Posted by Zo on April 22, 2002, at 19:55:01
Sooooo. I'd like to know the rules.
If I have been blocked for one week, will the next PBC result in a two-week block?
I need to gauge how much I can afford to personally invest--I care about so many people here, it felt like s**t (is it the rule that I have to use these asterisks?) to be abruptly cut off. [I also didn't know that one prior PBC resulted in a block.] I'm asking myself, can I really afford another discouragement, only even worse. Seeing as how my discouragement cup already pretty much runneth over, every day.
And I am *certain* I will get another PCB. .. To get a PBC is to be human. . .
But there's more--and this is what really concerns me. I am given to understand that to get a PBC, and therefore earn a block, is wholly random! It's whatever catches the eye of the admin! So it means nothing about you!
Great. It means something TO me.
It means something to everybody. The effect of random negative reenforcment is well-documented. People DO walk on eggs, DO become anxious, DO suck up to the Powers That Be.
In the understandable (if ultimately fruitless) attempt to control one's own fate. To bring order and sense to that which does not have any.
Which sounds a HELL of a lot like my abusive childhood. Including---I think this is what is so terribly sick-making---the constant little self-betrayals.
Isn't there a better way to structure things? EVERYONE fears being themselves. If people make a misstep in that direction, does it really teach anybody anything to "disappear" them from the community?
IS that community?
It seems perilously close to Patriarchal Thinking: You screw up, I punish you. End of story.
And that makes me verrrry nervous. I didn't raise my kids that way--I raised them in the context that there is always a solution, and it is arrived at by mutuality, by communication, by inclusiveness, not exclusion.
Blocking someone who's wildly Acting Out is not the issue here. Neither am I unappreciative of Dr. Bob, that's not the point either.
What was gained by blocking someone like Elizabeth or, if I may say so, me? How was the board improved by our absence? What were we taught? Even more importantly, what were the other board members taught?
My guess is, More Eggs.
If a rule and/or the manner in which it is applied results e in even the tiniest increase in the climate of fear---fear as opposed to safety, fear as opposed to belonging and acceptance--then that rule and those methods need reexamination.
IMNSO.
Zo
poster:Zo
thread:4374
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020420/msgs/4374.html