#whythisway

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Commentary on the Why This Way Beliefs

I'm excited because Sylvia and I have been working on the commentary for the Why This Way beliefs, on the wiki.

Because one of the beliefs is that the spirit or principles behind the beliefs are more important than their literal wording, I think this commentary section is really important.

The Importance of Why

It also explains why we have chosen to include each belief, and why we have worded it the way we did.  This is a key aspect of Why This Way, and in fact, is one of the key ideas that we want to communicate in the name Why This Way.  The group and the belief system is all about continually questioning every aspect of it, and we want to have as good a reason as possible for each of the beliefs that we include, as well as for the specific way of wording each statement.

The Balance of Spirit and Literal Wording

Yet while we place so much emphasis on figuring out the best wording, it's always the deeper purpose behind each belief that matters.  It sounds so common-sense, but I think it's really deep and radical at the same time.  I've rarely participated in organizations that took this approach, the one exception I can think of being Wikipedia (which is pretty awesome).  I'm really hopeful that our group can achieve something really powerful and awesome as we grow, through this philosophy and system of beliefs, and way of approaching beliefs.

[cazort]

Responding Gracefully to Unwanted Gifts and Confronting Unhealthy Cultural Values Surrounding Gifts

Have you ever experienced that dilemma where someone gives you a gift that you don't want, and you feel social pressure to pretend like you like the gift when in reality, you just want to return it, give it away, or even throw it out?  I was raised with the idea that if you did not express gratitude for a gift, it would "hurt the feelings" of the person who gave you the gift.  But I was also raised with the idea that being honest was good.

This created an apparent conflict...I wanted to be honest, but I didn't want to hurt people's feelings.  I used to think of these sort of situations as simply bad situations, ones where there was no good choice.  Now I think I see things differently.

Handling unwanted gifts gracefully:

If someone gives you a gift that you don't like or want, you can express gratitude for the fact that they thought about you and cared about you enough to give you the gift, without expressing appreciation of the gift itself.  This helps the gift giver feel appreciated, without being dishonest.

But this doesn't work in every situation.

When people try to enforce the appreciation or use of gifts:

My girlfriend Kelsey described a situation in which someone gave her a gift that she didn't want--it was an appliance that took up precious space in her tiny kitchen, that she did not want to use.  She quietly gave it to a friend, but later, a relative visited and saw that it wasn't in her kitchen, and then shared this with the original person who gave the gift.

This is not something I'd ever do, because I think it creates an unhealthy social pressure...a pressure to pretend to like a gift that you don't like.

You can't make someone like something or want something.  So this creates pressure to lie--which I believe is unhealthy.

When you are on the receiving end of a gift like this, there is often no fully graceful way to handle the situation without stepping outside of your situation and confronting the broader context, of the values and cultural expectations surrounding gift giving.

Changing the culture:

How do you change culture?  A starting point is to have a full understanding of the situation, and to be able to articulate what about the culture isn't working, in a way that people can understand.  Then, you can build your own value system, one that addresses the original intentions or spirit behind the old cultural rules, while addressing the problem that has arisen.  This is one of the basic ways in which Why This Way operates.

Last Thursday we discussed gift giving at a Why This Way meeting, and following the meeting, we created a page on gifts on our wiki.

Regardless of whether or not you're interested in our group, you can still engage in this same sort of process yourself.  I am hoping to change the culture surrounding gift giving.  Some of the new beliefs I've embraced about gift giving, that I think prevent the sorts of problems above, are:

When you receive an unwanted gift, you can express appreciation for the underlying sentiment behind the gift, without expressing (dishonestly) that you like the gift.

When people place social pressure on others to express appreciation for liking a gift, you can respond by expressing the ideas communicated here in this post--explaining how you value honesty, and how you believe that you cannot force someone to like a present, so you think it is unhealthy to place this sort of social pressure on people.

You can recognize that, if someone is offended because you don't like a gift, that you haven't necessarily done anything wrong.  If people are promoting a cultural belief that you consider unhealthy, you have a right to disagree with that belief, and they have no right to force it on you.  If someone is upset with you for not agreeing with their own cultural beliefs that you don't agree with, that is their problem, not yours.  You can express compassion for them as a human being while still disagreeing with them.  If they still are unhappy, it's their problem, not yours.

I hope these sorts of ideas can empower people who are stuck in situations involving unwanted gifts and social pressures to appreciate those gifts.

[cazort]

What is Religion? Do religions need to be mutually exclusive? I think not.

One thing that I became aware of when I co-founded Why This Way is that different people have ideas of what constitutes a religion.  Since the beginning of the group, I've been one of the strongest advocates for wanting to call the group a religion.  But others in the group don't want to call it a religion, so, to maintain consensus, we have begun to use a more open-ended or ambiguous presentation that it may or may not be a religion.  I still personally consider it to be my religion.

There are many reasons that people do not consider Why This Way a religion, and some of them I can agree with more than others.  One that I tend not to agree with at all, is the assertion that it cannot be religions because religions are mutually exclusive, and people can only have one religion.  I disagree.

Religions and Exclusivity:

A lot of people in Western society seem to have an idea that religion is mutually exclusive.  They seem to think that you can only be Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or atheist, or Jewish, or whatever group or belief system you identify with.  The thing is, my own life experience does not fit with this.  I know a lot of people who cross over boundaries of various faiths or belief systems.  For example:

I know some people who identify as both Jewish and atheist, because they see Judaism as something that is defined by culture and birth, and they do not see it requiring a belief in God.

A lot of people identify with only one religion, but actively disagree with certain official doctrines, beliefs, or practices of that religion, and nearly everyone will agree with or embrace some beliefs and practices of religions that they do not identify with.  So people who identify solely with one religion and believe they only have one religion, may still not fit exactly into a category of adhering to that religion and not to others.

I personally identified as Christian for some time, and when I identified as such, I never felt like my beliefs in Christianity and participation in organized Christianity were mutually exclusive with my ability to participate in or find truth in other religions.  I never thought that other religions were wholly wrong or untrue--just that they were different faiths and communities which I did not happen to practice, participate in, or be as familiar with.

Non-western cultures do not make the same sort of claims of mutual exclusivity that Western cultures do.  For example, in China, historically, it was common for people to practice or embrace both Taoist and Buddhist principles, and in Japan it is common for people to practice both Buddhism and Shinto.  One of my friends recently did Ph.D. anthropology work in Indonesia, studying Shamanism, and he found that there, many people identify with Catholicism but practice and preserve elements of the indigenous religions.  A similar thing happened in the Caribbean, where Catholicism interacted with native American and African spirituality, creating syncretic religions like Voodoo.

Some people believe certain religions to be exclusive, and some go farther as to define religion as to be exclusive.  But I don't agree with this.  I do not think that Christianity even is mutually exclusive with other faiths--and this would put me at odds with a large number of Christians.  I'm comfortable openly professing this belief, but I also have chosen to stop identifying with Christianity because I feel like Why This Way is a closer match to my belief system.