In which I have Feelings about community

[kaberett]

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.

Comments

[redbird]

Connected to which, experience also doesn't always accrue in the same order, because real life isn't a standardized curriculum. I could have several bits of relevant experience that someone else doesn't, while lacking one or more bits in the same field that they do have. And that's an easy one for people to miss, even if they recognize that chronological age doesn't always correlate with years of experience in an activity, experience, or place.

[kaberett]

Yep, precisely.