@Vofuro thank you for the got of confidence/support. In truth, it's not so much that I think that people can
always be logical or control their emorions in the moment—far from it, but rather, given my visceral experiences with trauma, general craziness, social dysfunction, immaturity, growing up, organizational behavior, leadership, psychology, trauma work, and more, I believe and have seen people able to sort through their trauma and drama peacefully with effective tools and a supportive community.
For example, while people probably shouldn't try to play "therapists", we can share our knowledge and experiences amongst one another (and surprisingly, that can go a long way to helping people), and those shared experiences and time can help draw people out of the pitch black void.
A number of friends of mine (friends whom I knew only through the net) were saved despite living in semi to fully "toxic" environments by me providing healthy spaces for them—one friend told me before he attempted suicide and I was able to let people with immediate access to him know, thereby removing the risk by having them toss the meds & save him from an overdose. [The firefighters (see Internal Family Systems Therapy) were going nuts and trying to cope with sudden onset reteauma in the only way they felt that they could because they weren't heard.]
I have studied at least
seven different forms of trauma therapy (albeit, there are even more, but I'm keeping the list short) amongst other forms of therapy and leadership/language/thinking/etc. skills over the years. Each one has benefits and shortcomings, but ultimately, experience tells me that when we as humans as a collective community and as individuals can master and work through our own shit, we can better work as communities/teams/etc.
For example, language barriers (which often extend to culture barriers) and culture baggage act as major factors in global community activities. People make
assumptions about one another and when those assumptions are not based in fact or good reasoning, are not good, well reasoned, sound/cogent judgements, we can create all sorts of clusterfucks about one another.
One group can make assumptions about time and availability, desire, interest, professionalism, etc., about another group of people.
For instance, the culture (family, work, school, town, ethnic group, religion, society, etc., each constitute different "cultures") of one person may be
very different than another person, different goals & objectives, different values so to speak. If interacting with one group without a greater knowledge of the person or where they come from, one may make falicious assumptions about them. Furthermore, each person is different, each situation is different. Drama & trauma can play out because of the unique interpersonal skills, strengths, and weaknesses of a person, where their mental health is at, where their personal values are at.
If a 21 year old working 2 jobs, having very little real world production work experience, who is going to university in the US and is paying their own way or is taking student loans, lacked the education background to succeed in their studies due to poverty and is trying to figure thing out for themselves, is highly distracted, and helping out at home in their spare time. If we say this hypothetical team member has low motivation, poor nutrition (a common problem in the US), may be suffering from depression (statistically likely), isolation, amongst other issues including not having the interpersonal skills that one gains over time provided they have access to and utilized the necessary learning opportunities, say this person is acting as a team leader on a project. I'm going to say that this person struggles with communication in that they are extremely blunt & shy. They may come off as "blunt" or "avoidant" (depending upon their audience) as a result of their culture, stress/workload, and it has become a coping mechanism. They may also be prone to "flaking/ghosting" teammates. Too much on their plate and not enough support. We can create more characterization items as needed for our analogy.
Now, if this person has people from around the world who may range in age from middle school to people 30+, how would these people react to what is going on?
For example, if a 30 something Chinese translator who is living in mainland China (not Hong Kong) and grew up (as I have been told to me by a mainland Chinese mangaka friend) to write for Chinese business (namely, extremely blunt to the point of ruthlessly brutal) holds strong opinions on punctuality and scheduling, along with another person in their late 20s also working 2 full jobs in Manila is dealing with this "American" who may be prone to demand other people submit paperwork in a timely fashion for a volunteer job, while they themselves may not reply immediately to correspondence.
(I'm a little fried writing this, so the example may be somewhat convoluted.)
These other people may have their own trauma histories, work lives, family lives, histories, cultural norms and customs, and more, and when
all of that gets dumped into a volunteer setting, or any setting really, shit can quite easily go thermonuclear.
The skills & goals that I learned in therapy, counseling, leadership, and more has application to help people and communities preemptively lead our ways out of nuking ourselves.
Yeah, it's a LOT of work, but the rewards are that people learn to better work together without, ideally, shitting one one another or having entire projects implode because of drama.
Because, let's face it—what are we here for?
What is the collectively agreed upon goals for the Scanlation communities?
If we can agree upon our goals, then we have a better means of sorting through this sort of stuff. :3
