Rusty's Blog

…it’s not all it’s cut out to be.

Don’t get me wrong, tolerance is a start. Just remember it’s not an end.

Kind of tough starting with the ending isn’t it? Actually, that ‘ending’ is just a start. I suppose a bit of an explanation is in order.

If you ask people what the founding principles are of religion in the united states, it would be that people should tolerate other people’s religions. Or rather a lot of people feel that way. This basically means that we should allow other people to ignore what we feel is a sound principle of our own faith, and that if what they choose to do is against our own faith, we should just let it go. As an example, most of the Christian derivations consider Sunday to be a day of worship, and not of work. Jeudaism on the other hand treats Saturday that way, and Islam tends to treat Friday as the day of worship. Tolerance suggests that we should ‘let’ people of the other two faiths practice thier holy days.

The problem with this is that we tend to find that ‘letting’ people do this tends to grate at our nerves, and there is no way we can get beyond that under the auspices of Tolerance. It is a start though.

What Tolerance is intended to lead to is Learning, Understanding and Acceptance.

If you can allow people to do what their faith, or views suggest is the correct thing to do, and you recognize that there is a problem from your perspective, you can then Ask why people with those faiths or views do those things. Without Asking, you can never get to Learning why they are doing that. Christianity treats Sunday as the holy day of the week, because that is the day of the week that Christ rose from the grave. Jeudaism treats Saturday as the holy day of the week because the commandment says that we are to remember the sabath or seventh day, and keep it holy. This is in rememberance of the 7th day of the week of creation when the Lord rested. Within Islam, Friday is the holy day for a number of reasons, including Adam being created on Friday, the revelation of Islam as the religion, and the day of resurection being Friday. (slightly different meaning from Christ’s resurection, but we’re not going to go there for now.)

Once you have learned why people of another faith follow specific practices, it becomes a matter of recognition and acceptance that while they may not be important reasons for you to follow those practices, they are important to the people who practice that faith.

Just about everyone in the office starts work at 9 am. Bob regularly shows up at 10:30, and works till an hour and a half after everyone else goes home. This bothers a number of his co-workers, but his manager, and thiers, seems to just take it in stride. His co-workers ‘Tolerate’ Bob’s behaviour, because they see that their manager continues to allow it. On the other hand his manager has noted two things. If Bob works those hours, he oddly enough gets more done in that time than anyone else on his staff. Also Bob is in training for the upcomming olympic trials. By the time Bob shows up at work, he’s already spent 3 hours working out and getting cleaned up for work. When Bob gets off work at 6:30, his first stop is the local gym where he puts in another 2 hours before he goes home and spends the next 3 hours working on his graduate degree program. His co-workers may ‘tolerate’ Bob’s behaviour, but at this rate Bob’s not going to be working with them for long. His boss understands and accepts the behaviour, because he is aware of the even larger picture around what Bob is doing.

School’s and govornment offices are investigating a 4 day work-week in some cities. 20 years ago, the idea was proposed, but there was no way that it was going to happen. The lifestyle we had at the time did not encourage that sort of flexibility. Some of the things that have changed since then include more 2 parents working. Higher price of gassoline, and food. Working from 8 am till 6 pm may seem like a long stretch, but if you can save 20% of your commuting budget, might it be worth the redistribution of work? How about if it saves more like 25%? At the moment a lot of bus companies charge a different rate after 6:00 pm than they do from 3:30 to 6:00pm. This may not be a lot of help to people who may have to pay a little bit more at the parking garage for the added 2 hours, but they also end up without those hours at all (as well as any time spent going to and from the office from the parking garage) for the 5th day that they won’t be working. One school district found that just the savings in fuel costs for reducing the school week by 1 day pays for a class that they would otherwise have to eliminate. It also has an impact on the cost of school lunches for the district.

In a time where we are all looking for ways to save money, these can be very important reasons to investigate those alternatives. However in large portions of the business sector, the 5 day 8 hour work week, with an added 8 hours of overtime on Saturday presuming you would like to continue working here, is so ingrained into their work ethic that you can forget about seeing them change anytime soon. It will happen though.

So remember, start with Tollerance, but it isn’t the end. Recognize that you are missing something, and learn what it is that will convert Tolerance into Acceptance, and Appreciation.

I think that there are probably a lot more of your friends who know other friends of yours, than you realize. Consider your work and say one avocation of yours. I can easily pick from work and two avocations, but if we start with just one, it is a bit simpler to explain.

At work I am part of a team of about 20 people, some in the city I work in, some in a couple of others. I also work with people from other teams on a shift overlap related basis, So if I simply include the people in the city I work in, I am part of a team of about 30 people that I work amoung with some regularity.

One of my avocations is helping to run a science fiction convention. This last year the convention attracted some 2500 people. Of those some 250 were part of the dedicated volunteer team helping to keep things moving. Of that I work directly with some 40, and somewhat less directly with another 40, or about 80 total.

So that is something on the close order of 110 people who I can state overlap directly with me. None of the people I work with are a member of the set of people I work the convention with. I have absolutely no doubt however that there are people in each of the groups who know people in the other groups. Sure there are a lot of people in each group who do not know each other. But that’s not at all difficult to find in most cases.

I am not counting third level aquaintences at this point. One of the people I work with regularly at the convention is married to a stewardess. Since I work with people who have a need to fly from time to time, it is amost certain that she has met one or more of the people I work with. Likewise I have a friend that I see ocasionally at work, but don’t work directly with, who has been involved with running the convention in the past, so obviously he knows quite a few of those people as well.

Why is it that we tend to know people that may completely unbeknownst to us know each other? I think it has a lot to do with what kind of people we are. Whether you work in Marketing, and socialize in a church that has no-one from your company in it, or you work as a publisher and spend your free time at bar’s or even dances, there is some aspect of your work life that tends to be a part of your avocations. In my case I fully acknoledge that I am a geek. Some may say Nerd, and I don’t have any need to argue with them.

In any case both what I do for work, and being part of running a science fiction convention, tend to involve interacting with other geeks. That being said, both sets of ‘friends’ are part of a larger set, geeks. You can undoubtedly find similar set overlaps between the people you consider friends at work, and friends at play.

It can also be fun to find out who amoung the various sets of people you know, do know each other. Some of those relationships may be entirely unexpected.

Enjoy.