The "four pillars" of the "house" or "rave" community are PEACE, LOVE, UNITY, and RESPECT. I'd always heard peace/love/unity around here (here being the East Coast) but it wasn't until I came in contact with Brian from San Francisco that I heard the fourth one, RESPECT.
And then suddenly it all came clear to me. You can't have peace, love, and unity without respect. And even more importantly, each individual is responsible for finding and maintaining and giving peace, love, unity, and respect. It isn't just handed to you. It doesn't just magically appear because you've arrived at a rave or taken some acid or ecstacy. You have to find it and generate it for yourself, and then GIVE IT AWAY to anyone and everyone to sort of "jump start" them into generating it. The "giving away" of it is what makes up, in my mind, the "vibe."
Peace is what you use to chill out when the sound system blows and the music stops for ten minutes. It's what you use when some idiot keeps bumping in to you while dancing. It's sort of like serenity and being calm. Shit happens, and you deal with it.
Once you have peace and love, unity follows in that you can appreciate other people and other things, and this appreciation allows you to work together with them, or spend time together with them, and otherwise support them, even if you don't always agree with them. A sense of something "bigger" than just yourself and your own pleasure is part of unity -- in the case of us on the list the "bigger" thing is an interest in the odd social phenomena known as "raving." Unity helps me to do things like throw good parties for the ne-raves list, even though there *are* people who are on the list and who might come to these parties who I'd rather not have anything to do with . . . it is in the spirit of greater unity that I chill with these feelings (peace again) and welcome everyone into my home so they can be together and have fun.
This, to me, is the key that is often missing in our scene. People get too much into flamage (and I admit, I've been guilty of this). People are more worried about being DISrespected by others, rather than concentrating on generating and giving respect. This is the most difficult one for me to explain, because I've had the least amount of time to think about it . . . . Respect includes things like NOT graffiting on walls at raves, picking up your trash, and giving whatever you can as a donation when the hat is passed at a free event. It also includes seperating yourself from that what you don't like, while allowing it to continue uninterrupted because people other than yourself are getting enjoyment from it (for example, take my feelings toward the majority of breakbeat: I really don't like it, so when it is played I go chill with some friends and wait until the set is over . . . I used to whine and complain, but then it sunk in to me that OTHER people were getting something from it, and by trying to supress their enjoyment I was showing extreme disrespect for them.)
Laura La Gassa laura@hyperreal.com