At 08:53  2003-12-10 +1300, I wrote:
"disagreements, discrimination, and buying locally", at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/12894 (after signing-in) is

At 08:53  2003-12-09 +1300, I wrote to LessIsMore {at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/12876 (after signing-in)}:
> ...
>· Why worry, about someone else taking offense? It's not _their_ business, what _you_ believe!
>
And at 11:05  2003-12-09 +1300, I wrote:
>
>· I agree about the "chilled relations", but that's life, IMO.
>[In] the vast majority of the world ... people generally are _interested_ in others' _different_ opinions. They may dismiss them or they may want to hear more, but there's a basic tolerance, a realism I think, about the fact that others are _other_, different.
>

· I see this LessIsMore list as not only providing support for people who _right_now_ are trying to live well on less, but also discussing and moving towards a future in which consumerism/exploitation/greed aren't the main ways people look at their life and personal decisions-and-actions.

· So disagreements between the wide variety of teenagers-and-older in such a future can be expected. People don't share the same world-view. In Canada we had French Canadians with a different language (and Catholicism generally instead of Protestantism); in Ghana and Nigeria we had about a dozen different peoples/tribes each with their own language and opinions about how to decide what was right; in India we met people from several different racial backgrounds and half a dozen very different religions.
  IMO that's what the world is like. _Not_ like the USA.

· I visited and lived in Canada before and during the second World War; at that time there was discrimination against the French ("after all, they were
_defeated_ on the Plains of Abraham!"-part of Quebec); in Ghana and Nigeria people from the poorer parts were discriminated-against when they went to earn money in the richer parts; and for a long time after India's separation
from Pakistan (and increasing recently since the BJP came to power), Muslims
and Tribals have been discriminated-against even though that was illegal. And in parts of the world I haven't been (Iran, China), Christians are discriminated-against simply because they are a tiny minority.

· _I_ am discriminated-against (in a mild way) here in NZ because of my long
hair-and-beard, and to an unknown extent because of my unwillingness to agree with those around me (e.g. the administration and Board of the private school where I used to teach before I was asked to retire; there were also valid reasons for this request).

· In my LIM post quoted second above, I said: “I agree about the "chilled relations", but that's life, IMO.”
  I accept that discrimination has a place, in the toolbox which a society uses to enable its members to get along together and achieve a better life.
  These are the tools (my order):
- general talk, finding similarities andd differences
- discussion/formal-argument, on a topicc where there's disagreement
- some resolution pointing to steps-to-bbe-taken; majority-minority is common
- if the less-powerful group (eg. minoriity) interfere: discrimination
- as a last resort: shunning (excommuniccation, "reading-out-of-Meeting").

· As an example, suppose LIMers were all living in the same small town (e.g. Bath, Maine, or that town Gary mentioned where Amish sell many of their products). And suppose further that the "resolution" in point 3 above was for everybody to limit themselves (with a specified set of exceptions) to: buying and using only locally-produced products.
  Some in our town (including some LIMers, probably from the silent majority
here) would not agree to this "extreme" degree of self limitation, and would
insist on the freedom to buy whatever they felt like. ("It's my money, I'll do whatever I like with it!")
  What is the next step after the usual remonstrance, expressions of anger?

· I say such rebels should be discriminated-against (not invited to social events, not made-welcome anywhere, not voted-into-office, not hired by a local business, etc). And I say that knowing that _I_ would be one of these "rebels", if not on this issue then on some other.

· Summary: we _should_ have disagreements; we _should_ have discrimination.

David.