  Spiritual
This week: Do Not Do Harm Edited by: NaNoKit  
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Our Writing.Com community shows that people can get along. How do we spread that to the wider world?
This week's Spiritual Newsletter is about hatred and violence, and how we can stop it.
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Have you been watching the news? Have you been browsing the Internet? Grim, isn’t it? There’s all this hatred and division out there, and I know that I have spoken out about it several times, including in this newsletter, but it isn’t good.
Thank goodness for Writing.Com. We get along on here. It doesn’t matter about your gender, or your age, or your nationality, or your faith, or your romantic preferences, or anything. We’re a friendly bunch. We care about the other, and we care about helping the other.
If we can manage this without any problems, why can’t the wider world? If we can have a safe place on here – a place that has been safe for 17 years now – why can’t peace last outside of this website? It baffles me. It shouldn’t be difficult. If people valued what we value when we hang out on Writing.Com, everyone would be so much happier.
When we interact with the other, we do so with respect. Any differences between us are either irrelevant or met with a genuine interest and a willingness to learn from the other. Helping, sharing and support are seen as good things, things that we do and enjoy doing. We don’t drag others down. We build them up instead.
We have fun, we laugh, and any minor irritations are smoothed over very quickly. We do not accept bullying. We do not tolerate anyone being mean. We may not all share the same opinions, but that’s okay. We can hang out regardless. There is far more that unites us than what divides us.
Yet, out there in the wider world people call the other names over anything and everything. People might decide who you are and attack you for it, even if they are completely wrong. A friend of mine gets sent horrible tweets for hours on end, several times a week, and as soon as she blocks an account new ones will pop up. Why? Because she is critical of how people on low incomes are treated, and people with disabilities, and people with health problems, and she feels that certain policies are damaging. She gets accused by one side of being a liberal (insert not very nice terms here), and threatened because of it, and by the other side of being a right-wing (insert further not very nice terms) and gets abused by them. I have been threatened and abused for being a woman, for being an immigrant, for having political views. I have been told that I will burn in hell because whilst I believe in God, I don’t follow any particular religion. My support of marriage rights for same-gender couples doesn’t help there.
Beyond the Internet there’s violence. And terrible suffering. And for what? Why are people so awful to one another? Why all the destruction?
We are capable of better. This community is evidence of that. All we need to do as a species is to follow one simple rule: Do not do harm.
We do not lose anything if we refuse to harm others. Instead, we gain a lot. We gain a safer world. One in which everyone can thrive. It would mean the end to violence, the end to abuse, the end to treating anyone as though they are somehow less.
People would be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone would have a decent standard of living, because anything less than that would be doing harm.
Will it ever happen? I often get accused of being an idealist, but I cannot see why it can’t. All that it takes is for people to decide to not do harm. I can decide that. You can decide that. The more people who make that decision, the better the world will become.
I have made that decision. You’re free to join me. 
NaNoKit
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In line with the subject of this newsletter, I want to highlight the following important contests:
If you enjoy the Fall, come check out the 5-day mini challenges in:
If you want to express yourself beyond a lower content rating:
And if you need something a little more light-hearted:
There is a new poetry contest in town:
And if you've read a good item, why not do something nice for its author and nominate them:
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Last but not least, this activity is raising funds for the Quills:
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The Spiritual Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in!
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Spiritual Newsletter Team.
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Spiritual: October 04, 2017 Issue [#8535]
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