No, i dont want to offend anyone with this post so plz bare with me on this.
In my opinion zero tolerance can be a danger too.
Let me try to explain the view of a dutchie
Mind you, english in not my native language so i could be confusing here.
Holland or The Netherlands are known for their tolerance right? And i always thought it is a charm, to be able in your own country to encounter this many cultures.
Then came 9-11. To be perfectly honest i was shocked beyond belief.
First of course due to the devistation and secondly, but this i realized later, why?
Yes, i know, it sounds too common. This phrase sprang to mind and until this day i am not able to shake it: "Whatever happened to the value's of humanity?"
Then the murder on Theo van Gogh was a fact, so we went zero tolerance too.
In the case of terrorism, i dont pretend to know anything that could be of use to fight it.
But i do know this: Communication is now and always has been the key to avoid situations wich have a breedingground for misunderstanding and everything that can follow out of that, when the particular situation is not kept under control.
The control factor in my view would be communication. I even have a fairly recent example for this:
On a Gaming forum, where i have some powers, people started posting about a clan war going on. This happend on the servers where they played the game.
On the servers however, i dont have any powers what so ever. First thing I did was sit back and look at the situation at hand. To me, at that time, the only thing i could do was get online and find out what the problem was.
Which was as follow:
When you play and a higher level character joins your party or walks by where you are fighting, the monsters respawn at the highest level. Not really a problem unless you play hardcore and the level differnce is so high your character is bound to die.
This was mostly the case, besides the fact this was going on for a while now and the harrasment between players back and forward has gone out of hand. The only thing possible was to communicate, wich was fun since I am dutch and the clan inolved was Russian.
No, my russian is not that good.
With the help of more clans we started playing with the russian people and communicated to them what could happen if they kept behaving like this to our characters.
It took me almost a month, but with the help of the other clans the situation was resolved. This help they provided was nothing more than being able, and more inportant willing, to play/ talk with the Russian people.
Back to Spocks post.
I noticed that he made this post at the beginning of the year.
We all know what happend after that.
Did it help? could be my question then.
Are we as humans, where we do live, one year later, feeling more safe then before due to zero tolerance?
Personally i have to say no, I'm not. What I do miss, since the zero tolerance attitude has become a norm in Holland, is the fact that the standard communication has been replaced with no communication.
In my oppinion this could be he trigger for more trouble. Why? you might ask...
I'm not convinced this terrorist situation will be the end of this earth and its community's as we know it. I mean, i dont think we as humans, will go out into the universe or blow up the earth pretty soon, therefore we probably have to keep going on this globe as we do now.
So, plz someone tell me how are we to re-accept those who are different from us now? At some point I honestly think we need to communicate and tolerate people again who we think are the terrorists this time.
With a zero tolerance attitude here in Holland I know it is going to be harder then it should be, and trust me, I think it is difficult enough to begin with.
Plz dont get me wrong, I fully agree that there has to be done something, I'm just not sure if this would be the way.
And again, this is not me offending someone, but with the Christmas time ahead, I have found that it maybe the best time of the year to reflect on these things, it is just my oppinion as a Dutch person.
edit; I know I did something wrong, what is it with that help smile?
[Edited for spelling/grammar - Spock]