Social Media and Honesty

This is the second of two follow up posts to a liveblog of a panel about social media for nonprofits. Here I’d like to focus on the fact that the internet often brings out the honesty in us: we say things we wouldn’t say otherwise, and very often these are nasty, negative things. Many people think this is the worst thing ever to happen and it means none of us should ever go on the internet and we should totally just accept that that’s how the internet is because duh it’s the internet (hyperbole, hyperbole). However there are some things about this bald honesty that are really positives, and which we should take advantage of.

The first element of this is that it exposes people who are really quite horrible. People feel more free to say sexist, racist, and cruel things online than they do otherwise. It reveals a lot of the things that they are likely thinking underneath but have learned to hide. That means that those of us who understand why these things are inappropriate can call them out and explain what’s wrong with their actions, as opposed to face to face interactions in which they hide their true feelings and we can do nothing about it.

It’s hard to face an enemy who won’t show its true face. If people are constantly hiding their racism but still acting on it in subtle ways, it continues to have impacts but is much harder to call out and change. Giving people a forum to voice their true opinions allows those opinions to be honestly engaged with and hopefully changed for the better.

But the other element of this is that it allows all sorts of unpopular opinions to get into dialogue together: sometimes these are even POSITIVE opinions. We get to hear from people who normally are not allowed to speak: people who practice BDSM, trans* people, people with mental illness, immigrants…all of these honest experiences are put out there to intersect with the opinions we hear every day. And perhaps hearing these true experiences will help those with negative stereotypes to move beyond the simplistic impressions they have of others and find a real understanding of difference.

Sometimes these bald-faced opinions are things we need to hear. Sometimes they’re things we hear all too often but never so clearly stated. But honesty, in my opinion, is rarely a bad thing. It can be difficult to hear and should generally come with compassion, but if we want to improve as a society, we need to clearly know where we are and how people see the world.

Of course being baldly honest when you’re acting as the representative of a company is not the best policy, but individuals being truthful about their opinions will probably help us to understand what the problems in our society are and how to fix them.

The Moral Value of Truth

This is part 2 of a 3 part series addressing why I get extremely pissed off at certain commenters/tropes in the skeptical community. Part 1 can be found here.

A common trope in the skeptical community is that we have a moral imperative towards truth: there is a value in truth that trumps all other values, and the pursuit of truth is the most important thing we can do. Many of us believe that this is what separates us from religious communities, or what will make us happier, more effective human beings. Others of us might believe that this is the definition of “skeptic”: the ruthless pursuit of truth. I believe that this moral imperative towards truth is harmful and unnecessary.

To explain: truth is an instrumental, not an innate value. Whether something is true or not does not tell us whether it is useful or will make us happy or anything else. Perhaps some people might argue that truth in and of itself is a value, because they pursue it for its own sake (I am often among these people because I value curiosity and learning), but for the most part, we view happiness, contentedness, equality, fairness, and other quality of life things as innate values. These are what we strive for. Why? Because we know that they make our own life better, and in order to be consistent, we must understand that they make other people’s lives better as well. Now we could get into a very nuanced debate here about values, the objectivity of values, and the point of values, but I think that most of us will agree that we should strive to improve the quality of as many human lives as possible. I’m going to be working from that assumption for the rest of this post, and I’m really not interested in a debate about where morals come from.

Truth often can contribute to our happiness. It is hard to be happy if we are basing our happiness on a lie or on delusion, because those things can fall apart and leave us incredibly unhappy. However this does not mean that we need to ruthlessly pursue truth. It means that in the important aspects of our lives, we should try to base our values and actions on truth. Truth can also make us incredibly unhappy, as can the search for truth. I know many people, myself included, who are almost haunted by the need for certainty and truth, and who are truly disturbed by the lack of purpose in our lives. If I look at all the facts, that is the most true conclusion that I find: that there is no purpose in my life. This has led to some serious emotional and mental problems for me. The idea that it’s more important for me to be close to that truth and hold that truth than it is for me to deal with my depression or recover from my eating disorder is ridiculous to me. Whether I have a certain purpose or not doesn’t truly affect how I should act and the efficacy of my actions in the here and now. It is pursuing truth too far, to the point where it becomes removed from my life and simply becomes an intellectual exercise that is causing me misery. So for now, I choose to ignore that truth and focus on different truths.

Truth is certainly a part of morality and a part of happiness. Being true with other people has to do with trust, which is an important part of relationships. Not ignoring or deluding yourself about something that affects your life, or something that could change your behavior is extremely important because it keeps your happiness grounded in the way things actually are: a much more stable happiness than it would be otherwise. But desperately pushing for truth, and acting as though truth is more important than human well-being is harmful. We do not have a moral imperative to seek out every kind of truth, every piece of truth. It’s impossible for any human being to find the whole truth, and we always need to recognize the subjective perspective from which we are pursuing truth. When we forget those things in our pursuit of truth, we end up letting curiosity or a need to know drive us past any recognizable point of usefulness. Yes, knowledge for knowledge’s sake can be useful and beautiful and exciting, but if it stops being those things, we have absolutely no reason to continue pursuing it. We are allowed to be content in not knowing, or in not caring about something. If an individual doesn’t care whether there’s a god or not, and proceeds to live their life in a kind and fulfilled way, why should we care if they are not actively trying to find out? We shouldn’t. There is no reason they should need to. The pursuit of truth serves us. We are not slaves to a quest for truth. We are constrained by the facts of situations, and those are the times when it does become imperative for us to pursue truth. My mental health and emotional well being are more important to me than the objective “truth” of a situation. Does this make me a wishful thinker? Maybe. I don’t really care. Because being right isn’t all important to me.

More fiction! Hopefully to be a repeat feature

Drabble: Addiction

I have an addiction.

I don’t want to admit it. Addictions are shameful things. But I started going into withdrawal shock this morning and I can’t deny it anymore.

There is something in this world that I can’t live without, something that leaves me feeling calmer and higher and fuller. There is something that I rely on to pull the whirling merry-go-round of insanity from my head and make it into a roller coaster exclusively for my own use.

I have an addiction to writing. Don’t tell anyone. Addictions aren’t to be shared. Addictions are to be hidden.

Drabble: Truth

Hm. I rewrote Truth in a few different ways to explore different elements of it. I’m not quite sure which ones I like or what I like about them. Thoughts?

It starts again. She walks in to her room, casts her eyes around as if looking for something, and sits down again, her legs wobbly as usual. There was something she needed to do, but she became distracted again when she saw the bed and the window. She looks out the window, wondering yet again what could be outside. She looks around her room and glances around her mind and wonders yet again what could be there, again and again. She follows the circuit of her mind, hoping that it will narrow to the point of certainty, hoping for truth.

Sitting down again on her bed, she casts her mind here and there, tender yet desperate, probing every thought she had and every piece of evidence that might exist, touching before shying away. Whenever she is alone, she searches, and as she looks again she knows nothing is there. Yesterday she did not eat. Today she will not, because she knows. I won’t wake up tomorrow if I can’t find it! Her mind screams. She knows this is a lie. She knows she cannot help but wake again tomorrow and continue sifting through her own mind for truth. For certainty.

Sitting on her bed, she is searching. Sitting alone, she knows that something is there for her and she cannot find it. Alone, there is one thing that will befriend her and she has been seeking it for so long. There is one thing that she needs, and she will sit alone until she knows. She needs to eat. To eat. She didn’t eat yesterday. Yesterday her stomach was not empty enough and today she will ignore the pains to sit alone on her bed. Her stomach, her gut tells her that she is missing something. Missing the truth, alone.

 

I’m kinda stuck in drabble/poetry format right now because I have a short attention span and all of my longer motivation is going to work on what I HOPE will become a full length book (someday pretty please). If you have any prompts that you want to send me I would LOVE YOU FOREVER because I’m going to try to make this a somewhat regular feature.

And now for some haiku because the weather is driving me bonkers and what better way to write about the weather than with a haiku?

Water drips from eaves

Falling to the snowy ground

Where has the sun gone?

 

The branches above me

quiver gently in the wind

whispering for light

 

 

It can’t be snowing

I’m moving to Florida

Fuck Minnesota

 

I am trying to

disappear without notice

But you remain here

 

Drabble: Sharp

The lines tend to be blurred when he bothers to open his eyes. Sounds bounce off his eardrums like a kid jumping on a bed. Sights smother his face like pillows. When he bothers to remember tasting or smelling, things seep in, slowly, more texture than flavor. Through the softness, he wants something to cut. When everything bleeds together, he can’t focus and all he needs is a pinprick, a point, something of clarity. And so he quietly opens a drawer and removes a razor, pressing it against the pad of his thumb to make sure that it is sharp.

Experiments in Fiction

Ok, so it has been a very very very long time since I’ve written much of any fiction at all. Feel free to skip this post now that you know that because I promise it’s not gonna be very good. I’m mostly looking for some feedback on my drabble about truth, but any other thoughts are welcome (please be nice, I’m very sensitive about my fiction. If you hate it, at least be constructive).  So anyway, here are a few things I’ve written in the past couple of days. Let me know what you think.

 

Drabble 1: Beginnings

Blank pages always made her anxious. Some days she would scribble a line of nonsense above the whiteness, simply to feel she wasn’t staring into the void. Too much white gave her headaches. Today she opened her journal, holding her fountain pen between her teeth, and looked intently at the page. White. Black lines traversing. Instead of putting pen to paper, she gently reached her hand out and touched the page, a single finger following the straight lines across it. With a sigh, she laid her pen down and placed her palm against the page, breathing deeply as she disappeared.

 

Drabble 2: Truth

She sat down again, on her bed. It was time to begin searching, again. Things were gnawing at her, as they always did, and she would answer, again and again. She whittled herself away trying to find it, and again she could not. Without it she would not bother waking up tomorrow, she told herself again. But again she knew that was a lie. Yesterday she had not eaten, and again today she would not. She wouldn’t let herself again until she found what she was looking for. Truth evaded her when all she wanted was to have certainty again.

 

Poem: Purpose

I am a thresher

What is my purpose?

I have talents

I awaken each morning and work without fail

quickly

mowing down the tall crops

I am efficient

I work endlessly.

Do I arise each morning for this?

I have failures

I do not rest

I cannot stop

Do I sleep each night dwelling on how to improve?

My task goes on

There will be another season and another

Or is my revolution to put down my scythe and lie in the grass?