AwakeEnergyScouter

I agree completely. Many in US society (like many developed societies)- across political affiliations and social groups and all kinds of other ways of grouping people - are disconnected from the natural sense of being alive and awake to experience it that we all can tap into. In part that's because we don't spend enough time talking about that feeling of energy and flow to notice that we can be more or less connected with that, and what having it stream through you vs being completely disconnected from it and not even being sure that it exists, feels like. We are not actively exploring what it is to be a human being, how being a human works, and as a result we remain ignorant of how psychological cause and effect can move us either in a downward spiral or an upward spiral. But we all sense that there's up and down and we'd rather be going upwards, and that's where the need remains. We want to be mentally awake. What is the point, indeed? That could be an expression of depression or a crisp philosophical question. When we are tapped into the energy of life, we don't have to have a conceptual answer in mind into order to be excited to explore.

You're right, @RememberSchiff. Being politically unaligned is a key part of the scouting "container", and now that we're having this conversation I realize this is also practically important to say out loud repeatedly. That @Eagledadisn't aware of any obviously "blue" families joining could actually be a great sign in that sense - hopefully, we wouldn't be so clear on how parents in scouting families vote because they choose to de-emphasize that at scouting events. Precisely because we don't talk politics I don't actually know what the rest of our pack committee votes for, but demographically it's quite likely that we have a mix of political opinions. I also think it's generally true that people want and expect a break from politics when they go scouting. I wish the parents in the shirts disparaging political candidates wore something else, but since it hasn't affected activities and political talk hasn't started I also can't imagine myself (or someone else from pack leadership) walking over to them to tell them to stop wearing the shirts because what are we, the clothing police? However, what counts as "political" may vary, and based on what I've seen I think the lagging public awareness of BSA membership policy changes in and of itself can amplify the big-deal-ness of previously excluded youth for the youth. When my scout and I started our first year selling popcorn door to door, it was obvious that girls and boys scouting together is normal and unworthy of comment or attention because that's how it's been for mom and grandpa. Then, neighbor after neighbor after neighbor had a reaction to our genders, working through their own feelings, positive or negative, about girls and boys scouting together. None of them meant to make it a big deal, but the bigness of the deal just kept growing as more people had their personal reactions to BSA policy changes or thought we were selling cookies. One neighbor ran to fetch their French exchange student to see real American girl scouts, which we were unfortunately not, especially not me. My scout got more and more annoyed at being put in a box they weren't in, and suddenly girls in BSA and the existence of a second aligned scouting organization became something to explain and talk about as an issue instead of just getting on with the popcorn selling to fund canoe rentals and campground fees. Scouting is clearly super-duper gendered to the max in people's minds in the US, and that isn't going to unwind quickly. In my mind, and I assume that of Swedish people in general, scouting is ungendered. It's simply unrelated to gender. So there's absolutely nothing to say about that. You don't start conversations about random unrelated things. Wearing my old scout shirt with the fleur-de-lis is like a magnet for opinions on girls in BSA. The two super angry rants were precipitated by it, and a scout at a council event saw the lily and made a beeline to talk to me as soon as he had a chance to understand why it was there. Scouts and scouters in our pack have asked about it, but in a friendly way of course. The only scouter (to my knowledge) who's gotten it straight away was a former scout who went to a World Jamboree who had the inverse experience of showing up to realize they were in a sea of together-scouters as a little island of gender-segregated scouts. So, my personal choice here is to never wear my old shirt and effectively hide my own scouting experience or accept that I will have to deal with the ongoing attention and what some might consider politics. I would love to just get on with the scouting as we did when I was a scout myself, but there is a collective emotional reaction and processing of BSA's policy changes that's rolling around both inside and outside BSA and while some scouts can duck it, a lot of them can't, and so there's no choice but to just wade through it. And for the record, I find it wrong that GSUSA excludes boys and men, and quite aggressively so from what I hear. I do say that. It's true that it's not a generally heard opinion but especially now, I think it should be heard. It's of course easy for me to say but I think GSUSA and BSA should just stop faffing about and merge. BSA should definitely change its name, because people are using "it's in the name!!!" as an argument for why girls shouldn't be allowed. (Other than the Internet, both angry ranters threw that out there.) The hyperfocus on certain subgroups of scouts isn't coming from those scouts themselves, it's coming from... drum roll... adults, like @Eagledadwas saying. Getting really worked up about the focus just creates more focus. What we can realistically do here is to try to figure out what will help the entire society just digest this as the status quo in no need of particular attention. Having lived this state of being as a scout myself I know it's quite possible. I tried to find more information on these patches for girls, people of color, and was it LGBTQIA people? I can't find anything. Anyone got a link?

I agree, but at least in our pack some parents' clothes are political identity statements so there's no not knowing. Luckily we haven't had politicization of actual activities, but some folks really, really identify with a political "tribe" and want everyone to know it. Most of those families are new to scouting so they may not have realized that we're not a political movement but a civic one.

So glad to hear this! 🥰 Hope your scout continues to get to just do their thing throughout their scouting career. And that those kinds of stories get told as they happen. Scouting is for everyone.

But "blue" families must extend their genuine welcome to "red" families as this happens, too. All differences between people are, in the ultimate view, no more real than the reflection of the moon in water is real. It is all an illusion.

I suspect it is not generally obvious why I am so focused (in a different thread) on the importance of being very clear, inside and outside BSA, that everyone is welcome. In order to not introduce even more to that thread, here is why, in the form of a somewhat poetically phrased view. I think you will recognize how this works in your own experience. We each have a golden sun of goodness in our hearts, a sun of compassion and wisdom that is the essence of all beings. This gift is available to us day or night, always shining. It is the source of all happiness. It is open like the sky, accommodating all possibilities. It is majestic like a mountain, immovable in its conviction. It is like freshly fallen snow, awake and cheerful. It is like a lush forest, natural and harmonious. It is like a great breeze, refreshing and alive. It is the missing piece that was never missing in the first place. It is our inherent human dignity, what we bow to when we say namaste and what we want to protect with universal human rights. When beings recognize this sun of goodness and develop doubtless confidence in it, the sky of possibilities opens up and the river of human intelligence comes flooding in. Flowers of love and compassion can sprout. Trees of strength and confidence grow. We feel content and complete as human beings, with strong character, love, and intelligence. But when we do not recognize our inherent goodness, we are trapped in doubt and fear, and the world closes and becomes solid. Issues become big. Problems seem insurmountable. Life's flow becomes speedy and chaotic. The mind becomes sensitive and nervous. Every small pain and minor irritation becomes distracting. Our energy is low; our vitality appears to be waning day by day. Socially, we have difficulty getting along with others. We become territorial, and anger arises at anything and anybody. In this state, we mindlessly create karma instead of purifying it, perpetually putting into motion negative scenarios that come back to haunt us. The scope of our life diminishes, and we either aspire to do less and less or panic and become overly ambitious. So when we do not clearly proclaim the existence of primordial goodness, negative forces gain momentum, we become emotionally tight and unapproachable, even minor gestures of love and kindness become difficult. We create social imbalance. But we can avoid all this by simply acknowledging our inherent human worthiness, the rightness of being here as we are. In order to choose the path of luminous brilliance, we have to stay in touch with our own inherent dignity and acknowledge that of others. We need to think it, but we also need to say it and show it. When we are a good friend to new scouts (and scouters), when we create a culture where we are friendly, helpful, kind, courteous, cheerful, and loyal to everyone who wants to scout with BSA, whether they are "like us" or not, we unleash that warm wisdom and river of human intelligence for both ourselves and others. This, in turn, sets the whole organization on the path of virtue that scouting builds on, especially for the scouts who may not have found their place in the world yet. If scouts and scouters aren't sure if they're welcome, then the disharmonious path starts creeping in. We prevent that by making sure that everyone is - and feels - welcome.

We're obviously in very different places with this. I'm very confident scouting and its values are evergreen, simply because being a tween and teenager is hard and scouting is an accepting, loving environment outside both the family and schools where youth can test their wings and explore who they are in a constructive and facilitated way. Being out in nature often gives you spiritual experiences and being little model societies in the patrol and troop also shows you why virtue matters as a practical matter, not just as a philosophical one. Why would US culture in particular be unable to handle a values-based program? What are you seeing that makes you so pessimistic about scouting?

Glad to hear! I agree that evaluating decisions in view of a long-term view is important, of course it is. But when we slip from talking about our values to talking about membership strategy without clearly switching frames, it can easily give the unintentional impression that our true priority is membership numbers, á lá "what you measure is what you get". Curious minds will wonder what happened to membership numbers when membership policy is changed. But if the basis for the membership policy change was values, then there's a natural restriction on how one might take action on the numbers, which I don't often see mentioned. One hopes that's because it's taken for granted, but it's clearer if we explicitly say it.

Not sure I follow here, @ToKindle96 - would you be fine with kicking Eagle1993's gay trans scout out if membership numbers went up as a result?

@Eagledad So glad to hear! I was actually primarily talking about youth, though, but I assume the adult part wasn't key? Not that cold-shouldering adults is ok, it's just that adults have more resources to handle it and less likely to take it as a reflection of their inherent human value than youth are.

Those who are attracted to the scouting movement, do you welcome all of them?

So... Who welcomes everyone? ⚜️🌼💎

I don't know about that. I've personally been at the receiving end of two very angry (one bordering on aggressive) tirades about how wrong it is that women are allowed to be BSA scouts. The one that made me step back in case of violence was while selling popcorn with my scout. Yep. To the scout's face. This very forum has some (at least to me) eye-popping threads about openly LGBTQIA people and women. There are stickies on moderation policy saying more or less "ok it's over, LGBTQIA folks and women are in now so let's not rehash whether they should be because it's damaging to scouts". That wouldn't be needed if everyone in the larger BSA circles agreed that everyone is welcome. Being an atheist didn't exactly win me any popularity points here. Atheists are definitely not generally welcome. You may not be saying that people aren't welcome, and perhaps that also isn't what MrJeff is saying or what his Eagle scout thought was against his morals. But some people most definitely have been and still are. That's why it needs saying out loud very clearly, because there's a message to the contrary being put out there, and since people are free to say what they like they will continue to put that message out there. And this is also why I don't want to move on to YPT or the effectiveness of special interest groups, because this is a very important basic point to clarify. If we do not agree that everyone is welcome, then things like whether there should be affinity groups isn't going to get discussed with any degree of productivity anyway. We have close family friends who are interested in BSA, but are reluctant to join because they're unsure of how they and their child will be treated because of both race and sexual orientation. Their judgement seems to be that they expect that the answer is 'poorly' and have not joined, and I can't say I think they're wrong without knowing the pack leadership of the pack in question. If even a single person like the two IRL ranters are on that committee or a leader, I would expect that they're right, and since I know they're out there... I am glad to hear that we do genuinely agree that everyone is welcome now. This is such an important basic point! Thank you.

Sorry, what? Aren't all scouts civilian? Are there really military scouts? This seems highly irregular. Am I misunderstanding your phrasing here, perhaps? When you imply military scouts, what exactly do you mean? If your scouting involvement is half blended with the US military, then that's a guarantee that it's not a representative experience of the scout movement. 30 years ago, we also didn't talk about skin color and cultural background (because much fewer refugees had arrived, and the previous waves of immigrants had integrated well) or sexual orientation. We didn't talk about sexual orientation because we didn't care; it wasn't relevant to scouting or its values. LGBTQIA leaders and scouts weren't a problem. We never talked about religion, that's a private matter, but I'll disagree that three different kinds of Christians is significant religious variety. We did, however, focus a lot on the Scout Law, and part of ours is that a scout is a good friend to all. "Everyone is welcome" is a phrase I heard all the time. All. The. Time. Also, that scouting is a peace movement - not exactly aligned with the military! My scouting experience is just as hyperlocal as yours, of course, but what you can't say is that I'm an outsider to scouting ("the Left") coming to wreck your organization. You don't have to agree with me, of course, but I am sticking by the scout law (you guys just bulleted the parts of being a good friend out separately) here precisely because there are probably others lurking whose sense of belonging in BSA is being shaken by what's being said here. I can't know for sure, but better safe than sorry; that everyone is welcome needs to be said out loud, now that it is so in policy. If someone thinks that everyone is not welcome, then that's something that should be discussed.

Overall, I can't, either. Had a bunch of statements that are potentially alienating to current scouts not been in the OP and immediate comments, I wouldn't have worried about not quite getting what it's about. My personal motivation is making sure that all current scouts feel genuinely welcome, and that nobody who is interested in scouting chooses not to join BSA because they fear being treated poorly. In the service of this, I am now attempting to use the third of the four enlightened actions, magnetizing, since I already tried pacifying and enriching. Where this will ultimately go - well, I guess we'll have to see.

I went out of my way to ask you what you meant. First you elided and then you said "I said what I said", which amounts to a refusal to clarify. This isn't the first time, either. Of course it's possible that you didn't mean what I think you meant, because what you wrote can be interpreted many different ways. That's exactly why I asked you for clarification. Surely you're not now shocked that this could occur? As written, your OP doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's like half the story is unwritten. You're relying on the reader to fill in the blanks. Either fill in the blanks explicitly or expect a series of misunderstandings. Clarity is needed here. Please provide it, if you can. May all beings be happy May all beings be peaceful May they dwell in the great equanimity Free from passion, aggression, and prejudice

It sounds like, though, that an alternative view lives among some scouters, not just you.

Bravo! 👏 They were ready ⚜️

I hope you can find an opening to help them notice that adventure is more fun than a hamster wheel. Sure, there's satisfaction in finishing things. But you can learn skills in many ways. You can only bring a whole group of your friends on some epic outdoor adventure in scouts ⚜️🏕️ I don't recall having earned a thing at any summer camp. Merit badges and advancement was what we did during meetings, and camp was where you showed whether you were worthy. Then again, we have (or had, at least, I see things have changed since I was a scout) far, far fewer merit badges to earn and no "capstone" like Eagle. The reason to stay in scouts wasn't to impress anyone, it was because you liked it.

This sounds super helpful! How wonderful that you did this! Even if you did a tad too much. It's a situation read and it's not easy to see what the exact right level of challenge for someone is. Catching yourself is the steppingstone to improving anyway! 👏

I agree that YPT policies can be a little absurd, but the OP wasn't on that. Check back - it was Eagle94-A1 who brought YPT into it two comments down. Certainly, the difficulty in formulating a policy to protect youth from sexual abusers that they met through scouting but that doesn't lead to absurd situations where youth have to choose between being scouts and seeing their friends is well worth discussing. But the OP seems to be about how BSA has been destroyed by letting people who aren't white cishet males join the organization and the importance of standing by that opinion because it's a morally correct stand.

But you're not actually willing to say it, apparently. You rely on people inferring what you're talking about. And because you're not willing to spell out what you mean and stand by it, the interpretation I land on is that what's ailing BSA is letting all the "riffraff" in. It used to be only the "right" people, and now all the "wrong" people are allowed to join. You think it's wrong, and you're very mad about it, but somehow this has nothing to with DEI. I don't think further comment is needed here. This whole thing falls apart immediately all on its own. I will simple reiterate that your "right" and "wrong" people approach isn't that of either WOSM or WAGGS, and the scouting movement as a whole has long, long since left this right/wrong people thing behind, if it was ever generally a thing. It was never part of my scouting experience, and those pictures by the German photographer were described to have the theme of freedom to be who you are. Bingo, I recognize that completely. That's what scouts were for me socially. It was a place where I belonged. You seem to want the opposite. You want something that's not scouting, best I can tell. Something that's unkind on purpose. You can buy versions of the Swedish scout t-shirt with the logo in rainbow and other pride scout items, and that's because everyone is welcome and part of being kind, friendly, helpful, and a good friend is making sure everyone feels it, too. I don't feel excluded as straight, I've never in my whole life felt like someone or something is holding me being straight against me. Similarly, I have never had the color of my skin held against me, so I am completely unbothered by the existence of affinity groups for POC. That it bothers you so much further reinforces my impression that to you, exclusion is core. As a graduate student in engineering, I loved going to the Society of Women Engineers' national meetings, because for once every single person in this giant crowd is also an engineer. I found mentors and it, for a week, took away the uneasy feeling (based on unfortunate experience) of that some people want you to fail because they don't think you should be there. I encountered them as an adult, and so it was pretty easy to not take the idea that I shouldn't be there seriously, but children absolutely will enter a spiral of self-doubt over those kinds of things. Children need explicit encouragement if anybody ever does! Anger clouds one's judgement. What was the purpose of posting this, since you know it's offensive and exclusionary? I presume you will decline an invitation to clarify once again, and so it is left to look like your mind is heavily obscured by reactive emotion. Hurt people hurt people, I suppose. I hope you can heal your hurt and see clearer in the future, even to the point of attaining profound, brilliant glory. May you recognize your true nature and rapidly attain complete, perfect enlightenment.

So, am I understanding you correctly to be saying that the way in which the Eagle Scout's view of the BSA had soured to the point where he felt that it was in conflict with his morals and beliefs was only with that the BSA has policies around whom older scouts and scouters can spend time with outside of scouting? If so, that wasn't clear to me at all from the OP or your first comment. I still don't see the connection between YPT rules and "false inclusion", but now I'm clear on what you mean by it. Taking my best guess here - is it that both the YPT rules and trying to be welcoming to subgroups the BSA has traditionally vehemently excluded are attempts to save an organization that has already been ruined by its own ego-driven failure to protect youth? Really not sure this is what you meant though.

I don't quite see what this has to do with sexual preferences, gender identity, or inclusion, false or otherwise. I mean, every single person in the BSA now and in the past has had sexual preferences and gender identities, and I'm not sure what false inclusion is in this context. Based on what you wrote next, perhaps you mean ignoring classism? But I'm asking in order to make sure I understand you correctly.

I don't follow. Could you please elaborate?