We're living in a world now where so many of us, probably especially many of us on this board are feeling as much difficulty in dealing with life experiences that they have ever felt with:
1) the economy basically making everyone broke and providing job experiences that aren't as rewarding spiritually, friendships, and for some just feel abusive at times, but situations where they couldn't bail out of as much as they used to be able to in the past when it got to that point. Families are ripping apart in many cases with these situations too, making things worse.
2) increased health problems with more problems with poverty, health insurance issues along with debt, etc. that makes it harder for people just to cope with feeling well all day.
3) Very divisive issues in politics where we all feel the NEED to build many movements to do something TODAY to fix the problems that seem so entrenched in front of us. Those that stand in the way of us seem a lot more threatening and more obstacles we need to "knock down" than they used to when we were trying to just build "awareness campaigns" when there was less sense of urgency.
4) The businesses you've been used to, the social venues both online and in the real world are also all feeling the economic pain and are either shutting down in many cases or completely changing, which affects those that use them and disrupt their lives too.
5) When this gets compounded, I think we feel more isolated when we're dealing more with these sorts of issues and other distractions that make it harder to interact with the people around us. There are increased suicides now, and we're becoming more aware of that after what happened to Robin Williams.
DU has been a place where people came together and tried to seek common ground with fellow members, gathering information we all cared about, and finding ways to build consensus on we could deal with the political environment around us. We may have had our disagreements at times, but enough of us were secure in our own lives, and felt there was enough common ground, and less sense of urgency than today to feel like we needed to get in to more nasty arguments and divisions here. Unfortunately I think that is changing. Many feel the need to build their own movements, which in the absence in some cases of other things of value in their lives, becomes their mission, and the need to "shut down" opposition to these movements so that they can build more power to do what they want them to do. When we get splits on issues like who should we support for president and run the party, respect each other's gender and race, amongst other things, people take it a lot more personally than we used to. Sometimes I don't think we realize when we go to far how much we also might be hurting others the same way we're feeling hurt ourselves.
It's sad, because I think if ultimately people could all look at each others' measuring sticks and how we each had to deal with life's issues day to day, we'd probably discover a lot of agreement on what needs attention and how to deal with it.
I think what I would ask is that everyone take a step back, especially if they're dealing with problems of their own that they feel are unique to them and realize that we're all dealing with a lot more adversity today, and that unless we find ways to come together to deal with that adversity, this place will continue to be a place that people leave from. And hopefully don't feel that they have to go so far in leaving as Robin Williams did, rest his soul!
Maybe if you can't agree with someone on certain political issues, we can find ways to appeal to each other in ways to make up for all of the other difficult parts of life we're all dealing with now, and at least be a source of personal friendships that could help restore this place as a valuable place in so many peoples' lives.
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It's fascinating really.................
