Lessons Learned Online
Some of the things I have learned online, much of it while going through 22 months of withdrawal from prescription drugs and routinely
going down in flames.
Fighting against the fighting rarely helps and usually just keeps the fighting alive.
Pissing on other people and treating them with disrespect while demanding that you and/or your friends (etc) should be respected proves
that you don't really value respect for all humanity: you are perfectly fine with a dog-eat-dog world as long as you and your friends are
the ones on the top of the pile. This does nothing to break the cycle of a disrespectful, uncaring environment. If one values a respectful
environment, the seeds of that can be planted by treating others with respect, even when they are being awful to you. (No, this doesn't mean
being a doormat. Being a willing victim also doesn't break the cycle of victim-victimizer. It actually feeds it.)
On a list aimed at offering support to people in extremely stressful situations, sooner or later someone is going to make a complete ass
of themselves. (I have certainly done plenty of that myself over the years.) They often have the best of intentions. Overlooking their sudden
case of severe foot-in-mouth disease and having a little compassion and patience is usually the best way to see a topic quietly die.
Attacking them when they are probably feeling vulnerable and needy will generally cause them to get really angry at the fact that this is a
support list and they aren't getting any support at all. Then it all goes to hell as everyone tries to jump into the fray and, while
intending to defend their friend and/or defend some ideal about what this list is all about, every last person promptly behaves offensively
because "the best defense is a good offense". Only, no, in this case it is not. "Defending" civilized behavior by being offensive and
trying to tell other people how to behave only further destroys an atmosphere of civilized behavior.
On most lists, there are a few people on list whose opinions set the tone for the entire list. If those few people all basicaly agree
with each other, then no other ideas can be expressed. If those people have very different world views, the list tends to line up to be
on one side or the other and you still can't suggest any truly new ideas. I prefer a culture where a free exchange of ideas is actively
encouraged. Acting like "you are either for me or against me" kills such an atmosphere. I have found that when such a culture can be
achieved, it provides a much richer source of support because if ten people speak up, you will get ten different ideas and ten different
experiences. The person who asked for help is likely to find several of them useful and will have more options to pursue.
I don't much
value a list that primarily offers emotional support. In my experience, when everyone is offering emotional support, it generally means
that no one has any practical ideas to offer. In my experience, if you help someone solve their problem or at least cope more effectively
with an unavoidable but stressful situation (like an upcoming surgery), their emotional pain will go away when their real problem gets better.
That's part of why I am so bad at trying to offer emotional support -- and I have no plans to get much better at it. I plan to continue to do
my best to offer practical suggestions for coping effectively with difficult situations.
27 November 2008 (Thanksgiving)
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