beurocracy and exclusivity in the caving community

[cap n chris]

Happy that's clarified. The thread now makes proper sense with its correct title.

And, yes, there is; but it's not surprising and not particularly onerous and that's just the way it is. In fact it's barely perceptible unless you're a non-BCA member, under 18 or a professional (whole new multi-page thread for each of these subcategories perhaps); networking helps since it's generally who you know, not what you know, that counts but t'internet has made access to caves the easiest it has ever been, ever, to adult club members. CNCC has made massive improvements as well and is a shining example to other regions.

 

[Fulk]

Thank you.

 

[Kenilworth]

I well know that there are active and healthy caving clubs and organizations. I'm talking about a different kind of community. In the traditional and ideal sense, a community is based on literal common ground. An actual specific physical piece of earth. The community would then include the ground and all of the things, including people, that it can support. People making up such a community must acknowledge a responsibility of care and mutual support of one another and of their common ground. In a good community, the place is the context for existence. The interdependency is complex and complete. The place cannot be damaged without damaging the community. The people cannot be hurt without hurting it. Every instance of shortsightedness, selfishness, greed, ambition, or violence will reciprocate into the ground or the people, thus the whole community. Such communities are careful and fragile and they are easily lost into the cowardice of "progress".

This is the concept I think of when I hear the word community. It's an idea that is important to me. I understand that there are looser definitions by which there certainly is a caving community. But those looser communities cannot hope to be anything rich and real and valuable without common ground. They can be powerful, certainly, but not sacred.

In order to say the truth more clearly, why can't we use other words than some diminished version of "community". The caving community is lots of things: organizations, clubs, events, freindships, projects, ambitions, love-affairs. Take some time, say what you mean.

I think we overuse the word community for reasons that have nothing to do with linguistic evolution. "Bicycling" "gay" "caving" "workout" "coffee-drinking" "cancer" and on and on, I think people simply want a place to belong. But a shared interest or condition is not enough to make the sort of place that we consciously or subconsciously want, that we need.

 

[mikem]

OED 2nd definition - the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.

We are a community, end of.

Mike

 

[alastairgott]

Can I read this thread in a flow chart, so I can see who's arguing with who.  :blink:

 

[Keris82]

Lol! Seems I caused a fair bit of controversy!  :-\

 

[mikem]

Did I mention you can't spell bureaucracy.... 

 

[droid]

I'm probably going to cause some controversy with these comments

 

[Kenilworth]

OED 2nd definition - the condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.

We are a community, end of.

Mike

The good ol' dictionary can be used to support almost anything. My argument is not about definitions, but that the word may suggest a reality that does not exist. Definitions as free as the above allow for silliness. For example, you and I, Mike, are members of the Male Community. We are both part of the Nose-Having Community, as is the possum smashed on the road out front (we should be mourning this loss of one of our comrades).

It is easy to draw forth the OED and take aimless slices at an argument you don't like, but a definition that reduces a word to meaninglessness is not sufficient to decapitate your opponent.

A common interest in caving, like a common interest in fishing, or tacos, or breasts, is too trivial a thing to support a community worth fighting for, or even referring to as a community.

 

[mikem]

Having a nose is hardly an attitude or interest. There are c. 6,OOO card-carrying cavers in the UK, that's less than 1 in 1O,OOO of the population & they are starting to emerge from the club tribalism of the last few decades into a more aligned "community" (the size of a large village or small town)...

 

[Kenilworth]

Having a nose is hardly an attitude or interest. There are c. 6,OOO card-carrying cavers in the UK, that's less than 1 in 1O,OOO of the population & they are starting to emerge from the club tribalism of the last few decades into a more aligned "community" (the size of a large village or small town)...

Most dictionaries (I haven't got an OED but probably it too) have a first definition something like:
"A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common." Noses are a characteristic I think. Anyway I bet there are more people interested in tacos than in caves.

National alignment is a step away from community, not toward it. A tribe is more of a community than a nation. The demands upon a community come from the place, not from a greater culture. Culture has to grow out of the place. Contempt for small places is the ruin of community.

I have witnessed small and close and active and interdependent and conscientious groups of cavers acting within and by their places in a way that comes close to the sort of community I'm talking about. They are not part of a larger "caving community" because they have no common physical ground with it, they do not need it, it does not need them. They would be amused to be called a community of themselves. They are best described as a group of friends, or even a family. Families are important building blocks of community, but a community cannot be made of families scattered over a country because a country is not a place it is a label. At its richest, the community is an ecological concept, not a political or cultural one. Cultural alignment approaches monoculturalism, one of the most powerful, destructive, and vulnerable ecological conditions.

I am in love with three pieces of ground, one where I live, one where my grandparents live, and one where they used to live. In all of these places there are many caves but almost no cavers. Alone or with my family, I explore and dig and survey and write in these places. We are not part of any caving community, no matter what the dictionary says. When I was an NSS member, and traveled to projects with caving clubs, I was not a member of a community. What am I?

 

[mikem]

Whilst Britain has only a limited number of caving areas, which are all quite small, & most of the cavers congregate in those - there are 3 club huts within about 1km of each other on top of Mendip & they do intermingle nowadays! Different to your experience I know...

 

[Ed]

Whilst Britain has only a limited number of caving areas, which are all quite small, & most of the cavers congregate in those - there are 3 club huts within about 1km of each other on top of Mendip & they do intermingle nowadays! Different to your experience I know...

Intermingle.......they've even been know to interbreed, even BPC and CPC 

 

[Kenilworth]

Which are also ecogical functions that might have something useful to teach.

 

[2xw]

What you are Kenilworth is an American who has no clue what he is talking about. The lessons you have learnt in the states do not work here.

 

[Kenilworth]

What you are Kenilworth is an American who has no clue what he is talking about. The lessons you have learnt in the states do not work here.

I'm searching for clues. I'm but not attempting to apply lessons to the UK, or the US. I can only apply them to myself and my own activity. What I am trying to do is to illustrate the relatively low value of The Entity of caving, and to understand the panic that some seem to feel when they perceive a threat to its health. Caving is not as different here as many seem to believe. Nearly identical conversations about the "dying community", about access, about bureaucracy, have been happening here for decades. It's all static that focuses on the least important parts of caving, and runs on ego, not legitimate concern for valuable things.

The simplest question, and one that has never been thoughtfully answered here is, "What would happen if all formal caving organizations vanished overnight?" The stock answer is that they would all gradually reappear. But what would be lost in the meanwhile? Identify those things and I think you'll find that they aren't anything like a community, and could stand to stay lost (with one exception).

I'm always amused at the use of the term American as an insult. I'm not sure if it's meant to excite some idiotic patriotic retaliation or to attack me based on my own stated distaste for American culture. Either way, I was born here. I'm doing the best I can.

 

[cap n chris]

What you are Kenilworth is an American who has no clue what he is talking about.

FWIW I believe Kenilworth to be probably the most thoughtful, incisive and deep-thinking contributor to this forum; perhaps the "no clue what he is talking about" epithet is better attributed to other less meditative, yet shouty and arm-wavy, people, of which there appear to be many; weight of numbers (i.e. democracy/mob rule) does not equal correctness.

 

[mikem]

Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others... (unless you find a truly benign dictator)

 

[2xw]

American isn't an insult in this context, just that you have clearly no experience of caving here, or our various groups and organisations. The cultures are very different. The very fact that if formal organisations died they would gradually reappear affirms that there is a cogent and relatively tight knit community. Something would arise again to serve its needs.

You would think him deep and incisive Cap'n, I've found you both equally vapid. Verbosity isn't a substitute for meaning.

 

[Kenilworth]

American isn't an insult in this context, just that you have clearly no experience of caving here...

None to speak of. My UK caving was done much like my US caving is... find a cave and go in. Certainly I have no first-hand knowledge of caving culture there. This forum is the only such education I've had, whatever good that is. Your invitation to come and witness the community leaves me wondering how my caving experience would be enhanced by my doing so.

The very fact that if formal organisations died they would gradually reappear affirms that there is a cogent and relatively tight knit community. Something would arise again to serve its needs.

The persistence of such organizations would not necessarily affirm the existence of a quality community. The question is, what needs are being served? I believe they are the needs for glory (or control, influence, affirmation) and convenience. These are needs I do not care about, that I in fact oppose.

  You would think him deep and incisive Cap'n, I've found you both equally vapid. Verbosity isn't a substitute for meaning

I'm certainly not deep or incisive... or vapid. I haven't got the rhetorical or linguistic skill to write tidily and powerfully but I'll persist in meandering if that's the only way I can express myself. While I don't always, or even often, agree with Chris, I do find him to be thoughtful and relatively unfettered, which is refreshing. This is a pretty bland forum, with usually no more than two opposing sides each taking seven thousand turns at saying the same two things.