I keep seeing the word "harm" being thrown around on the site, on the main wall, in blogs and on profiles. I'm starting to wonder if people understand what the term means.
Harm does not mean insult or offense. Harm does not mean uncomfortableness. Harm is DAMAGE. Physical, or mental damage or injury.
I'm not in any way stating that we cannot damage people with what we say. We can. But there is a difference between expressions of ideas that we don't particularly care for, and systemic verbal abuse.
For illustration, I'll conjur up this uncomfortable scenario. You tune into the local news and hear a disturbing report - a car was stolen, and there was a young child in the back seat. In the next news cycle you hear that the child was "found unharmed" in a local store shortly afterwards. Let's think that through. The child has been unwilling hostage in a hijacked car with a stranger with criminal intent and was found abandoned in a store far from the security of the parents. Unharmed. Child is scared, shaken up, insecure, definitely insulted and acted upon against their will. But unharmed.
The bumps and bruises to ego and belief, offenses and sometimes intellectual insults we sustain while on this site and confronted with beliefs that oppose our own are just that. Bumps, bruises, insult. Not harm. The kid in the illustration above went through much worse and was unharmed. When people organize for the purpose of nothing more than to silence a member or to sully someone's reputation in life - THAT is injurious. That is harm.
Resiliency is optimal. I encourage our entire community to use the tools of their beliefs to strengthen their cores so that the bumps and bruises along the way are felt for what they are. If you lightly bump into a glass and into a piece of wood, one will shatter while the other bears no mark. We are ordained, we should be strong in our paths, and if we aren't, we need to work on strengthening instead of complaining about light bumps when our glass shatters.
Thanks for reading, I wish you all peace.
