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In which I have Feelings about community
Experience does not correlate linearly with age. The chronologically oldest members of a community do not have the right to dictate its terms or modes of engagement; in so doing they alienate and exclude and erase.
I have not lived through the same events as the chronologically oldest members of my communities. But this, too, is true: they do not axiomatically or automatically understand my experiences any more than I do theirs.
Community-building is by necessity collaborative and constructive. Hierarchies for streamlining decisions are not required to uphold inequalities and power gradients.
I am rendered brittle by this tension, this assumed inequality, and then I remember: that I can help people decades older than me. That people younger than me gift me insights that rearrange my world around me and leave it better. That the people I am best able to ask for help are those who ask me.
When I say that I think the most important thing I do is know who to ask, I am fairly sure that what I mean isn't just about knowledge and respect for expertise: it's about reciprocating trust and kindnesses, and about bringing as many people as possible into this economy of gifts-freely-given that constitutes the ground on which I build.
I have not lived through the same events as the chronologically oldest members of my communities. But this, too, is true: they do not axiomatically or automatically understand my experiences any more than I do theirs.
Community-building is by necessity collaborative and constructive. Hierarchies for streamlining decisions are not required to uphold inequalities and power gradients.
I am rendered brittle by this tension, this assumed inequality, and then I remember: that I can help people decades older than me. That people younger than me gift me insights that rearrange my world around me and leave it better. That the people I am best able to ask for help are those who ask me.
When I say that I think the most important thing I do is know who to ask, I am fairly sure that what I mean isn't just about knowledge and respect for expertise: it's about reciprocating trust and kindnesses, and about bringing as many people as possible into this economy of gifts-freely-given that constitutes the ground on which I build.