Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktThe problem is: people who need to get after other people, one way or another. They wreck it for everybody. The people they run off are easy to run off and those are almost always the people worth having.
The solution, a zebra, someone with a whistle? Well, someone needs to make people who enjoy attacking other people go away. It seems like the hardest task to me. Or is it?
You can always tell if someone is trying to lay bait for an attack, they set up some specious premise, or at least, illogical. Knock that chip off my shoulder, I dare you! If the conversation doesn’t go their way, they come back harder and eventually get personal. That is an easy pattern to recognize.
It can’t be a love fest, there has to be disagreement or there is no point. But the rules have to be strict. It is possible to have ongoing, long term, civil disagreements, that is the organizing principle.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
Hi -Maybe we can all learn as we go, and I thought the idea was for all of us to be zebras.We brought some of the old grievances with us from the Plumline and instead of beginning fresh we fell back into old patterns of behavior. Since then most of us have been trying a little harder to think before we hit the post button but we had already lost so many of the good commenters. I'm not really interested in hearing my own thoughts, I'm pretty predictable.Perhaps our goals are too different and the experiment is doomed to failure. I still think it's worth a shot, but we need more people and even more diversity to really learn anything here about ourselves and each other.
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First, I refer you to rule # 5 under the Rules of Engagement. As follows: 5. Take it down a notch. People will slip, and say things that are rude, or absolutist, or hubristic. Your role, in that situation, should probably be to talk them down off the ledge, not get up there with them. Just sayin'.A corollary might be to note that we don't have a fire brigade or a secret service prepared to jump out in front of every bullet. And sometimes folks may not even catch a given insult or overstep,you may have to bring it up for discussion. I've gotten offended and gone off in a huff myself, before, because I don't want to explain why I left in a huff. Perhaps because sometimes it's hard to explain why I have a really good reason to be offended.I think there are going to be rough patches, but I'm guessing whichever persons offended you also have a lot to contribute to the conversation. Part of the goal, as I see it, is to try and get those folks to try and change the tone (I include myself in needing to do better there), but it's not going to happen by magic, and it's not going to happen overnight.Some folks are going to want to bail more quickly than others. I get that. But I'm lmsinca, I think it's worth it to give it a shot.And frankly, if anyone is going to be evicted, other than self-evicted, it's going to involve time and discussion and second and third chances if I have anything to say about it. Which I will, until such time as I'm voted off the island.
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Goodnight you guys, I hope you're back shrink
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Hey, shrink.Might it work to just say, hey, I think that's over the line, let's not personalize it? Defuse.You are a shrink; you should be good at it.I have been under the belief that we would all help maintain the peace and think that it should work that way. I honestly didn't think that what drove you away was over the line, but if you felt it was, I guess that's fair.
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I don't know why Shrink bailed ( can't, he never said, that I saw), but I don't think any of us need to be telling anybody that they have no right to comment or talk about something in an open dialog. It's completely inappropriate, in my opinion, and easily as insulting as any name you can call a person. It's a conversation torpedo, and should only be pulled out if the goal was to sabotage the conversation. But, like I said, there are going to rough patches. If were gonna cook in our kitchen, there's gonna be a little heat. And we've got to help the little red hen mix her dough if we want to eat the bread. IMO.
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Most important referee: you. If someone's stepped over the line, call them out on the specific thing they did. Preferably without launching into a diatribe about how we always do this and what creeps certain unnamed somebodies are and everybody here is falling down on the job, etc. While it's hard to convince someone they've stepped over the line ( they were just stating an obvious fact, they think), if we don't discuss thecwhy and here for ( including, especially, the most aggrieved part), refereeing isn't possible. Not in this context, I don't think. We disagree on many things, but this project is collaborative, first and foremost. Refereeing will have to be done the same way, and that means the person who committed the foul gets a say in the call.
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Kevin: but I don't think any of us need to be telling anybody that they have no right to comment or talk about something in an open dialog.Has anyone here actually doone this? I haven't seen it happen.
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Scott,I'm exaggerating. I said I needed to work on such things as much as anybody. What you actually said was: "Your unbridled cynicism (I am willing to call it that) does not serve you well, shrink. Especially regarding things with which you have no experience."Which is actually a softer touch than I was remembering, but that tells me something about the difficulty of providing constructive criticism in this kind of forum right there.I think the implication might come off as nastier than you mean it, even so, although I disagree with what I *think* Shrink may have been extrapolating, even if one was determined to take the comment in the worst way possible.Anyway, I'm not sure if there is much point to pursuing the conversation, as I get the feeling Shrink's post was a drive-by. Stirring the pot with no real intention to stick around. Hope I am mistaken.
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