Social media presses everyone's limbic response buttons. I'm sorry people reacted like that. Like Internet gambling in the UK, we should all have to wait 48 hours before replying to any post we read. I'm sure anyone's ire would wear off by then.
Thanks for the support/sympathy, Stephanie :) Now that's an idea about a 48-hour lag between reading and replying - if they haven't already, someone should invent an app for serial offenders to install on their phones! It's completely countercultural though, when the whole thing with digital is its immediacy: instant responses, algorithms that preference engagement within the first hour/24 hours etc.
That's great news that they have introduced restrictions on gambling in the UK! It's a huge problem in Australia and it doesn't look like a lot of progress is being made to address it. Gambling losses are up +6.8% vs real wages -5.7%. Annual gambling losses of $31.5 billion exceeded combined government spending on aged care of $28.3 billion.
I have no comments on Charities. However, the first thought came to my mind when I read your article was that "the internet makes people more divisive". You think social media would accommodate different ideas and make the world more diverse, but no. Lots of people take opinions personally, and become angry and then attack those whoever disagree. Isn't it like dictatorship, not allowing different ideology, burning books, brainwashing people with unified ideas, even killing people who disagreed and expressed publicly their opinions? Is there any difference between the extreme left and the extreme right?
This also reminds me of a commercial about how to eat mix nuts. The two comedians argued if mix nuts should be eaten one by one, or a handful of mix ones put into mouth together. They both had good reasons, but couldn't convince each other, so they decided to post online and see people's opinions. This stirred the whole internet and people even protested on the street. The commercial is not at all exaggerating. See the world nowadays, how many people especially celebrities got cancelled and personal attach when they express some unpopular ideas?
I always believe the nature of human beings never changes over thousands of years of evolution. However, technologies exposes the nature so we can see ourselves more clear. We might have been always divisive, and internet helps us to see how divisive we were, we are and we will be.
Hey Ramona, thanks for taking the time to articulate your thoughts on this! It's sad and ironic that social media and the internet have these wonderful aspects that get warped and become really awful things - like what you say about diversity. It's there, but it's in multiple silos that become hostile to each other rather than a true diversity across the world. I agree there's an element of dictatorship at whatever extreme, whether "left" or "right". There's a great quote I read recently from Thomas Merton, who wrote back in 1949 about "the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong ... in the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong ... And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right ... etc."
So yes, in many ways none of this is new to human nature.
You'll have to share the link to that mixed nuts commercial if you have it - that's crazy! (And a great social experiment).
I love reading your blogs. They are always considered. Keep writing and don't over think the negative comments too much. I know from experience that that can be especially difficult but they can suck too much valuable time and steal too much joy. On the other hand I would say be prepared to battle these things out at times or just keep moving on!
Leaders need to keep speaking.
Your questions was valid and deserved to be answered. It's just unfortunate that so few people could do it respectfully.
That kind of mail in my box would be considered junk mail and go straight in the bin with the only a momentary guilty thought to the environmeny and the waste of paper it might be. I hoped it would be recycled!
Ange, thanks so much for your support and encouragement! It was sad that only a few people engaged respectfully without passing judgment on me.
I do want to be the kind of person who is willing to speak my mind and stand for things. I'm continuing to navigate the tension in, for example, the value of publishing a perspective that may upset some of my friends.
- At what point is that unloving and to what extent should friends assume my best intentions?
- Where is the line between being respectful and considerate vs caring too much what other people think?
- How do I know what is actually helpful to share in writing, publicly, online?
The best approach I've found so far is to share learnings or insights drawn directly from my personal experience rather than writing pure opinion (and also mostly avoid polemics).
Anyway, it's something that I will have to keep wrestling with! Which is maybe not such a bad thing, to regularly interrogate why I write what I write and to keep remembering who I'm writing for. Thanks again for being one of the people I write for :)
Social media presses everyone's limbic response buttons. I'm sorry people reacted like that. Like Internet gambling in the UK, we should all have to wait 48 hours before replying to any post we read. I'm sure anyone's ire would wear off by then.
Thanks for the support/sympathy, Stephanie :) Now that's an idea about a 48-hour lag between reading and replying - if they haven't already, someone should invent an app for serial offenders to install on their phones! It's completely countercultural though, when the whole thing with digital is its immediacy: instant responses, algorithms that preference engagement within the first hour/24 hours etc.
That's great news that they have introduced restrictions on gambling in the UK! It's a huge problem in Australia and it doesn't look like a lot of progress is being made to address it. Gambling losses are up +6.8% vs real wages -5.7%. Annual gambling losses of $31.5 billion exceeded combined government spending on aged care of $28.3 billion.
I have no comments on Charities. However, the first thought came to my mind when I read your article was that "the internet makes people more divisive". You think social media would accommodate different ideas and make the world more diverse, but no. Lots of people take opinions personally, and become angry and then attack those whoever disagree. Isn't it like dictatorship, not allowing different ideology, burning books, brainwashing people with unified ideas, even killing people who disagreed and expressed publicly their opinions? Is there any difference between the extreme left and the extreme right?
This also reminds me of a commercial about how to eat mix nuts. The two comedians argued if mix nuts should be eaten one by one, or a handful of mix ones put into mouth together. They both had good reasons, but couldn't convince each other, so they decided to post online and see people's opinions. This stirred the whole internet and people even protested on the street. The commercial is not at all exaggerating. See the world nowadays, how many people especially celebrities got cancelled and personal attach when they express some unpopular ideas?
I always believe the nature of human beings never changes over thousands of years of evolution. However, technologies exposes the nature so we can see ourselves more clear. We might have been always divisive, and internet helps us to see how divisive we were, we are and we will be.
Hey Ramona, thanks for taking the time to articulate your thoughts on this! It's sad and ironic that social media and the internet have these wonderful aspects that get warped and become really awful things - like what you say about diversity. It's there, but it's in multiple silos that become hostile to each other rather than a true diversity across the world. I agree there's an element of dictatorship at whatever extreme, whether "left" or "right". There's a great quote I read recently from Thomas Merton, who wrote back in 1949 about "the exaggeration of all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong ... in the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong ... And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right ... etc."
So yes, in many ways none of this is new to human nature.
You'll have to share the link to that mixed nuts commercial if you have it - that's crazy! (And a great social experiment).
Hey Hsu-Ann,
I love reading your blogs. They are always considered. Keep writing and don't over think the negative comments too much. I know from experience that that can be especially difficult but they can suck too much valuable time and steal too much joy. On the other hand I would say be prepared to battle these things out at times or just keep moving on!
Leaders need to keep speaking.
Your questions was valid and deserved to be answered. It's just unfortunate that so few people could do it respectfully.
That kind of mail in my box would be considered junk mail and go straight in the bin with the only a momentary guilty thought to the environmeny and the waste of paper it might be. I hoped it would be recycled!
Ange, thanks so much for your support and encouragement! It was sad that only a few people engaged respectfully without passing judgment on me.
I do want to be the kind of person who is willing to speak my mind and stand for things. I'm continuing to navigate the tension in, for example, the value of publishing a perspective that may upset some of my friends.
- At what point is that unloving and to what extent should friends assume my best intentions?
- Where is the line between being respectful and considerate vs caring too much what other people think?
- How do I know what is actually helpful to share in writing, publicly, online?
The best approach I've found so far is to share learnings or insights drawn directly from my personal experience rather than writing pure opinion (and also mostly avoid polemics).
Anyway, it's something that I will have to keep wrestling with! Which is maybe not such a bad thing, to regularly interrogate why I write what I write and to keep remembering who I'm writing for. Thanks again for being one of the people I write for :)