The primary purpose of 50+ Friends was and is friendship. Ours is a group of individuals from all different walks of life who genuinely care about each other and about the group. That is very much self evident by the efforts of everyone connected with our Home Page and the various sections that each is responsible for. Many of our members may not realize that these volunteers each work long and hard to maintain their sections and they do it out of respect and caring for the other members of 50+ Friends. Perhaps respect and love would be a more appropriate way of saying it.
50+ Friends has really taken on a life of its own and that is as it should be. I, for one, am really proud of what it has evolved into. It is now a real team effort, and a grand team it is.
I must say that it saddens me to hear about, or see, from time to time one or two individuals being verbally attack others. Thank goodness that there is usually another member or two of our group present who will not allow this to continue. Good for them.
Before you accuse me of the same thing, lets look at "intolerance" just a bit. I use Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (copyright 1961) as my reference. It defines "intolerance" as "the quality or state of being intolerant" and "intolerant" as "unwilling to grant equal freedom of expression esp. in religious matters or other social, political, or professional rights" and "bigoted". From there I went to my computer and Microsoft Works Thesaurus. For "intolerance" it showed meaning as "bigotry" and synonyms as "prejudice, fanaticism, narrow-minded, dogmatism, racism and narrowness".
Lets take my lead in statement, "LET'S NOT TOLERATE INTOLERANCE, and change the last part so that it reads as follows:
LET'S NOT TOLERATE BIGOTRY, or
LET'S NOT TOLERATE PREJUDICE, or
LET'S NOT TOLERATE FANATICISM, or
LET'S NOT TOLERATE NARROW-MINDEDNESS, or
LET'S NOT TOLERATE DOGMATISM, or
LET'S NOT TOLERATE RACISM
If and when I see this type of thing occurring in one of the chat rooms, I will take it upon myself to step in and try and stop it. I hope that each of you would do the same. None of our members, or other chatters in any of the rooms we visit from time, deserve these kind of attacks. When any of us speak up against them all of us are stronger as a results.
Sorry about being somewhat "preachy" this time but I felt this was something that really needed to be said. I promise that next time I will lighten up and be a little less on the serious side.
Buck