Are You Showing Support for Black Lives Matter in Second Life?

[Gatogateau]

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

In some ways you are correct --- in many areas of the country the police are out of control.   There are multiple underlying causes, but just like solving the race issue will not solve the problem of the power-hungry control-freak cops, the reverse is also true. Each underlying issue has to be tackled individually.

 

Yes! This! and...

no.

This is part of the problem, imo, of this whole thorny issue... is that it is NOT "a" thorny issue but systemic and across the board. Racial, class (financial), educational, political... And without broad, system relief all we'll get is ineffective piecemeal or worse, nothing, because everything gets watered down into a special interest. 

but...

Yes! If advancement can be made in one sector, then for the love of ... cupcakes ... Do It! Hopefully somebody gets some relief and hopefully that eventually pulls others in need up.

There is a very weird, zero-sum mentality to those who oppose things that will raise people up. It is the ingrained notion that if more people get raised up to an "equal" level, that those already at that level will necessarily get pulled down and become less than. That is so silly and dangerous. I don't know how we combat that. Education, but those folks tend to be selectively and wilfully ignorant. It isn't zero-sum, any more than if someone shows love to someone else that means someone else gets their love pulled. 

[Gatogateau]

45 minutes ago, AyelaNewLife said:

You are dangerously clueless. 

TY. Dangerously Clueless is a better term than I've been using which is Mis(s) Information. And you are so right, thread after thread of really scary things.

[Innula Zenovka]

12 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

This is so shocking to me that it feels like you're describing a work of fiction.

A lot of our police do carry firearms, but they are specially trained firearms officers, and when the normal police need the assistance of firearms specialists, then a senior officer has to authorise the deployment of a specialist firearms team, who are trained in negotiation and de-escalation, to assist them.

So, for example, if the Drugs Squad are raiding premises and suspect the occupants may have guns, there will be two operations -- first the Fireams Officers (not a SWAT team) go in, secure the premises and disarm the occupants, and then they allow the Drugs team in to do their work.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Innula Zenovka

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Meanwhile, Trump hopes George Floyd is happy about the economy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-george-floyd-press-conference-today-job-numbers-a9551426.html?fbclid=IwAR0hFvy4RtloA4jVOB-8JxWlaosZ8X1YcAORo8SE5VRuK5oBn18CAE8DMNI

[Tolya Ugajin]

Since I rarely leave my own sim any more, and because I get quite enough of RL in RL without bringing it into SL, no. 

[Luna Bliss]

11 minutes ago, Gatogateau said:

There is a very weird, zero-sum mentality to those who oppose things that will raise people up. It is the ingrained notion that if more people get raised up to an "equal" level, that those already at that level will necessarily get pulled down and become less than. That is so silly and dangerous. I don't know how we combat that. Education, but those folks tend to be selectively and wilfully ignorant. It isn't zero-sum, any more than if someone shows love to someone else that means someone else gets their love pulled. 

This is the world we live in though, in America, where individualism & competition reigns, so perhaps these people are wise and just see things as they are.  As long as the patriarchy and 'might makes right' is valued above all else there has to sections of people inhabiting bottom levels.  Contrast this with some countries in Europe that value community more and actually support its citizens via all sorts of public aid, even the poor.

[AyelaNewLife]

Just now, Luna Bliss said:

What about the puritanical churches during the formation of the US, and the evangelicals we have today?  How do they influence policies and attitudes of the police? What makes the Anglican church so much worse?  I know nothing about them so you'll have to explain.

I'm answering this for your benefit Luna.

The Church of England is potentially unique among the major branches of the Christian faith. It was founded at the height of the Reformation, when the political power of the Catholic Church was torn asunder by a mass movement that emphasised faith over structure. Yet unlike almost all other denominations that sprung up at this time, the Anglican Church was not formed around a theological idea or difference. Instead, it was a petty dispute between King Henry VIII and the Pope (with a side order of a large unpaid tax bill that needed paying) that led to us breaking free of Rome and forming our own church.

What followed was a few decades of struggle over the direction the Church should take - cling to Catholicism in all but name, or strike out to a more puritanical form of Protestantism? Several generations followed of swinging back and forth with the changing of the monarch, with a divided population so used to practising their faith at least in part in secret, yet always under the umbrella of the same Church. What emerged was a broad, permissive organisation which encompasses a vast range of beliefs and views.  When later waves of reformation swept the nation, these breakaways were just allowed to happen and co-exist in peace, and in many ways lived cooperatively. 

This means we avoided organisation vs organisation conflict. We avoided the dictation of theology by the state church, which took the rest of Europe two more centuries to fully break, and we avoided the senseless slaughter of conflicts such as the French Wars of Religion or the Thirty Years War. And it laid the groundwork for the symbiotic relationship between Church and State that exists here, rather than the parasitic one infecting much of the USA.

If it sounds like I'm describing a completely different organisation to the one you quoted, then I'll leave you to decide which one of us is grounded in reality.

(I could also talk at length about how this period resulted in enclaves of extremists of all colours fleeing to the colonies, and how that legacy of an uncompromising, puritanical outlook on religious or moral differences is still eating away at America to this day in a way that does not occur in Europe, but I'm wary of opening that can of worms... whoops, too late.)

[Aethelwine]

46 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

The Episcopalian Church is the only church in protestant America that I know that has completely separated from The Church of England and it separated over a century ago.  Anglican values are about repentance and a purification of "the Queen's church" although you could replace that with king as well.  The evangelicals of today are indeed Anglican, which is The Church of England.  

Here is a bit about it:

The majority of Anglicans are members of national or regional ecclesiastical provinces of the international Anglican Communion, which forms the third-largest Christian communion in the world, after the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=are+churches+in+america+anglican&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS784US784&oq=are+churches+in+america+anglican&aqs=chrome..69i57j33l2.6282j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

You seem to have got that the wrong way around. The Episcopalian church is the largest and quite possibly only church in the United States that is a part of the Anglican Communion. And is only the 14th largest Christian denomination in the USA. Ref

The role of the Queen is pretty much limited to the Church of England, and her largely ceremonial role in the appointment of bishops. Outside the Church of England in other Anglican churches she has no constitutional role at all.

The role of repentance in church doctrine predates protestantism and is part of a Penitence tradition that goes back to the earliest years of the church.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Aethelwine

[Luna Bliss]

2 minutes ago, AyelaNewLife said:

I'm answering this for your benefit Luna.

*** plus lots of useful but very detailed and overwhelming info to process *** lol

There's a reason, Ayela, why I just meditate!    

[Ashlyn Voir]

12 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

While I don't necessarily agree with the "never", I do believe that we still have quite a few generations before we manage to wipe it out, or at least come close.  While it is passed down from one generation to the next, I have seen some get educated and throw away their parents'/grandparents' views.  That still means it is a very slow process........... and we still have a very long way to go, at least in some parts of the country.

It’s wishful thinking, to be honest. There are children who are taught to be racist and as they get older, many times don’t break away from that mindset. So, unfortunately to be realistic, it will never go away. And, even if by some miracle racism went away, there would still be something people will find to find themselves more superior over another. 

[Gatogateau]

8 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

Meanwhile, Trump hopes George Floyd is happy about the economy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-george-floyd-press-conference-today-job-numbers-a9551426.html?fbclid=IwAR0hFvy4RtloA4jVOB-8JxWlaosZ8X1YcAORo8SE5VRuK5oBn18CAE8DMNI

You know how there are some posters you know you just shouldn't read unless you want your eyeballs to pop out of your head due to a sudden surge of blood pressure? Well, that's how I felt when I saw the link, from which you can glean the article content. I looked. My eyeballs are now plastered on the monitor, luckily I can touch type. 

I mean...

What...

I'm sure many of us keep saying things like "I've seen it all" or "nothing surprises me anymore" and yet, "Surprise!"

I mean...

What?

(Supernatural gifs... I gots more of them than TS gifs)

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, Ashlyn Voir said:

there would still be something people will find to find themselves more superior over another. 

This is 100% true. 

[kali Wylder]

Can we please move the church debate to another thread if ya'll feel there is more that you have to say about it? 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Gatogateau]

13 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

While I don't necessarily agree with the "never", I do believe that we still have quite a few generations before we manage to wipe it out, or at least come close.  While it is passed down from one generation to the next, I have seen some get educated and throw away their parents'/grandparents' views.  That still means it is a very slow process........... and we still have a very long way to go, at least in some parts of the country.

 

45 minutes ago, Ashlyn Voir said:

It’s wishful thinking, to be honest. There are children who are taught to be racist and as they get older, many times don’t break away from that mindset. So, unfortunately to be realistic, it will never go away. And, even if by some miracle racism went away, there would still be something people will find to find themselves more superior over another. 

Like most things this complicated*, there's truth in both sides. From personal experience I can tell you that change can occur from one generation to the next. My father was very racist. Very. Not of the lynching variety but...bad. Mom was less so, but kind of an enabler. I have tried to not be. It didn't make sense to me then, as a child (but then I was the kid who got thrown out of Sunday school because I was questioning the teacher why "Indians" (it was a while ago) wouldn't go to heaven if they never even got to hear about Jesus...  ) and I saw it for the evil it was (not to mention stupid) as I got older. Because my geographical situations just happened to usually end up in very white areas (like lily white New England???) I could have very easily just accepted the status quo and thought of anything not-white as less-than, or worse. I didn't. My two sisters didn't. Just because racism, or alcoholism, or abuse CAN be learned and passed down through the generations, it is not something that MUST happen.

In my case, and perhaps in all cases, the difference was education, both formal and the pictures I saw on tv. Throw light, throw light... 

ETA the *footnote I forgot

* And yet it is so NOT complicated. Treat everyone fairly. Stop the hate. Etc. Simple... and somehow seemingly out of grasp.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Gatogateau

[Beth Macbain]

5 hours ago, Uneven said:

 

https://twitter.com/forallnerds/status/1268649853913042945?s=21

I love this! It even makes me want to see the movie!

(I have no idea what the movie is...)

[AyelaNewLife]

4 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

Can we please move the church debate to another thread if ya'll feel there is more that you have to say about it? 

Yeah sorry, I bit onto that one, my bad.

[Luna Bliss]

2 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

Can we please move the church debate to another thread if ya'll feel there is more that you have to say about it?

I have no need to discuss it more, but it is extremely relevant to the racism we see in America today, as there are so many damb evangelicals in the US that don't operate with love in mind and view poverty as a moral failing.  But most importantly, if Pence comes into power should our orange one croak, this is going to be VERY relevant to how races and other factions are treated.

[FairreLilette]

22 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

You seem to have got that the wrong way around. The Episcopalian church is the largest and quite possibly only church in the United States that is a part of the Anglican Communion. And is only the 14th largest Christian denomination in the USA. Ref

The role of the Queen is pretty much limited to the Church of England, and her largely ceremonial role in the appointment of bishops. Outside the Church of England in other Anglican churches she has no constitutional role at all.

The role of repentance in church doctrine predates protestantism and is part of a Penitence tradition that goes back to the earliest years of the church.

Ok, sorry I got that one wrong.  The Episcopalian church is the only church to have left The Church of England.  However, then all American churches are still basically Anglican then.  

Episcopalian:

The church was organized after the American Revolution, when it became separate from the Church of England, whose clergy are required to swear allegiance to the British monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Episcopal Church describes itself as "Protestant, yet Catholic".^[4] The Episcopal Church claims apostolic succession, tracing its bishops back to the apostles via holy orders. The Book of Common Prayer, a collection of traditional rites, blessings, liturgies, and prayers used throughout the Anglican Communion, is central to Episcopal worship.

Anglican:

The Church of England is considered the original church of the Anglican Communion, which represents over 85 million people in more than 165 countries. While the Church upholds many of the customs of Roman Catholicism, it also embraces fundamental ideas adopted during the Protestant Reformation.

[MoiraKathleen]

1 minute ago, FairreLilette said:

However, then all American churches are still basically Anglican then.  

No, they are not basically Anglican - outside of the Catholic Church, they are Protestant churches.

[kali Wylder]

[FairreLilette]

7 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I have no need to discuss it more, but it is extremely relevant to the racism we see in America today, as there are so many damb evangelicals in the US that don't operate with love in mind and view poverty as a moral failing.  But most importantly, if Pence comes into power should our orange one croak, this is going to be VERY relevant to how races and other factions are treated.

I think roots of discrimination stem in part from "the churches", however, it is not an easy topic to discuss.  Not an easy topic at all but I think there are also roots of ignorance which spring forth from churches.   How to overcome it all.  I don't know but we have broke free in many ways, thankfully.  I still feel the churches have a stronghold on me personally and I want to live freer beyond it as I don't subscribe to their doctrines but they want to shove it down our throats whenever they get an opportunity to try.  

[Gatogateau]

35 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

blah

I don't see your comments, will never see your comments unless: someone I read quotes them :::me shakes tiny furry paw at them for doing so::: or this stupid software burps, as it does frequently.

Stop talking to me. Yes, I see the irony. Don't care. Leave me alone. Point your screachings elsewhere. You have plenty of targets. I don't care if the words you utter are so brilliant as to be suitable for typing over a wondrous jpg and posting on Facebook. 

Several of us have asked you to go away from us. Take a hint. Or do you just enjoy being a stirrer and a BullyBee <--- because by your own definition that is what you are doing. (rhetorical and won't see the answer unless ^^^ as above.)

[Beth Macbain]

52 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

Meanwhile, Trump hopes George Floyd is happy about the economy.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-george-floyd-press-conference-today-job-numbers-a9551426.html?fbclid=IwAR0hFvy4RtloA4jVOB-8JxWlaosZ8X1YcAORo8SE5VRuK5oBn18CAE8DMNI

I literally cannot even.

[Gatogateau]

21 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

I love this! It even makes me want to see the movie!

(I have no idea what the movie is...)

Zomg. I missed the original post (my eyes are glazing over and I keep repeating "move away from the Forum" to no avail aparently). THIS 

ETA the rest of the post, premature submitting (like inworld D/s only less messy)

THIS was brilliant! For some reason though "Amish" just killed me with laughter. So glad I saw this today.

Edited June 5, 2020 by Gatogateau