[Sca-cooks] OT- Input request from SCA BoD - Please Help!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

>prime reason they quit. The Society is supposed to be a refuge of honor and
>courtesy away from the unpleasantness of the mundane world.
>     Instead, they find that when it comes to power plays and personal feuds
>in the SCA, it's far worse than the real world; there, they have some form
>of legal protection. Here, the law means nothing, and personal connections
>mean everything. Almost all official SCA functions, including vendettas,
>occur in total secrecy, which is distasteful to most. But since there's
>nothing anyone can do about it, eventually they stop being members and
>sooner or later just go away. There's a fundamental disconnect between the
>populace and the SCA power structure that seems to be growing.
>     So if the Board wants to slow the hemorrhage of bitter, disillusioned
>former members, they should take some steps to address the state of politics
in the Society.

Any statistics available on the experiences of those people who have
gone on to profitable time spent in:

a) their local PTA and/or School Board
b) Boy or Girl Scouting
c) organized religions, Church Ladies Aid Societies, etc.
d) Alcoholics Anonymous or other self-help groups
e) local-level community action
f) living history/renn fairs
g) Culinary Historians of [Insert Place Name Here]
h) any social interaction with fellow students in more traditional
martial arts studies

These are, of course, all [randomly selected] activities which,
unlike the SCA, of course have no politics ;-). They all, however,
involve entry into a community of one sort or another. A common maxim
about avoiding politics, is you can do that if you become a hermit.
Until, of course, another hermit moves in on the next stone pillar,
cave, or what have you...

Politics is the science of living and working together with other
people. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but as with most
skills, it is almost never a matter of completely faultless and
otherwise perfectly skilled people whose lives are destroyed by The
Evils of Politics. I hear that many car accidents are caused by
drivers, too, and I would not be at all surprised to hear some member
of the al Qaeda complaining that so-and-so gets all the good
terrorism assignments because he sucks up to the boss.

I sincerely doubt there's anything the SCA can do, on an
institutional level, to help with the political problems caused by
people and consequently suffered by people, except not exist. Which,
BTW, is not as strange an option for a SCAdian as one might imagine.
Maybe we've simply gotten too big: some kingdoms are giving thought
to seceding and incorporating separately. This isn't a permanent
solution, but it might bring us, in some ways, back to the somewhat
simpler life we had, oh, ten or fifteen years ago.

But ultimately, one cannot really legislate good will. Sometimes
people do bad things, and sometimes the only thing you can do about
is stay out of the way, choose not to be one of them, and set an
example for those who follow.

Adamantius