Look at The Trace Too in Second Life & Ignore My Rant About “Me Too” Activism

The Trace↑ was always a beautiful sim, changing with the seasons and a great place to take photos. After a temporary hiatus Kylie Jaxxon↑ is back with The Trace Too↑ and it’s stunning!

I thought it would be a perfect day to show you a calm, soothing, pretty landscape because I know I’m going to offend somebody. Probably many somebodies.

This isn’t a difficult achievement these days, and that’s my problem. I’m not addressing the pejorative Political Correctness debate here – I’m talking about courtesy and the evils of “me too”. Sometimes inclusivity is another way of saying “my cause is more important than yours”.

The Trace Too (moderate)

One of the changes I’ve witnessed in my life’s journey is the power and spread of activism. Passion for causes and a willingness to speak up on behalf of justice, peace, equality and rights has become the norm – it wasn’t always so.

Others might point to different (and more accurate) starting points, but I believe that the demonstrations against the war in the 60s helped make our generation, and the succeeding ones, more vocal and more convinced that we had the ability to make a difference.

People are adopting serious issues and working to resolve them – many, many people and many, many issues.

The Trace Too (moderate)

There are a lot of causes worth fighting for because there’s a lot wrong with our world. I don’t just mean disease and hunger and war and poverty and inequality; we have new disasters and horrific tales of slaughter every day; species are disappearing; water has become a scarce resource; the ocean is a cesspool of plastic; genders are ignored or vilified, etc. The list is endless.

In order to solve problems they must first get attention. They must be understood, get placed on a priority list in the right venue (wherever required to get the action needed to solve it) and addressed.

The passion behind somebody’s activism, in many cases, seems to come with blinkers; an inability to acknowlege the value or need of anything outside their narrow view or allow anything else to get attention.

The Trace Too (moderate)

The internet has made activism easier, particularly social media. Not only does your message get out there, but it finds sympathetic voices joining in around the world. It also breeds a sense of supremacy.

How many times have you seen somebody in your Twitter stream, or on your Facebook friends list, call for action to address a cause only to have somebody else shout at them because they’re ignoring something else?

Try to raise awareness of the horrible impact of a giant earthquake and you’ll get yelled at for not talking about mass murder in Syria. It’s not that your cause isn’t just, people seem to insist that their cause be “the only”. I understand that they don’t want to be forgotten, but they’re dismissing other legitimate issues in an effort to support their own.

The Trace Too (moderate)

People actually have the ability to care about multiple causes – they don’t have to talk about all of them at the same time. Supporting one worthwhile endeavour does NOT mean you are negating the importance of another. Seriously, hosting the Vagina Monologues (for example) does not mean that you are indifferent to women without vaginas↑. Caring about a death in Ferguson does not mean that people think Boko Haram are the good guys.

I think we have two options. We ought to be courteous enough to recognize the legitimate value of each of the enormous variety of activist passions, and acknowledge that they all deserve attention (just not all the time at the expense of any other topic).

If we really can’t do that, then let’s create one giant umbrella cause called “The World is F*cked”. All tweets, concerts, fundraising or awareness events, will come with that title.

Nothing will get fixed, of course, because that’s just way too general a subject. The good news is that the “me too” mindset will be satisfied.