Mystree_Machine Authors Visa’s Vexing Vacillations
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Several conversations with several friends - and also the story of my entire life - is getting me to crystalize some thoughts
The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends
The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people
The most important person you have to be friends with is yourself
Possibly the most important thing in a friendship- including one with yourself, or your spouse, or your child - is attention. Deep, focused, undivided, non-judgemental attention.
To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard
So: the most important thing about the most important thing in life is attention,
and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it.
If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention...
...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life
becoming friends with yourself:
The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends
The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people
The most important person you have to be friends with is yourself
Possibly the most important thing in a friendship- including one with yourself, or your spouse, or your child - is attention. Deep, focused, undivided, non-judgemental attention.
To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard
So: the most important thing about the most important thing in life is attention,
and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it.
If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention...
...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life
becoming friends with yourself:
Much of self-improvement, personal development, introspection, etc can quite simply be reframed as the art of socialising with yourself. Listen to yourself, pay close attention to yourself, don\u2019t interrupt yourself, be kind and supportive to yourself, be constructive in criticism
— Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations (@visakanv) March 27, 2019
There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people I’ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to “support” the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can “mis-support” them by agreeing stupidly
Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.
Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people’s bids. Others are outright clueless and don’t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ’s razor)
I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people’s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people’s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It’s easy, and intoxicating
I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The “best” case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in – surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don’t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life
Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.
Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people’s bids. Others are outright clueless and don’t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ’s razor)
"The intentionality of an agent with behavior sufficiently indistinguishable from malice, is irrelevant." (JJ's razor > Hanlon's \U0001f609.) @cr1901
— JJ \u300cc\u03b9t\u03b9\u01b6\u03b5\u0273\u0192\u03b9v\u03b5\u300d \U0001f3f4\u200d\u2620\ufe0f (@CTZN5) June 6, 2016
I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people’s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people’s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It’s easy, and intoxicating
I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The “best” case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in – surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don’t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life