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[Ollie]

I read and watched it all, now I am very sad for a variety of reasons.
 
To the Community: Whether he asked for it or not things can be said with an aim to help or hurt.  I admit I haven't always been innocent in this regard myself.  But the level of vitriol leveled against Seri in this and the associated threads troubles me.
 
To Seri: Remember young man its a game.  You have invested a great deal into and to be honest it shows.  It doesn't matter if the community is right or wrong, or whether they are being fair or not.  I think its reached the point for you that participation may not be healthy.  I personally hope you find a way.

I think James has distilled my feelings on this thread (and the others like it recently, not just those relating to Seriphyn) quite adequately. There's a lot of 'well it's human nature' type comments being thrown around as justification for the behaviour of the community. It's a sophomore defense at least as applied to the level of intelligence this 'community' sometimes seems to like to congratulate itself on possessing. It buys into a sense of predetermined fate and frees you from the responsibility of trying to change it. From the point of view of a group of people claiming to be (and trying to appear to be at every available opportunity) at least moderately intelligent and sincerely committed to building a community it smacks of hypocrisy.

It was 'human nature' to single out and excise the sickest/weakest links of a community back when we were living in tribal groups in caves, dressing in rags and huddling around crudely constructed fires trying to keep warm. It was 'human nature' to single out those who were different or subscribed to different beliefs and modes of thought back when the Catholic Church's power was at its peak in Europe during the middle ages and the Inquisition was setting fires underneath those it and it alone deemed deviant. Nazi Germany took an interesting twist on the excuse when they declared Jews and a variety of other peoples something other than human and justified the actions they carried out based on that.

Hypocrisy. Dishonesty. Violence. Sexual abuse. Addiction. Murder. Slavery. War. Genocide and other atrocities.

Given the right conditions, you can hold all of these things up as examples of 'human nature'. Humans have at some point experienced or been responsible for all of them.

But you generally don't build a community, particularly a small and focussed one, around the application of them.

I'm willing to bet that if someone came and randomly punched you in the nose you wouldn't just shrug and blandly comment 'Well, that's human nature for you'. I'm also willing to bet that few if any of you would take kindly to others telling you it's human nature and maybe you should just live with it should you seek them out for advice on how to explain and deal with the situation.

For the objective amongst us, it's clear that there's a lot of OOC snark directed towards Seriphyn's player and that these threads have served to clearly identify some of the names of those who hold it and - in a few cases - how hollow some of their justifications are. What you might want to do is hold a mirror up and analyse whether or not that applies to you - and whether being that kind of self-absorbed arsehole sits well with you.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

James, what this situation DOESN'T need is more hyperbole. We are now officially at 23:59:59 on the Godwin's clock.

[orange]

James, what this situation DOESN'T need is more hyperbole. We are now officially at 23:59:59 on the Godwin's clock.

Hitler.  Because. 

[Ollie]

It's not hyperbole to suggest that 'well it's human nature and you should just deal with it' is a weak excuse for the type of behaviour and attitudes exhibited by parts of this community which Seriphyn's posts have spotlighted.

The hyperbole you're referencing was probably the sentence about slavery, genocide, etc. those things are all part of human nature, completely unacceptable parts in most modern egalitarian societies but not always so.

My point is should we meekly accept the "it's just human nature"excuse or should we reject it and take the opportunity to look more critically at how we behave and how we treat others here and see if there's anything we need to do better?

Part of what makes this a community are the rules that are in place - rules that are usually fairly well respected. Yet in his first post Seriphyn earlier in the week found himself under direct attack by not one but two mods, both of whom are smart enough to know what they should have done is moderate it as flame-bait or YDIW or whatever it was deemed to be and in doing that explain their reasoning in a civil way that didn't add further fuel to things. Yet few people, myself included, bothered to point this out at the time. Those who did then appeared to be marginalised themselves (at least to this observer).

If that happens often enough we'll eventually see the open community that we've all spent time and effort developing rot from within.

[Silver Night]

[mod]A couple of problems here:1) Drawing parallels between someone being less kind than they might or should be to someone else in an internet spaceship game and genocide is hyperbole.2) It is also trolling.3) Calling other players 'self-absorbed arseholes' is not anywhere close to being allowed. Perhaps you should take some time to reread the rules. [/mod]