Full of mixed emotions tonight. Recently, I had to step back from an internet community I put a lot of love and tears and energy in for a long time, because I couldn't sustain the sheer demand on my spoons that it was requiring, with all the changes going on in my life. I'm not the same me that I was, and that's....kinda to be expected, but it's still hard when it's the community that gave me a large number of my friends, it's where I met my husband, it's indirectly responsible for me coming to find the Baha'i faith. So it was a hard thing to let go.
On top of my personal stuff, it meant that the leadership had to look for new humans to serve it, which is done through an election using the Single Transferable Vote model. It's not a perfect system. It never has been, and never will be. It's better than First Past the Post style stuff, but you've still got people campaigning and you've got politics and oh, it's a mess. But election went on, people nominated themselves, they declared their "platform" (such as it is), people voted, people were elected.
So here we sit, where I'd ideally be feeling like oh hey, cool, the community is safe in the hands of the best people that the site could find to lead itself. Except...the community is unhappy. The election was...messy, and while the people who were elected are good people, there's still a lot of upsetness and worry around what this means for the site/community now, because the approaches of the new moderators worry some of community, for a variety of reasons.
And honestly, this post isn't about my feelings on the issue in terms of the site itself - the election went how it went, the people that got elected know how things work, they know how to handle the things they need to handle. But it just has me thinking a lot about how election systems as a whole are kinda broken - this whole thing about campaigning and trying to convince people you are the best thing they need, and sometimes there's lies and sliding the truth just a little sideways, and I can't help it, all I see is how unhappy and confused the community is now. They thought they were getting what they needed, and now they're not sure, and everyone's kinda on edge as they try to figure out what is going to happen going forward.
That got *me* thinking about the other election I've been a part of recently-ish, my local community's yearly election for our Local Spiritual Assembly. (If you don't know how Baha'i elections work - any Baha'i in good standing over the age of 21 is eligible to both vote AND to be voted for. There's explicitly no campaigning, no nominations, you're really not even supposed to discuss who you're going to vote for with others (discussing the sorts of qualities or ideals etc that you might look for in the sorts of people that your community needs to lead them is a separate matter, however, and that is something you definitely should be trying to figure out together!). It's basically supposed to be between you and God to figure out who you feel are the nine people in your community best suited for this role.
We have some guidance, as Shoghi Effendi reminds us - "Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience... Nothing short of the all-encompassing, all-pervading power of His Guidance and Love can enable this newly enfolded order to gather strength and flourish amid the storm and stress of a turbulent age, and in the fullness of time vindicate its high claim to be universally recognized as the one Haven of abiding felicity and peace."
And yes, spiritual election is vastly different than internet community moderatorship election, but it just made me think about how different the election felt. Yes, we had far from a perfect turnout at our election, and yes, I am sure there are people who disagree with how it ultimately went, and I am sure you could poke holes in the logic of how it works if you wanted to . But it very much felt like my community was doing it's best to come together and find a group of people that represented all our needs, and who we felt could help guide us through the next year as we kept walking the path that Baha'u'llah has laid out for us.
So now I just kinda find myself sitting here, going "Okay, well, now what? How do I sit with all of this? How do I keep this weird guilt at bay that the unhappiness is my fault for saying I couldn't keep leading?" and I think the only real thing I can do, is remind myself that sometimes, saying you can't do something is the most important thing - knowing when you no longer have the same capacity to love/care/give of yourself as you used to is a very tricky thing. I can sit with the community, I can love on them, I can help remind them of their good bits, and maybe, we can talk about what we can do, regardless of our feelings about the leadership body, to both respect the position and role of those who are serving as moderators, but also keep making the internet a better, kinder, welcoming, supportive, useful place. It might feel like "All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon" style labour (h/t to Shakesville for that one) but if all of us have teaspoons, maybe it will not be so bad.
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