A Community Health Advisory

The illness is exclusion. I have seen a few reports of it recently. Exclusion takes many forms and is known by several names. The course of this illness is not a pleasant one. It can start off very benign with a comment such as, “What can you expect from those people?” It can start to escalate with, “I prefer not to be around that type of people.” It grows quickly into, “I can’t understand why people like that are allowed into places like this.” In its chronic stages, “We actively discourage that sort of person from coming around.” Next there are the terminal stages, “We only want right thinking people here.” In the end, a community becomes so infected with exclusion that it ceases to exist.

There is no need to fear an epidemic of exclusion in the Sagacity community. In the main, the community is very healthy. I am reporting only sporadic and easily controlled outbreaks. I am also pleased to announce that there are extremely effective curative and preventative measures against this illness. Those measures are called inclusion and tolerance. They are available in abundant free supply at any Sagacity event. Although the cure is freely available, I will remind my readers that some previously eliminated illnesses are on the increase not because of a lack of vaccination but an unwillingness to use it. We have to use the measures at our disposal for them to be effective.

This illness must be taken seriously. I have seen it infect and destroy communities in several areas. If left unchecked, it can wipe out a community in as little as two months. Even communities that have taken years to build can be attacked with a vengeance by this illness.

There are those that strongly advocate exclusion. This is to be expected. These people are the carriers of the illness. These advocates prefer the clandestine gatherings of a carefully selected few. That is precisely the result, a gathering of a few. Eventually even those few fail to gather. There are no new ideas, no fresh experiences, and no stimulation. There is only a boring sameness. That is self-defeating. The same thing could be accomplished standing in a room where all the walls, ceiling, and floor were mirrors. Not my idea of a fun group of people. Although I would welcome evidence to the contrary, I have yet to see any clandestine exclusionary group actually grow and flourish. I have seen several die and become forgotten.