My experience at a recent exhibition

[beast66606]

Pitchforks ready everyone ?

 

Personally I would like to hear both sides of the story before we get the lynching party organised - Andy Y has offered his services and could arbitrate if necessary and make the ultimate decision. 

[AY Mod]

4 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

Pitchforks ready everyone ?

 

Personally I would like to hear both sides of the story before we get the lynching party organised - Andy Y has offered his services and could arbitrate if necessary and make the ultimate decision. 

 

I'm already doing what's appropriate.

 

Naming and shaming wouldn't be wise without evidence or witnesses.

[Dagworth]

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

Prejudice only becomes a problem when THINKING is translated into ACTIONS that affect others adversely.

 

I will openly admit to being prejudiced against certain groups / persuasions, but I avoid any actions that might offend those persons.

 

I do not feel the slightest guilt about the opinions that I hold, and I am entitled to hold them, despite loudly voiced opinions to the contrary.

Great post from someone who runs a business in this hobby...

i trust all those that are likely to be on the receiving end of your prejudiced thoughts now know to spend their money elsewhere.

 

Andi

[Reorte]

59 minutes ago, Neil said:

Do we only object to the notion of groupthink when it doesn't align with our personal point of view? This could be either because we don't agree with the substance of the issue or because we don't like the notion that social norms should be or can be collectively agreed upon. Further question, isn't groupthink the basis of democratic governance?

Quite often I think yes, we do. And we need to watch ourselves for doing that.

 

Democracy (at least when it works properly) is the opposite IMO, because it has to engage with everyone and not just the group, even (up to a point) some people we might prefer to hold our noses at. Anything political is treading on dangerous ground here but I think the worst governments are often the ones with the biggest majority, precisely because of this.

 

I certainly don't claim to be a saint in this regard, but I'll try to use myself as an example nonetheless. There are numerous things about modern Britain that I really, really hate, they make me very upset and depressed, but as long as they're put in place by a democratically elected government it's right that they're here (well at least as long as it's not gone off in the opposite direction to the platform it was elected on). Doesn't mean I can't and won't voice my opinion on them, quite strongly - the democratic aspect means that I've got the right for that voice to be heard (in general, not in every situation, e.g. since it's off topic for here the mods could rightly say "stop talking about this.") That's the mechanism for avoiding groupthink. It's clearly not perfect but it does try to deal with the problem.

 

Do I think society is making a colossal mistake in many areas? Yes. But what's a better method than accepting that social norms should be collectively agreed on? Oh, we'd all be tempted to force in whatever we think they should be if we could I'm sure, and I'm not sure that I could resist that temptation, but there's no way I could say that would be right.

 

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

I'm not prejudiced in any way. I'll even talk to those who model the GWR...

[beast66606]

Just now, Peter Kazmierczak said:

I'm not prejudiced in any way. I'll even talk to those who model the GWR...

 

Sorry Peter - next you'll tell us you read - and believe - the Gruniard.

[009 micro modeller]

15 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

Personally I would like to hear both sides of the story before we get the lynching party organised

Perhaps not the most tasteful phrasing, given the historical connotations.

 

15 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

I've have had to remove some people from here over the years for being 'like that' and posting inappropriate comments which they fail to remove or apologise for; even well known people who had a 'Don't you know who I am?' attitude.

That was what I was thinking with the situation at the start of this thread. It doesn’t sound as if the layout operators are particularly well known, have had articles about their layout published etc. etc. but what if it did involve someone more prominent?

 

15 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

I'm a member of numerous rail and local image/history groups on Facebook. In the former, posting an interesting old pic is generally met with a 'things were better then' nostalgia approach and the latter with 'things were better then' approach often leading to racist or socially divisive comments from judgmental bigots.

This is partly why there is concern from some people within the heritage sector about relying too much or exclusively on ‘nostalgia’ to get people to engage with heritage sites (there’s a few good articles about this, mostly relating to ‘living history’ sites like Beamish, though that’s a bit off-topic for this thread).

 

9 minutes ago, Dagworth said:

Great post from someone who runs a business in this hobby...

i trust all those that are likely to be on the receiving end of your prejudiced thoughts now know to spend their money elsewhere.

 

Andi

Although it’s carefully phrased so that we don’t know which groups are actually affected, so maybe we should all assume we might be - that’s more potential customers gone though.

 

13 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

 

I'm already doing what's appropriate.

 

Naming and shaming wouldn't be wise without evidence or witnesses.

I wonder whether something roughly analogous to the Kick It Out campaign in sport would ultimately be more beneficial than focusing on one incident. After all, as you say at the moment the two exhibitors can potentially just deny that they said anything.

[pete_mcfarlane]

3 hours ago, Mike_Walker said:

I totally agree, although it's a different environment, the same happens when talking with visitors to Swindon Panel, all sorts of interesting conversations are had often wandering far from the subject of railway signalling.  Not unlike your average RMweb thread...

 

The latest MRJ has some rather lovely examples of this, when the builder of Drws-Y-Nant took the layout to the Bala show. Well worth reading.

 

 

 

 

 

[jjb1970]

In an odd way I've have given more thought to these issues over the last three-four years living overseas than before as I have had more interaction with such views. When renting a home in Singapore you are asked to list your race among other questions, several property agents were delighted to receive expressions of interest from us and openly said a white man with your job and a Chinese wife is a dream ticket, any landlord will green light you. Now clearly in this case it benefited me but it is a very revealing question. Something which may seem counter intuitive is that as a white man I am outside the racial divide here, as the racial tension they have is between the three indigenous ethnic groups (Chinese majority, Malay and Indian minorities) where you do hear some nasty comments. I don't want to give the impression that this is a country inhabited by bigots and in many respects relations between the three groups are a model of harmony compared to many places and the idiots are a minority as in Britain. It's a wonderful country but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that certain things have made me think about race issues in a way I hadn't done before.

[jjb1970]

At a very personal level, perhaps my benchmark for intolerance is rather different to most. Mrs JJB (not yet Mrs JJB) and I were dating in the late 90's when I was based in Indonesia for a while. When their economy imploded in the 1997 Asian economic crisis there were rampaging mobs hacking Chinese to death (literally, not figuratively). Thankfully we are far from that in Britain (or Singapore), but this is why the issue over thought not mattering is relevant. The reason such behaviour can erupt is because people think in a certain way which allows things to explode under the right circumstances. And anyone who thinks Britain is immune from such savagery is deluded, in the developed European bubble we might like to think such things happen in lesser countries but you don't have to look very hard to find barbarous episodes in Europe (nor is it ancient history).

[rob D2]

2 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

Sadly that figure is incorrect; there are people who are 'like that' - the best that I can do is to ensure this place does not allow it. Yes, I've have had to remove some people from here over the years for being 'like that' and posting inappropriate comments which they fail to remove or apologise for; even well known people who had a 'Don't you know who I am?' attitude. I've even encountered it from within the trade.

 

  

 

I'm a member of numerous rail and local image/history groups on Facebook. In the former, posting an interesting old pic is generally met with a 'things were better then' nostalgia approach and the latter with 'things were better then' approach often leading to racist or socially divisive comments from judgmental bigots. Where I see the latter I report it group admins and if they don't take action against it I just leave the group.

Maybe I got the % wrong but you’d have more exposure to this than me Andy.

 

I think we’ve said what we can . We’ve supported the OP, you are looking into it .

Some of the more kangaroo court suggestions of what to do make me distinctly uneasy . 

[Reorte]

48 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

...Thankfully we are far from that in Britain (or Singapore), but this is why the issue over thought not mattering is relevant...

How much thought matters is an interesting one. The idea that it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't manifest in anything outside the head is true enough, but then I think  your point is that if the thought is there there's always the chance that it will.

 

There was a post a little while back about thought, but the person who made it also made the point that he consciously tried to avoid any negative prejudices he had from showing. That could be someone with a mask but it sounded much more like someone aware of their own negative instincts and tried to do something about them. That sort of thinking isn't a problem at all, because the fundamental thought there is don't have a go at people, even if a bit of you wants to. It's very different from someone who basically wants to but is managing to hold it back some of the time. We've all got our own shortcomings after all, you can never remove all of them but you can be aware of them and want to try to avoid them or work around them, and wanting to do so is admirable. It's wanting to give in to them that's the problem.

[PaulRhB]

48 minutes ago, rob D2 said:

Some of the more kangaroo court suggestions of what to do make me distinctly uneasy . 

Yes the OP was far more restrained and thoughtful, if understandably upset which prompted the posting. 

Beast is right to the extent that in the circumstances the OP’s moderate approach is the most appropriate response as he cannot provide more than his own evidence, his comment was mainly aimed at the thread not the OP I suspect. 

edit added after 009 modellers response: 

There’s a danger in jumping to demands to name and shame without the balance of wider evidence. While I believe the OP, and support his posting it, I also am very wary of pack outrage relying on single unverified sources from seeing it happen at work. A group of us stood up for someone vilified and were told it was dangerous for our jobs by a manager! The fact was we knew the ‘victim’ in that case was engineering other support from other disgruntled for other reasons. He was overheard explaining his plan by two of us and despite no way of verifying it to the investigators it set our minds to fight the lies woven into other people’s moans. 
I even got subjected to a phishing interview and trying to get me to incriminate me, for something fortunately the interviewers quickly realised was untrue. It took a lot not to retaliate with grievances against them to further muddy the fight as I realised they had also been set up. 

So I think best to leave the calls for action to the OP to continue and for the rest of us call out such behaviour on the spot in similarly dignified but not inflammatory way. 

Edited May 15 by PaulRhB

[cctransuk]

2 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Great post from someone who runs a business in this hobby...

i trust all those that are likely to be on the receiving end of your prejudiced thoughts now know to spend their money elsewhere.

 

Andi

 

Sorry - that attitude IS discriminatory in itself. You want people to discriminate against me, even though you have no idea which groups or persuasions I am prejudiced against, and even though I have said that I do not allow my prejudices to affect the way I interact with those groups.

 

You are saying, in so many words, that I should be sanctioned for admitting that I am human, and do not like everyone in the world equally.

 

Anyone that pretends to have no prejudices is a liar; you are, by your own admission, prejudiced against me.

 

As I said, when we attempt to control or judge others' thoughts, we get into VERY dangerous territory!

 

CJI.

[woodenhead]

Boy I wish I could simply hide this thread.

 

Woodenhead - a mixed race individual.

[andyman7]

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

I'm a member of numerous rail and local image/history groups on Facebook. In the former, posting an interesting old pic is generally met with a 'things were better then' nostalgia approach and the latter with 'things were better then' approach often leading to racist or socially divisive comments from judgmental bigots. Where I see the latter I report it group admins and if they don't take action against it I just leave the group.

The classic example of that is when someone posts a photo of the railway from the 60s and someone else almost inevitably says something like 'back before the railway was run by bean counters'; their rose-tinted spectacles somehow having managed to filter the actions of Dr Beeching out  🙂

Edited May 15 by andyman7
spelling

[AY Mod]

"Time for tea" said Zebedee.

[ianmianmianm]

Quick update from me - club contacted and I am happy with their response. Nothing further to do from their end - good actions on their part but shall not be naming either party - it's being andled offline.