Above the line or bellow the line.

Trigger warning… this is a rant about people’s behaviours in the current world… it doesn’t get explicit and it ends well though…. but is a little different to my usual writing.

I can’t remember all the countless times I have had to have had this conversation with students in my classrooms over the years. A fair share of my life has been working with rather difficult people. Youth at risk, school groups, disadvantaged groups, long term unemployed, recovering addicts and alcoholics and even military staff. All ages.

I could tell some wonderful stories of when I have had to do this over the past thirty five years as a professional educator. Perhaps I should one day.

The line of acceptable behaviour and unacceptable. It’s really a measure of someone’s ability to measure society’s unwritten norms. Well, sometimes they are written.

Shirley Steel and ex school principal once said to me, she used to use the analogy with kids, is it something you’d say or do to or with your grandmother. A perfect metaphor for the majority of school aged kids to use.

I have drawn this line on the sand and asked groups to stand somewhere on the scale from unacceptable to acceptable in response to a number of scenarios. For some the spread is wide and varied while others people agree unanimously.

Just like in real life. Of course it is, well that was the whole point. Sometimes we need to be very clear what that line is. And often the problem is that we expect others to know what that line is intuitively rather than being explicit in describing it.

It is fascinating that we have so many problems with this on social media. We have become our own content creators and these platforms have had to put some measures in to help. But really we need to be setting our own as what they do isn’t actually deep enough.

I have been finding social media and media in general overwhelming at the moment. Definitely above my line, and the line of many others. It is actually sickening. The hatred is unacceptable.

We, as in the everybody in the whole world, is in this together. This is a true world event. Blaming others and sprouting conspiracy theories, spreading hatred isn’t helping those that are suffering enough as it is. I think it’s time to discuss ethics and standards again. We need to outline a new set of norms that fit this new digital age of communication and community.

We have been thrust unexpectedly into a digital world of community and communications. Suddenly masses of people with ample spare time are participating at higher rates of engagement. I have started an almost daily ritual of removing people from my feed. Why, because they are overstepping my line in the sand of a community that I want to be apart of.

If you really want to help, offer support, love, beauty and art. Offer real advice. Criticisms that are only emotional outpourings of fear generated panic aren’t helping. Asking good questions is so important. Discussing ways forward is so helpful.

We need to support and look after each other at this time. Make an effort to reach out to others. It’s a good time to step up phone calls, video calls and reaching out to long lost friends. It’s a time to help those around. It’s a time to educate others.

The emotional toll on society from this is already proving to be immense. Uncharted and unknown to say the least.

The other conversation we really need to have is how do we get out of this? But that one I will leave for another day.

Central Australian ochres. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020