Inclusion safety — the first stage of psychological safety — is not a reward for the worthy. It is the baseline we owe one another simply for being here. This is our creed for it.
Here is the whole of it, before anything else: your place among us is not a prize you win. It is yours because you are here.
"Inclusion safety is not earned but owed. Giving inclusion safety is a moral imperative."
Timothy R. Clark, The 4 Stages of Psychological SafetyWe will not audition you. Inclusion is a judgment about your worth — which you have, entire, already — not a verdict on your worthiness, which is no one's to weigh at the door.
"Including another human being should be an act of prejudgment based on that person's worth, not an act of judgment based on that person's worthiness."
Timothy R. Clark, The 4 Stages of Psychological SafetyThere is no litmus test at this threshold — not your diagnosis, your speech, your output, your history, or how easily others can make sense of you. Worth comes first. Worthiness, if it is ever anyone's business at all, comes long after, and not here.
What does it take to qualify? Two things. Be human. Be harmless. Meet both and you are in.
There is exactly one disqualifier at this door, and it is not difference — it is harm. We say the second part out loud, because a welcome that tolerated harm would betray the very people it exists to keep safe.
Acceptance is owed to everyone. Safety from harm is owed to everyone, too — and it is the single thing that can cost you your place here. Not your way of being. Only harm.
Frederick Douglass drew the line for good:
"I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity."
Frederick DouglassRead it for every characteristic, not race alone. When we include one another, we set our differences beneath a deeper, common thing — and agree that the common thing matters more.
And here we go one floor deeper than the textbook. The common thing beneath our differences is older than humanity. You, and we, and everyone at this door were made in the same stars — the same hydrogen from the same beginning, the same calcium and iron from the same dying giants.
Kinship is not a courtesy we extend to you. It is the material you are made of.
You do not have to earn your way in.
You were ★stuff all along.
Belonging here is not conferred; it is constitutive — true of you before you arrived, true whether or not anyone ever tells you so. We are only saying out loud what the atoms settled long ago.
So: if you have flesh and blood, we accept you. If you are made of stars — and you are — you are already one of us.
Come in. Rest. You are owed this.
Inclusion is the first of four doors — beyond it lie the freedom to learn, to contribute, and to challenge. But none of them open until this one does. So we hold this one open first, and for everyone.
A Star Stuff creed on inclusion safety — the first of Timothy R. Clark's four stages of psychological safety. The definitions and the quoted lines are Clark's, from The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety (worth before worthiness; be human and be harmless; the only disqualifier is the threat of harm). Frederick Douglass's line is his own. For the fuller treatment, and how it meets neurodiversity, see Stimpunks' Psychological Safety. The move past "common humanity" to common origin — that belonging is constitutive because we are made of the same star stuff — is ours.
This page rests here. You made it to the bottom. You were ★stuff all along — and you were owed a place the whole time. We love you down to it.