Matt extrapolated on a useful mantra, "it is not always safe to care":
When I respond to people's posts, it is because I'm letting down my guard to
extend some caring. The extent to which a person is sincerely trying to
understand another person's point of view and is truly open to it is a function
of care. I don't care about everybody's viewpoint anymore: people who seem to
me more concerned about rhetorical grandstanding than a mutual conversation
with me are people I've decided to systematically avoid, because in opening
myself up by caring about them enough to try and understand them, I've
regularly been slapped across the face. The people I talk _to_ now are people
I think it is worth talking to. ...
The ability to sense sincerity and openness in writing is difficult. The
history of the MD is a record of people misreading other people's level of
sincerity and openness. It is also a history of misunderstanding, and a
history of people being open only to be slapped and then slapping another who
was trying to be open, and--most tragic of all--a history of pairs of
individuals who are open and get slapped, and then trade places, with the
slapper now ready to be open, but getting slapped by the other whose face still
stings.
dmb says:
This has a very interesting tension in it. It is both an essay on the virtues
of sincerity and openness in writing and it is also a confession of your own
guarded nature as a writer. Concern about your stinging face allows you to be
open only selectively, so it's really the other guy's fault that you only care
sometimes and in some cases. But you don't care in the case of said slapper,
even if he is now open. Is that about right? Oh, and I presume that you're
systematically avoiding me. Except in those cases where you only pretend you're
avoiding me, such as this one.
Yea, there's a lot of "interesting" "tension" in your writing. I just wish it
wasn't so guarded. One gets the distinct feeling that something is being held
back, that something has been left unsaid. It's as if the real point and
purpose has only been alluded to obliquely but never stated outright or
explicitly. But, for whatever it's worth, I think your spelling is immaculate.
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