Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community. - Anthony J. D'Angelo

Good Morning Digitial Neighbors! Happy Wednesday ADD Irregulars & WSN Aficionados, Friends & Refugees, Phamily & Misfits, Conversants & Lurkers, Seekers & Wanderers, Early Birds & Later Dayers, and all the rest of ya's that find you way to Locals and these little havens of community, laughter and critical thought.

Are our communities doomed to fail since there is no common understanding of what it means to be caring? While I lean to the right on many issues of culture and politics, I tend to be a live and let live person. You do what you wish as long as there or no overt acts of malice against others, you know the things we used to agree were violent and malicious just a decade or two ago, not hurt feelings. Too often hurt feelings are the result of inflated or fragile hearts/minds that seek more injury in life than understanding of it. Injury and offense trump reason because your victimization card is your passport to uncritical living. Who are all these people of privilege that dare to criticize your life??? Who are all these people that question your new identity and sense of self??? More than likely if they aren't applauding your newfound YOU, they are some sort of ISTS. It really doesn't matter what kind of ISTS you call them, silencing questions and criticisms is the only goal. The only dialogue that occurs is the lecture they provide and the notes you take in your reprogramming. RaceISTS is the most common silencer, but it may be over used losing its dialogue silencing effectiveness. Can anyone be SexISTS anymore or is everyone sexISTS now that we can be any gender designation we desire? Just asking. I can't keep up, in the land of offense, the biggest crybabies call the shots. The DSM just isn't what it used to be.

A live and let live reality can only exist when your neighbors believe in mutual respect, that their rights end where yours begin. So what are signs of actual caring for one another?

1. Actual listening
2. Freedom to question
3. Freedom to disagree
4. Displaying sympathy for the injured (actual, not cry baby hurt feelings)
5. Lost acts of civility - a simple thank you, public displays of patience
6. A willingness to not be easily offended or perpetually offended
7. Avoiding lecture mode when disagreements occur
7a. Not finding your 3 or more other emotional hyenas to mob those who disagree.
7b. Remembering #3 and walking away once the conversation is over.
8. Restoring a real understanding of harm - physical harm surpasses emotional harm, all the time.
9. Common understanding of words & terms, without this all the points above this are moot.
9a. All collectivist thinkers (Marxist, Socialists, Fascists) want to muddy the waters of vocabulary and distort language. We all know this, but it is good to point it out.
9b. Collectivism feels a lot like community, but complete conformity is the ultimate goal of collectivists living. You can be diverse is all the areas that are inconsequential and irrelevant, but not in your thinking.
10. Agreement on what is actually harmful to individuals, agreement on what real victimization is. I know we may never get back to this commonly understood reality. We have been away from it far too long. Perhaps the best we can do is allow individual States to determine what is the law and common understanding of the land like it has happened with abortion.

I know there are other things to add to that list and more clarifications to make, but that would seem to be a good start to restoring some sense of caring in our communities no matter what we believed, who we did or didn't worship and how we wanted to spend our time. Of course I could be completely missing the mark. While I am only a pilgrim in this life, I do care about the communities where I live. I do care about the people I love. I do want to see more caring return to society and less outrage and offense. I know that the outraged and offended cannot be defeated by reason, passivism or ignoring them.

A nice autumn barn and a horse - cheers my friends!