to your good intentions you're just going to open the nozzle on the gasoline hose. I think this is what you are saying you are doing, though, and I admire that a lot. I have no doubt you and others taking this approach will spread your own little ripples of peace and "making it better" by not feeding the cycle, and that's all you can do!