The Harmony of Discord

This site generally gets refered to as Otherkin.net (or even abbreviated to OKN).
Which is a useful shorthand, but the site does have a full name that seems to get neglected
or pass unnoticed most of the time. This is not just Otherkin.net, it is
Otherkin.net: Harmony & Discord.

There is a reason for that.

When I created the site over a year ago, the online otherkin community was very factionalised. Many
instances of personal bickering had escalated into full scale cold wars between the various
groups.

At first I considered this a weakness, a problem to be fixed. Why couldn’t everyone just get along,
talk to each other, learn to understand one another. Surely then the fights would stop, the flamewars
cool down and life would be wonderful.

Over the last year, the flames have died down for the most part, many of the protagonists from eariler
conflicts are now good friends and life is indeed wonderful. Right?

Well, not really.

These days the brief flares are about whether someone put enough “In My Opinion” disclaimers in their
post, whether Elenari are the same as elenari and whether it’s alright to tell someone if you think that what they
claim to be does not seem to fit their traits. The flares generally trail off into dull debates with all
the passion of a damp squid, and the original conversation is lost in the morass.

So if you want an interesting conversation these days, you generally are not going to find one on any
of the populous lists. The “otherkin community” isn’t. The fire and the magic are lost, swamped under
a thousand little bickering emails.

To come back to the begining, it’s called Harmony and Discord for a reason.

The reason is that dissonance, discord, disagreement is a good thing. As much as we need peace, we also need
strife. If we don’t argue, debate, disagree, how do we learn from each other? If we don’t occasionally scream
and yell at each other, do we actually care about what we say and do? Discord comes from disagreeing on something
you feel passionate about.

We need that passion. We need that dispute. We need to get so involved in our lives that sometimes we clash.

We also need calm. We need to find common ground. We need to get so involved in our lives that sometimes everything
just comes together.

Feel free to disagree. That is the point after all.