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I think one of the more roughshod parts of me is that I carry quite a bit of frustration and anger from past altercations with mfs who talked a big talk & didn't do shit, and you can see it come out sometimes when i'm uncharacteristically harsh on people who remind me of them
I think like 90-95% of the time, I try to focus on what I want to see more of, be supportive and encouraging of people who are trying, etc. I haven't thought very much about whether I should try to forgive old "friends" I felt betrayed and disappointed by. probably, I guess. lol
but see the problem with fraudulent cowards is that there are negative externalities to their bullshit. they don't just hurt themselves, they pollute the commons, their indifference to meaning marginally lowers the value of all meaning!! Idk if people really appreciate this
and I was a kid who was very much dependent on the public commons. some kids don't have anybody to teach them how to act, how to behave, etc. the commons is all they have. and if the commons is full of shit, how do you think those kids end up? it's really sad and ugly stuff
and also the more untrustworthy the commons is, bc of frauds, the harder it is for honest actors to be trusted. this hurts the powerless & disenfranchised the hardest. when I said this when I had no audience, I had some friends who said I was just bitter. so ok, built audience
there is a parallel here when I was a nobody and I complained about the commons, people told me to git gud when I got good and complained about the commons... well nobody's really said anything yet LOL we can do better but shifting norms is painful, tiresome, uncomfortable https://t.co/UhFYI2CGgA
I can probably commit to figuring out a way to approach this whole thing with more of a sense of humor, deftness, lightness, be extra careful not to be cruel to the fraudulent cowards because they too are god's children etc etc... just thinking out loud idk
I believe in being kind, gracious, blah blah... but also, a fraud is a fraud and I don't think being euphemistic helps. grey area there actually allows frauds to keep frauding. taleb's kinda right when he says "if you see fraud and don't say fraud then you are a fraud", ykwim?
but you see even here things get messy, because what if I see fraud but it's not actually fraud? ah, now I am a false fraud-accuser. maybe I am a fraud myself? maybe we are all frauds? lmao. a few years ago I would have stressfully slinked away in confusion but I see more naunce
but still, I don't have any edicts or proclamations to make here with confidence. it's more like, everything is messy and most of us are trying our best, and some people are kinda sus. maybe they are trying their best too in some complicated way but some behaviors are corrosive,
i'm sure some people think i'm kinda sus too despite all my efforts (and they might even point at the volume of effort as evidence of sus, which is also kind of understandable, sigh lol what can you do). messy. we keep trying. try to be honest. issue corrections when we're wrong
I mostly just wish the global public commons was 10x, 100x, 1000x better for our kids than it currently is, and I believe it's actually possible, and I'm also kind of mad (and meta-mad) that some people are disproportionately responsible for most of the pollution in the commons
meta-mad bc I don't actually want to single out some subgroup of people as the problem, because that can get really ugly really fast. but I suppose if you flip it, it also means that if we focus on helping those people, it should cleanup the whole thing. but they are hard to help
ah well. just thinking out loud. for now I should still focus on helping the people I *can* help, and increasing everyone's executive capacity so we can keep doing more for each other and as a collective. I just always get sad thinking about the kids who have it worse
@mykola yeah I think funnily enough my usual approach probably actually works best, and my issue is that when someone sets off my threat alarm, I get more intense, going from "gentle curious friend" to "investigative journalist / detective" and that worsens my odds
@visakanv "I can't tell the difference between you and a fraud" https://t.co/cqklYiArHC