Subject: Re: Difference, Community, and Sustainability

From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 16:11:28 -0500

Unleesh wrote:

>Oh but I do ... because you see, without toleration and celebration of
>difference, the difference that is born INTO that community is going to be
>repressed ... i didn't ask to be born into this neighborhood i live in,
with
>its intolerance of difference ...

Yes, but then you go on to extoll the virtues of the "Mosaic of
Subcultures" - a pattern which I had in mind actualy when I wrote my post.
If such a mosaic exists, then if you are born into a community where you
don't fit in, you can go to a different one.  If your choices are all pretty
much the same - a diverse but homogenized community such as we in the US
mostly have to live with - you can't.  That's all I was saying.

>primitive peoples aren't intolerant of
>difference at all, tho peasants may be ...

It depends which "primitive" peoples you're talking about, and what kinds of
differences.  Tribal peoples in fact were and are highly territorial and
often fought each other to keep their own values intact.  And although
certain types of differences were tolerated, a high degree of social
cooperation is also required in a close-knit community, so tribal taboos,
religions, and customs were fiercely defended and had to be respected by its
members or you would most definitely find yourself without a community.

>... i don't think you can expect people to be the same as you ... that has
a
>name : conformity

Actually, I think the notion of "conformity" arose from people's desire to
have a community where there is none.  They mistakenly believe that forcing
people into sharing certain values is a substitute for the kind of community
tribals enjoyed.  Conformity is not the same thing as having a desire to be
among familiars.

>...and the simple fact is that most primitive tribes had a
>wide tolerance of difference so long as basic values were shared ... that's
>one of their wonders and joys ...

I think you are over-simplifying and idealizing this.  It's true that most
tribal peoples did not seek to hunt down and kill every other tribe who
didn't behave as they did - or try to force others to behave the same way.
We do need to get back to that point and this is the problem you are having
with the white Christian majority.  They are not content to have their own
communities, they must force every community to become like themselves.
However, if you think no individuals felt stultified in a tribal society,
think again.  Fortunately, the "mosaic of subcultures" that exists where you
have a multitude of autonomous communities (such as the 300 different tribes
that occupied the Americas) allows you to marry into or move to another
community if you don't fit in.

--Lee

***********************************
Lee A. Flier
[email-masked]
Atlanta and Ellijay, Georgia
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 16:12:52 -0500

with

a

--Lee

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 16:35:49 -0500

Christopher Page wrote:

>Thank you "Unleesh" for bringing this subject up and Lee Flier for
>eloquently adding his experiences to it.

Well, I'm actually a "she" (not very obvious from my name, no offense
taken!), but thank you.

>I am glad to join the
>discussion on this subject....
>
>I tend to agree with Mr. Flier and have an additional question to posit:
>
>How does a diversity-friendly community respond to other tribal
>communties who by nature, cannot let other community-tribes be
>different?

I would hope that, eventually, such minority communities will come to occupy
their own physical spaces.  The problem is not so much that the majority
doesn't like it if others are different; the problem is that their hand is
in everything.  Right now, because the majority has made the laws for the
entire nation, there's not much room for alternatives to move.  As we find
each other and begin to live together I hope that will change.

>For example, I live in a fiercely conservative county in California
>(somehow I overlooked this when I was moving to the area) where anything
>non-Christian and non-Republican is viewed as not only undesirable but
>sinful and absolutely not tolerated.  I belong to a minority Jewish
>community here which largely pretends that we belong even though we are
>viewed by the dominant majority culture here as outsiders and aliens.

I hear ya.  Growing up, we were the only Jewish family in a small New
England town... there was also one black family.  The little black girl and
I got pretty close. <G>

>(We have a history of developing that attitude in order to cope with
>such things I realize.)  I don't mind Christians being difference but I
>do mind when they want me to be like them. I don't try to make them
>Jewish but they work very hard to make me Christian

Yeah, that is the problem in a nutshell.  Paradoxically, this problem might
be solved if Christians were allowed to have their own communities and
advertise themselves as such.  There might be certain resources, businesses
etc. shared by multiple cultures but obviously the hard core conservative
Christians are very insecure about their position and feel threatened by
others.  This as I mentioned isn't an uncommon or unnatural human response;
the problem is that since we are all thrown together physically it can
become a conflict.  If, for example, your area was a "registered Christian
community" and you belonged to a "registered Jewish community" then anybody
would know not to move there unless they either belonged to the respective
culture or didn't mind being an outcast (which some people don't).

Problem is, Christian communities generally DON'T advertise themselves as
such, either because they will be labeled as "racist segregationist white
supremacists" or whatever, or because their real goal is to make everyone
else be just like them.  I will grant you there are those, and those are a
problem, but I don't think they represent the majority of Christians.  I
really think the majority of Christians would be happy if they could live
and raise their families among those of their own kind without the threat of
interference from others.  If we lived in separate autonomous communities
and the Christians still tried to take over non-Christian communities and
insist that they follow Christian laws and customs, then we have blatantly
exposed the problem.

>...Further, permaculture as an
>agricultural practice is viewed in this county as neo-satanism....
>pesticides are venerated and worshipped as necessary and so vital that
>any decision against them is viewed by the dominant tribe as a
>"communist-liberal plot."  A permacutlure farmer cannot obtain credit or
>agricultural commission permits to grow in this county because the
>dominant tribe's power figures presume that organic or permaculture
>methods are illegitimate and spell financial disaster and communal
>instability.  Is this a good tribal boundary to allow?

When it comes to tribal customs, there is no such thing as "good" or "bad"
except to the degree that a practice helps the tribe to survive.  Almost any
tribe can find something abhorrent about any other tribe, because their
cultural background runs contrary to yours.  That's exactly the problem.

So, if your conservative neighbors are left to their own devices to practice
unsustainable farming, they ultimately won't survive because they'll kill
the soil, and their practices will be exposed as a problem.

>Tribalism is normal, but what happens when tribes put up hard barriers
>to keep others out?

That's part of the nature of tribalism.  Again I don't see it as a problem,
EXCEPT for the little fact that currently, the white Christian culture is so
overwhelmingly dominant on this big piece of land that it's impossible for
anyone else to thrive.  When this country was founded there was a lot of
energy invested in freedom of religion, and a lot of people left communities
where they weren't wanted and went off to form their own, based on their own
religious beliefs.  I think the equivalent needs to happen now, except that
instead of inhabiting "new" land (and I use that term sarcastically since we
all know it wasn't anyhow), we need simply to reorganize populations.  It
would be nice if that happened organically, just by people moving around
till they found somewhere they fit in, or else staking out a neighborhood
with several friends and trying to attract like minded people, a la the
various cohousing projects that are springing up.

>What happens when outsiders want to live in a
>geographical place but have to adopt soft borders to live within the
>dominant tribe that lives there already?  What happens to reinhabitation
>within a tribal community; when a member of the dominant tribe wakes up
>and wants to change things accordingly?
>
>Just a few more questions to consider......

And they are all very troubling questions.  I'm not at all sure it can
happen without violence, and possibly the breakup of the country into
smaller regions, as the Soviet Union did.  Conquering armies rarely bother
to draw lines in the sand along tribal/bioregional boundaries, but only
along boundaries convenient to their own purposes.  This is what we are
dealing with, and I really don't feel that the same physical space can be
occupied by different tribes ultimately, without BOTH being compromised.  In
order to quit trashing the land we have to develop a relationship to it
again, which only seems possible through living in a space whose boundaries
can clearly be understood by each member of the tribe, where responsibility
can't be deflected to some far-off place and its people decimated.  As long
as we have "dominant" cultures and are merely minorities occupying their
homogenous space, nobody wins.

I think our task as permaculturists is to make the dominant culture
understand that they don't win either.

--Lee

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 18:09:42 -0500

>A) That has already happened, witness history. (also called missionaries)

Yep.  That's a no-no.  But again, I don't consider that the majority of
Christians are zealots.  Let those who aren't zealots but would like to live
in a Christian community do so.  The zealots we will have to deal with
differently.

>B) Would they tolerate internal difference? Do they just ship their gays,
>their punks, their whatevers to other "registered communities"? Or do they
>more likely try to repress them?

That's not really our business.  If we wish to be left alone to run our own
"tribes" as we see fit, we have no business condemning someone else's
practices, however much we may not like them.  The only practice we can
condemn is if, as you say re: missionaries, they try to interfere with our
own communities.

If someone is gay and feels out of place in a Christian community, that
person should of course be free to leave the community and find either a gay
community or one that has no problem with gays.  In a "mosaic of
subcultures" one would be aware of the existence of other cultures and
therefore it would be tough to "repress" somebody to the extent that they
couldn't get out of their situation.

--Lee

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 19:30:20 -0500

>what if they're under 18? what then? should they be repressed if they're
gay?

You're asking the wrong question.  It isn't a question of whether they
"should".  In your community or mine, obviously they shouldn't.  But from a
Christian's point of view, they should.  From a Christian's point of view,
being gay is a sin and shouldn't be tolerated in their community.  What
makes your view any more "correct" than theirs?  Why shouldn't a Christian
be allowed to come into your home and tell you what to do with your gay son
or daughter?  For the same reason YOU shouldn't be allowed to tell them what
to do with theirs.  Those are the only "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" in
question here.

The question is not "should a gay person be repressed", because that answer
will be different for every culture.  The question is "should diverse,
autonomous cultures be allowed to exist?"  If you answer yes to that
question, then you must answer yes to the question "Should a Christian
community be allowed to repress gays?"  Note that answering yes to this
question does NOT mean you condone repressing gays, or that you like the
fact that they do this or are OK with it.  It simply means you are
practicing what you preach.

>it is my business
>if it affects me
>anything which affects me
>is my business

This is the problem with American society.  They believe that everything
affects them and therefore is fair game for interference.  That is just as
true, as I am trying to point out, of the liberal and enlightened crowd as
it is for the conservative and repressive crowd.  A Christian missionary
believes that if a single person on earth is left "unconverted", they are
personally affected and it is their personal duty to convert these people.
A suburban conservative believes that none of their neighbors should be
allowed to leave their lawns uncut or paint their house purple, because in
their mind it devalues THEIR property.

Likewise, a liberal "missionary" believes that every society should tolerate
having people of different races and religions living in their communities,
that every society should think gays are cool, that every society should do
this or that.  The problem is not having such beliefs; the problem is
thinking everyone else should.

--Lee

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 20:50:12 -0500

Unleesh wrote:

>ok, let's put it this way : I will do everything in my power to help out
>anyone who is different in one of these fascist "communities" I am
supposedly
>supposed to respect...

You don't have to respect them, just allow them to exist without passing
laws against their behavior or sending missionaries to their community to
pressure them into changing.

... including smuggling people out of the community in
>underground railroads, etc ...

NOW you're talking.  I'd say this was an entirely appropriate response!  If
someone asks for your help in this way, give it by all means!  Somewhere
there's a place for everybody and anybody has the right to find it.

Meanwhile, I'd give anything if somebody would smuggle out all the remaining
suburban lawn nazis from my neighborhood and take them to some island with a
golf course, where they'll be safe from the likes of me and all my
"different" friends and neighbors.  <G>

--Lee