The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I'm glad it resonated!
If you're the sort of person who wears your heart on your sleeve (as I am), then it can be very easy and tempting to pour yourself out in the environments you find yourself, like the internet. That can be incredibly useful, and powerful, and there have been times when exposing some of my most intense concerns to internet discussion has made my life better. But there have also been many times where it's made it worse.
I always like to remember the parable of Jesus where he says "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." If your treasure is in internet respect, then internet disrespect will be like wounds to the heart. And the more you invest yourself in internet discussions, the more of yourself you share, the more you're putting your treasure there.
While sometimes I enjoy internet discussions and even arguments, I've come to realize they're incredibly limited, and need to be entered into and continued carefully. I've started and chosen not to post more posts than I've ever published, because I realized the post would be fruitless, or lead to unnecessary dispute, or was excessively disagreeable, or simply would expose a vulnerability that shouldn't be exposed to the internet.
I think older nettizens find it easy to create a barrier between the internet and real life, understanding the boundaries appropriate to both. In particular, the old-school attitude of the net (which the motte participates in in some ways) was always that disagreeableness was inevitable and everything was under debate rules.
And under that framework, you shouldn't expose a weakness in your worldview any more than your defense attorney should make an argument for the prosecution. In part this represented the initial population of the internet -- male, educated, systems-oriented, academic. And in part it represents the reality that the internet is simply a cacophony of strangers. I don't know you. You don't know me. We have no relationship, no ties, I could insult you and swear death and devastation on you, and unless I crossed a legal boundary so severely that it got the real police involved, this would have no impact at all on my life outside of the net. I might get banned, but what is a ban? Nothing.
I'm not sure how old you are. I'm fairly young. Young enough that the internet has been real life for about as long as I've been active on it. But old enough to find online dating new-fangled, fr fr. (Did I use that correctly?) I think younger generations are having to re-learn the wisdom that the net is volatile and operates under debate rules. It's an important lesson. And like the law -- anything you say can and will be used against you, and the consequences for the misuse of that power are minimal.
Like everything, the internet is about risk vs reward. That's different for everyone. But hopefully, from the discomfort of seeing just how freely personal attacks flow on the internet, you can help yourself judge where the risk-benefit line stands for you. It obviously varies by context. But my personal view is that the places where discussing important aspects of your worldview, especially ones you're not sure about, has benefit outweighing risk is almost 0. But that's for you to decide. And I wish the best for you in deciding it.
I don’t think this is right. If anything I would say it’s important to expose your weaknesses. Partly as a show of good faith, and partly to find out (or show you know) where they are.
Part of the point of chatting in the Motte is so strangers can tell you, “I get that you believe A -> B -> C” but you can’t actually back up the first half of that”. Doesn’t mean you have to stop believing it, but you should be aware going forward that it’s an axiom not a strong inference or fact.
To put it another way, I think arguing on the motte is meant to be like sparring rather than like battle, and sparring won’t help you improve if you fight in a defensive manner, never over-extend, and refuse to be open.
EDIT: you were talking about the internet not the Motte. There’s one of my vulnerabilities for you - I’m a natural speed reader and I sometimes miss detail. The point is still valid I think but yes, don’t throw pearls before swine.
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