More on Tactics and Joy

Yesterday I observed another joyful and productive market day, and managed to stay in the joy place the whole day, and stop myself from dwelling on things that were not in that realm. It was great but I did stumble into a few of the current minefields of drama.

The triangulating gets more evident as I look into it and I can see that it has been happening for a really long time...the past few years anyway. Stories are told, drama is created, people are hurt and offended and in some cases driven away. All of it benefits the narcissists and mean people and creates loss as an end product. 

Studying the narcissism is fascinating and important, to get why the market is being divided up, distracted from our pressing issues like overspending and overstaffing, and why older and wiser members are being sidelined and manipulated. Newer members are easier to attract to the in-crowd, pleased to be noticed and supported. Problematic people are portrayed as being leaders of factions, such as "So-and-so and her minions" which I heard yesterday. Minions means fighting and conflict is distracting. 

When you agree or disagree with someone, you don't necessarily join their faction. All of our members are really independent thinkers with their own experiences and perspectives, and dividing us up does not benefit us or the organization, it only benefits the power structure. It erodes the viability of the organization. A good management would never promote division, it would strive for unity and find ways to build community. Sadly the way we are currently being led is to unify against our common enemy, the X-tians who disrupted our May 17th market, while our true problems are coming from within.

Turns out they came because of a regional conference of that type of extremists and we have no reason to believe they will come more frequently (only twice in 2024) and they aren't targeting only us. So the current effort to amass resources we don't have, including paid staff time and the energy of volunteers, to fight them, is a distraction. We have bigger issues right now, like financial accountability, the distress of members being targeted, and the psychological issues that are destroying our community through the drama and lies being created.

The attempt to make everyone adhere to a company line is something I have to explore in my own past as well as what is happening now and recently. That old Duty of Loyalty asks the Board and Officers to support whatever the org has decided, so when a person disagrees with that decision, it does ask you to set aside that disagreement. But it does not go so far as to control and manage what is said and done by everyone in the org. Many of us noticed we did not have an avenue to disagree with things, not only Board decisions but other issues and concerns. We found we suffered retaliation or targeted discipline if we had a different opinion. A lot of people walked away over that. I even know of some less-than-ethical actions designed to keep the company line dominant over dissent. Way less than ethical. 

And this encouragement to make our concerns about the proselytizing public is causing misinformation. One letter to the Weekly said the disturbance was happening every week, when it has happened once in two months. Another letter was the kind of righteous defense of the market I remember having written in the past, a kind of "I know it all" response to difficulty that doesn't sound balanced for the whole community, but kind of a Market First proclamation that sounds entitled and arrogant. And it wasn't even truthful for all of us, as my sales did not stop, and I am guessing many members in other parts of the market also continued to sell well. I think that was because we insisted in not giving in to the bullying, but remained in our businesslike, focused customer service mode and were still friendly and calm. We didn't engage with the bullies.

And that is the thing I keep telling myself over and over. You can't engage with bullies and narcissists with the hope of defeating them, as it just makes their motivation to dominate you stronger. As I have said before, I am just not going to allow bullies into my sphere. They can do all of their triangulating, ruin my reputation, misunderstand me, and all that they do, but I will have my joy, peace, and make the end of my productive years work for me. You can work against them, but you don't do it by feeding into their narratives and allowing them to always set the stage to drama.

I will somehow continue the service and responsibility for the organization that has been my duty of loyalty all 50 of these years. Loyalty is not to the people in power, it is to the values and the vision that got us here and sustains us. I was told that I enjoy more privilege than anyone at the market, which stunned me as an example of how I am being misinterpreted. I have worked hard for all of these years to make sure I did not have privilege, that I always gave more than I received, that I always held the highest ethics and sense of responsibility that I was capable of, and promoted member equity. I know that was widely respected and treasured by a lot of members, although it may be destroyed now. I did not do it perfectly. I had to learn how, and of course I did make mistakes. I promoted that company line and wrote those impassioned defenses and sometimes I suppose my trust was misplaced and my statements were untrue, or at minimum, dismissive of other people's experiences. I'm still learning.

So in a way, I am enjoying this new period of observation from the outside and seeing if I can understand what is really going on, the patterns, the intentions, and the preventable mistakes. There is no shortage of things to reflect upon. Yesterday included some very authentic conversations with my neighbors and customers, and I learned a lot. Being in Raven's old space has a spiritual value that I may not have recognized fully. A visitor told me how Raven would dispel negative energy by transforming it, quietly and powerfully with his shakers and his intentions. I am sure he had to do that with me sometimes even! I remember how it felt to talk about my dilemmas with him. He always could point out the ways for me to move the emotions to more positive ones, and he did it without judgement, half the time without me even noticing. I really miss Raven in Raven's corner. I'm thrilled to be holding that physical space, but going forward I will try harder to hold that spiritual and emotional space. Maybe I need a shaker.