Author: elenloth

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Being wrong is a skill

Being wrong is a skill that can be practiced. It takes a lot of effort and awareness to be able to just shut up and step off.

Practicing “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective” or “I’m going to step back and think about this for a while, thank you” is a really useful thing to have in your social skills backpack.

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High-control apostates

My thought of the day: high-control religions are likely to produce high-control apostates.

If you grew up with an extremely rigid and strict religion in your upbringing, you’re very likely to carry that forward into adulthood.

This explains people who leave the Church, and then insist that everyone who stays in the Church is obviously buying into every single interpretation that they themself believed. And it explains people who leave the Church and become, essentially, Fundamentalist Atheists. (This latter was very common during the ascent of the Four Horsemen of Atheism. All the online discourse about “Magic Sky Daddy” or “Sky Fairy” came from this kind of attitude.)

In reality, religion is a product of humans, and humans are varied and mutable. Someone can be a member of a religion you dislike without necessarily espousing every aspect of that religion that you dislike.

If you have left a high-control religion: that is okay. Just try to moderate your reactions to other people’s beliefs, and really analyze why you assume certain things about them.

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Milestones

I think the marker for middle age and/or maturity is “when you start having opinions about Bradford Pears.”

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Incrementalism

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine described herself as “incrementalist.” I think that’s a very good word.

Today, I saw this skeet. I’m going to copy the text here in case it gets deleted.

The way I’ve heard it explained is that there are people who are
1) actively against you
2) passively against you
3) don’t care
4) passively support you
5) actively support you

You’ll never get from 1 to 5 in one jump, so you want to move each person 1 notch more supportive. 1→2, 3→4, 4→5, etc

And that’s a very good explanation of how I view political discussions.

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Lunch Invitations

In a work context, “We’re all going to lunch” usually carries the implication of “Would you like to join us?”

If you’re still not sure if the implication is present, you can ask “Mind if I come along?” Or “Do you have space for one more?” Or something similar.

Here is an Instagram video about this!

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An octopus wearing a hat

Many years ago, I had a friend who tended to split things into either Good Thing or Bad Thing.

This went not just for things/ideas, but also for people.

And because they split the world into these categories, they also assumed that everyone else split the world the same way: there was no room for shades of grey, in their worldview.

On one memorable occasion, they posted about a very ambitious home renovation project; I suggested they take a carpentry class at Home Depot before jumping into the project, and they accused me (and everyone else who commented on the post) of being a malicious saboteur of their projects, and ended the screed with “Do you think I’m smart and competent, or do you think I’m an octopus wearing a hat?”

Friends: there is a lot of daylight between those two things.

I think about that conversation whenever I am tempted to split the world into black and white, good and bad, yin and yang. (Okay, maybe not that last.) It’s possible to receive criticism without assuming the critic hates you and thinks you’re wholly incompetent.