Traumwind - self-organisation breeds an helpful environment

One very nice thing about the social side of BlogWalk 2.0 was the fact that I always found a helpfull hand when I needed it, and I felt very integrated even when my handicap did show.

Nice also to see how this group integrated Siegfreid whose handicap is one of mobility and could have made participating in a BlogWalk esp. difficult for him. But there was always someone to help him also and see to his specific needs.

I think it is one of the great strengths of such an 'informal' meeting that self-organization does not only strech to topics and speaking-time, but also furthers social cooperation and tolerant responsibility for the fellow participants. Well I guess it was also due to the fact that the group was a special mix of special people... But I'm fairly sure than in a more strict and formal setting (authorian organisation) it would have been less likly to be such an helpfull environment. People tend to lay social/organisational responsibilities on the shoulders of the authorities in such situations. Self-organization let's individuals actively (and freely) take up reponsibility for fellow participants. This is also true for things like language barriers etc.

Now if the organizers had taken a more pre-organized approach, they would have had a hard time trying to carter to the individual needs of everyone, and to a high percetage they would have been likely to either fail completly, actually anoy those they were trying to help, or making it less enjoyable for a large number of participants. But by relying on self-organization there was a healthy air of spontaneous helpfullness, given freely and not interrupting or hindering anybody.

Pre-arranging special modes of comduit, special arragements for handicapped participants etc. all really help to achieve one thing: they highten the awareness of 'difference', they focus the awareness on the handicap itself, and thereby actually deepen the divide. Ideal is to allow for spontaneus helpfullness which mostly helps to make the handicap less obvious and thereby make the hanicapped far more integrated. Integration needs to hide differences, to make them not important. So many attempty to 'integrate handicapped' tend to focus on the differences...

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