Soundtrack in my head:  Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band"

Here it is, Valentine’s Day, and everyone talking about love.  Usually, it’s the romantic kind people talk about today, but considering that I’m currently unhitched in any way, shape or form, I find myself also thinking a lot about other types of love, such as the love of one’s neighbor and of humanity.  

In this blog, I am a strong advocate of Internet freedom and I oppose any effort to control or censor Internet content in any way.  By the same token, I have also spoken out strongly against using one’s blog or other medium—either electronic or otherwise—to inflict humiliation on another human being.  I spoke out most strongly against the public humiliation of former astronaut Lisa Nowak.  It was bad enough that the Florida authorities and the media humiliated her with the sordid yet unnecessary details they chose to reveal about her.   But the sheer volume of people making fun of her and make jokes at her expense was unreal.  A large source of this humiliation was the blogosphere that I otherwise would normally be quick to defend.

The other day, I happened to click on Lisa’s Chaos (no relation whatsoever to the astronaut) and saw this little tag that said “Kind Blog” and I had to click it.  On it was a statement saying the following:

“By posting this badge, I'm declaring that in addition to humour, intelligence, wit, sadness, snarkiness, passion, exuberance, peace, stillness, excitability, anger or any other emotion you may witness on my site:

"1)    I will never intentionally hurt other people, whether I know them or not, whether they blog or not, whether they're celebrities or not, either through my words or my images. It's just not my style; and

"2)    I hope that by the time you've clicked away from my site, I've helped in some way to make your day just a little bit better.

"Signed,

I think this is great.  I could not have found a better set of words to express what I think, (though I prefer the American spelling of "humor") and I like that this notion is being pushed not through force, regulation, or the rule of law, but through example.  So I decided that this tag absolutely had to be on my website.  I would also recommend this to fellow bloggers—fellow Baha'i bloggers in particular, but really any blogger who cares about how they affect others, and what kind of world they are creating through their actions.  

Plus the tag looks cool, increases the palette of colors on this page, and provides a nice, chill counterpart to the big honking “Save The Internet” tag that I also keep on my site.   Any other bloggers want to join me in my “fashion statement?”