unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

I know there's work in progress on the Code of Conduct, but I wanted to
address this topic here, because this is the only place in the Ubuntu
Context I've ever had this problem. In order for everyone to properly
understand the importance, I'll explain very briefly – and to the entire
community – why this is so important to me and why it makes me want to
step back from the community. But I primarily want to explain why I'm
here and why it's important that people like myself don't go away –
though everyone seems to want us to.

I begin reacting to religion a long time before my rational reasoning
begins.

Religion is such a strong topic for me. My grandmother was brought up as
extremely christian. And she's been a very powerful presense in my
family. On my fathers side, everyone's non-religious, I think. But my
grandmother was taught that everything nice was evil. Music, for
instance. And I'm a musician. And cards. I'm a card artist. And games.
I'm a pool player. Mostly everything I love, she was taught, is evil.
However, the final years of her life, after my mother died, she was very
lonely. And I spend large amounts of time with her, talking about life
and death. And it was so important to me that my efforts to talk
honestly to her, didn't affect her beliefs. That really took a
commitment. Because I was always confident that I would be able to
convince her that her beliefs didn't make any sense, but I didn't want
to take it away from her - even subconciously. . I respect my elders and
their religions. It doesn't mean they're right.

I've spent a very large part of my life talking about religion – all of
the big ones – though I've never been one myself. I can argue with
priests or mullahs or anyone. It is extremely interesting to me,
understanding what makes people think the way they do. Whether they're
different because of age, religion, sex or sanity, really doesn't matter
that much to me, as long as I truly understand. That's also why I want
to engage in the way people use computers. Because I don't only consider
them as tools. I consider them as a new part of our reality. In my inner
mind, I call it the hypersynapsis. I think it's bigger than computers
and bigger than the internet, but definitely not bigger than humans.

Ubuntu was never sold to me. I joined because it immediately clicked
with all of my strange personal vectors. I fight very hard for Ubuntu,
but I also defend Microsoft – simply because much of the things people
are saying, isn't true.

I hope I never have to defend my beliefs in any Ubuntu channel ever
again. Because it's the one and only time I do. And it feels wrong to
me, that I should be forced out of the community because of my
non-religious beliefs – weird as they may be.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad