AwakeEnergyScouter

Just read something someone said on social media that seems quite relevant here. "The issue with a culture war based epistemology, where all things are seen through the lens of cultural war. Will always lead directly to conspiracy theories. For when you see normal people doing normal things, through that lens, it must take on all the misaligned power of a conspiracy against you personally. This happens to both the right and left side of politics. Yet more frequently on the right. Anyone's vision of a "correct" culture, will always fail. For culture is never isotropic." We are all here in our role as scouters. In that role, our loyalty is to each other and the scout movement.

I doubt I am interpreting what you said here the way you meant it, because I just heard "Yes, atheists that don't belong to an organized religion are still being excluded from scouting with the BSA, and so we should remedy that".

I know I certainly don't feel excluded or pushed out by the existence of all the affinity groups that aren't for me, which is most of them. Be welcome, have at it. Just like I don't feel slighted when a meeting opens with a round of applause for veterans but not me, a non-veteran. Exactly because I haven't seek the tiniest inkling of special favor a la sauna dealmaking.

Mine too. All of them. One of my bosses responded rapidly to a somewhat problematic situation with a co-worker and I never had to deal with that harassment again at one job. HR helped a few folks a level below me with harassment issues, one of which had also raised eyebrows quite widely and so was quite important to deal with. The nonwhite nonstraight nonmale workers that were excellent at their jobs were recognized as being such and promoted at least at most of my employers. (An exception comes to mind.) But I have never heard anyone say that we should give an iffy candidate a chance because of DEI. I have also never thought it. Have iffy candidates been hired? Yes. Were they hired because of their gender, sexual preferences, or skin color? Nope. (One was literally the hiring manager going "I am too tired to interview more people".) My current company is very into literal DEI - including for disabled people (primarily veterans) and ex-military folks. My company goes out of its way to hire ex-military personnel and military spouses. The idea is clearly to make sure meritocracy reigns; that's what they're trying to do and that seems to be working. So my personal experience with DEI policies is positive and doesn't even confirm to the view that "liberals" approve of "DEI" and "conservatives" oppose "DEI". I know that's a narrative out there, but I'm not convinced it describes reality that well.

I am attempting to engage you in civil discourse, rather than jumping to conclusions of what you're actually trying to say, your motivations, and your opinions. I am asking you to articulate clearly and factually what you think. This is because without you stating your position clearly and factually, civil discourse is a nonstarter and this thread is, at least in response to you specifically, not going to be civil and as such lacks value for scouting. I am not asking you questions because I cannot find information and form an opinion of my own on it, I am asking you questions to ensure that I understand your point in relevant detail. What I cannot find on the internet or by being an active scouter is your personal view of things. I am asking you to tell me what you think so that I can listen to understand. All I'm really clear on right now is that you are very angry, and I am hoping that my best understanding of why is incorrect. At the very least, you should have a chance to clarify... or two, or three, or four, or five... Just to be clear, what I mean by 'civil discourse' is the view found at Civcs for Life, American University, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Since you decline to articulate, again and again, the message I get is that you aren't actually interested in civil discourse. You even explicitly say you have "no desire to word joust and no requirement for further clarification". So, I must ask again, if you are not interested in civil discourse to further understanding among scouts and scouters of differing opinions, what was the point of starting this conversation? How is this helpful to scouting? The internet doesn't need another flame war. Even people who generally agree with your general POV aren't sure what exact argument you're trying to make. This sounds plausible as a possibility, but there are so many possibilities and/or you're making five or six different but related arguments with nothing but argument by assertion to back them up that everyone who has responded has had to make an assumption about what you mean based on commonly made (by others) arguments rather than what you're actually saying. Some of these offshoots are in fact civil discourse; but how about we make this conversation as a whole about developing better understanding as a result of deep commitment to civil discourse instead?

I actually took the rules to mean "no adults that haven't been background checked staying overnight". In part because that makes total sense. If the red flags are already up, use them. It's necessary, if not sufficient.

Our pack is planning to lean into Earth Month this April and make the pack meeting centered on the Outdoor Code and Leave No Trace. We already have a number of LNT materials, games, and such, and there is more online. The question isn't how to find activities, it's how to select good ones for such a range of patience levels and abilities. Would anyone who's used LNT training materials (or similar) with cub scouts be willing to share what worked well and what didn't work so well?

Only the last NOAC? Or also the last US national jamboree? Were these the first such events, or were there previously held events? Are such events held more widely? If BSA is pushing DEI so hard, how come I haven't heard a DEI peep despite being an active scouter? Please provide the wider data basis for your subjective description of DEI in the BSA. You've previously called them "sanctioned" by BSA, what does that mean exactly? Organized by? Allowed to occur organized by some group of scouts and/or scouters but not the BSA itself? What was the stated purpose of the "meetings/gatherings"? Were they meetings or social gatherings? As someone else already quipped, did the poor straight white men miss out on an ice cream social? Were they in fact actually excluded, or were white straight men actually allowed to attend the "meetings/gatherings"? That last one is absolutely imperative for you to address if you actually want to engage in civil discourse, especially since it still seems rocky to let go of the anger. Your core intellectual claim hinges on that they were actually excluded in the first place. But were they? I have my doubts. In grad school, I was a Society of Women Engineers officer. Men are not, in fact, excluded from SWE membership, and we had a very active male member in our chapter. The national conference was full of men looking for jobs. As for woke being an acronym - never heard of that, and apparently neither has any online dictionary including Urban Dictionary. If you use nonstandard meanings of words, it's on you to explain how you're using the words.

I agree with Civics for Life that civil discourse is constructive to have for its own sake. "Civil discourse is not simply polite conversation, though courtesy and respect are crucial to it. Civil discourse goes beyond politeness. It is conversation with purpose—that is, constructive dialogue. Though they may disagree, participants in civil discourse are committed to hearing each other’s fact-based opinions and dispassionately evaluating those opinions against their own. Participants enter into civil discourse with a shared goal: to leave it with greater clarity or even, potentially, having achieved some new agreement." They further define the characteristics of civil discourse as "Civil discourse is: Fact-based Non-ideological Productive Respectful" So that covers civil discourse - but not uncivil discourse. When the conversation loses its factual grounding, becomes ideological, becomes unproductive, and disrespectful, it's not civil. Even if expletives are withheld. So let's take a look, shall we? In the Order of the Arrow subforum, we have a post with the subject "DEI is an acronym for Don't Expect Improvement". Taken literally this is plainly untrue, so the statement is not meant to be taken literally and seems ideological given current US political context. Then we have some seeming anger about "wokeness" due to the all caps, followed by oblique references that I only can guess one of, creating a dearth of facts. Following this is is a referential statement that proponents of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have also realized that being woke isn't really beneficial and that the truth of this can be confirmed by asking unspecified colleges, universities, and manufacturers (which ones exactly is not specified) that have fired their "DEI employees" (HR staff working on DEI?) and (probably) boarded up their DEI offices. Since this seems to connect to recent partisan kerfuffles about banning DEI offices and positions, this is likely to be ideological as well, and so far nothing to do with Order of the Arrow or even scouting at all. Once we do get to scouting, there's a statement implying a contradiction between Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and BSA organizing alleged special events for women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and POC followed by an allegation that there would be outrage if straight white folks (including women? probably meant men only) had a gathering. I say alleged, because MrJeff has already brought this up at least once and also failed to give clear examples of what gatherings when exactly in what context, including when previously asked for it, and since he's never able to give actual examples I'm ready to believe it's not a real thing in the first place when no one else here seems to know what specifically he's talking about. The post that he made right before this one has no mention of DEI, so that's no help, although I'll note @Mrjeff that my handle here can't be broken down into just Awake in any sensical way, the concept is (awake energy) because it's a twist on a dharma name. (And we scouts, as you may recall, aspire to be mentally awake, possessing that awake energy.) And I'll also note that I'm willing to speak directly to both you, @Eagledad, as well as @Mrjeffbecause talking about people in the third person in their presence is rude. So, if there is an actual fact basis for this conversation, @Mrjeff isn't providing it and no one else can guess what it is. This is then capped with a question about what the difference between BSA-organized events for scouts only recently allowed to join the BSA (historically speaking) and a gathering (BSA-organized or not is unspecified) of (probably) straight white men, and the question of how segregated events aid DEI. These questions do not seem sincere, given what came before them. As before in our previous conversation, my problem with this conversation isn't that I don't personally like it, it's that it's hurting BSA scouting and BSA scouts. Scouting is not and has never been a political "safe space" where you can rant and rave about your political opinions in peace. We are a civil, not political, movement. We've always had both left-leaning and right-leaning scouts and scouters. Did you watch InquisitiveScouter's TED talk video? Well worth watching. But there is something Haidt missed, something InquisitiveScouter mentioned earlier on just in different words - the two levels of truths. On the absolute level, there are indeed no groups of people. But at the same time, it would be downright denialistic to pretend you can't see the outlines of groups of people, even though the 'edges' dissolve as you look for them. So one should absolutely strive to attain the stage of 'one taste' where like and dislike have been transcended, but that doesn't mean that you lose your sense faculties and ability to tell one thing from another. You just don't solidify what those senses convey into some Eternal Truth in your mind, don't believe your thoughts as my dear root teacher always says. What ultimately sets the wheel of samsara into motion is the Three Poisons - passion, aggression, and ignorance (of how the world really works). Look around the internet - conversations that start from an angry post are virtually guaranteed to turn uncivil. In this case, though, the people who end up fighting are supposed to be in the same tribe of scouters! Why start an angry, ideological conversation without a clear factual grounding? Why? It is not productive and only ends up hurting scouting and scouts. When you start in anger it's unlikely to end in peace, in this case leading to infighting within our scouting tribe.

Yes, I think this is the main point. I did express myself imprecisely, that's true, categorizing a risk level below some undefined cutoff as "YPT working" and categorizing a risk level above that as "YPT not working". What that risk level is is a matter of debate, of course, but because the main point here isn't really that conversation I used the BSA's phrasing to keep the focus on what on Earth this conversation is meant to be good for. The wisdom of starting conversations by lobbing culture war grenades depends in no way whatsoever on statistics. What productive aim did you have in mind when you started this conversation, @Mrjeff? Still waiting on those examples of what you're talking about, for the second time. Nobody else seems to know or has even offered a guess.

But that doesn't mean that statistics isn't a valid epistemology. As you reap the fruits of in your daily life. Even manufacturing of physical goods uses statistics for quality control. And that's before we mention statistical mechanics. Knowledge about the world that hinges on statistics is quite possible.

This is the second layer... Does the gender of the abused young person matter? Of course not. Either YPT works or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, the problem isn't "DEI", it's that YPT isn't covering all the bases to prevent CSA.

TBH the rule that you need a female leader around girls all the time sounds a little accusatory of men's character in general to me, despite the statistics. If the idea is that only a woman would protect girls from sexual abuse, what does that imply about all the other male leaders?

Ok, you got any links to official BSA information about these so we can all be on the same page about what specifically you're criticizing? The reason it went off the rails immediately is that people who are angry about too much DEI fit an image of a culture war warrior swinging a sword all around them. IOW it easily looks like you started a conversation by throwing a culture war grenade. If this is not what you intended you may want to be much, much, much more specific about what where when and why.

The blurb itself says right there that they are surveying both girls and boys at the same time, i e they are not only surveying one gender to the exclusion of the other. If you already have a statistically valid sampling of the boys, adding more boys doesn't improve the statistical accuracy, so while it's possible they're collecting more girl data than is useful and/or cost-effective it's not creating a two-tier system. The phrasing does make me wonder if there are relatively speaking few girl members, such that it actually makes sense to send out the survey to all of them in order to maximize the odds that the number of responses ends up being a statistically valid sample of the girls as well as the boys.

How is this discussion helpful?

Sidebar: Why couldn't you just find an elected German official? Why restrict yourself to the base?

Somebody didn't think that name through 😂

I thought we scouts were bougie. Are we not? Lederhosen is not saying otherwise. And 'King/Queen' is still in a lot of Scout Promises... Just sayin' 😉

Time for a REI x BSA collab? 😄

Been telling my scouts that exact thing in the context of the Internal Spirit Award... You can tell it's a scout shirt because it's a Western shirt with two front button pockets and a bunch of badges worn with a necker, even if you don't recognize from what country it's from. Without the badges... Fails scout shirt sniff test

That's how scout shirts are meant to be!

Now that you say that, a parent was complaining about that at our last campout. I mean, I get it. Sewing new badges is yet another thing on the to-do list. The incredibly long, winding to-do list. Blargh. If you just asked me out of the blue, I'd say I don't like sewing on badges either. But that doesn't mean I think that we shouldn't have patches that need sewing on. Not loving every aspect of everything I ever do for scouts isn't the same thing as wanting to change the program. Everything in life is a mix of things you like and dislike. And seeing as scouting is a spiritually based program, and as such is based in the recognition that trying to only have pleasure with no pain isn't possible, it doesn't make sense to sweat these small ordinary irritations. They are meant to be overcome. As a Zen Master Sengcan said... The Great Way is not difficult. It merely avoids picking and choosing.

National didn't poll my scout, who hates taking the belt with all the loops on and off and therefore mostly refuses to wear it. They're not wrong - the loops end up scattering all over the floor a lot. It doesn't have the right vibe. Plus, what kind of a scout shirt isn't covered in patches? And aren't all the sewing avoidance methods already offered enough? 🤦🏼‍♀️ And then there's the ecological impact. I thought the reason for the move to belt loops was just a consequence of that they wanted to move the awards to adventures because the awards were earned by less than 1% of scouts. Came as a surprise to me, because in our pack scouts earn awards all the time. We even provide earmarked opportunities to earn the Outdoor Activity Award, the International Spirit Award (and therefore the World Conservation Award), and the NPS Ranger Award.

I didn't realize it was no longer available. I thought it was still an earnable award for all. Well... In this exact moment, it is. But since the awards are being replaced by belt loops, and it doesn't seem like there's any adventure called something like what's in it, I'm working under the assumption that it will be discontinued June 1 for cub scouts. I'd be happy to be told that's a misunderstanding.