Read on Twitter
My last thread, at least for a while.
Topic: Decency, Friendship, and Giving a Damn
Topic: Decency, Friendship, and Giving a Damn
It's really easy to get swept up in the need to feel relevant, to be part of something beyond yourself. It's natural; we want to point to something that was different about the world because we were in it. It's why nihilism is ultimately a place of abandonment, not conversion.
One of the clearest iterations of that now is the online (and increasingly offline) mob. It gives it's participants the sense of significance - that yelling at Chelsea Clinton about Islamaphobia, chanting Jews won't replace us, piling on an IDW critic - that this matters.
To the recipient of these actions it certainly feels like it matters. But it's a dance of vengeance worthy of Medea; filled with blinding outrage which brings calamity & ruin on all those around you. But your rage, your indignation, your righteousness, they dissolve when you do.
If you want to do something that matters, do something that requires risk. Do something that makes you vulnerable. You've only got a limited amount of time - don't waste it seeking masturbatory honor in grandstanding or rage mobbing or preaching unearned pieties.
Being decent doesn't mean accepting injustice. It doesn't mean lauding the status quo. It doesn't mean just being nice. It means giving a damn. It means taking an interest in someone else's plight, in their weaknesses and strengths. It means engaging to engage, not dominate.
We can't all be friends; we don't live together so we can't experience life together. Yet, in another sense, we can do & can. Platforms like this one give us the opportunity to meet others we otherwise never would have. We get another crazy thing; we get to see what they think.
Aristotle says this is one of the marks of friendship - being of the same mind. This is a tremendously rigorous standard; it's not just a "meeting of the minds" on a transaction or mutual interest, though those too he considered forms of friendship.
Instead, it's a friendship where both people approach living life in the same way, with an eye toward being virtuous, where both people are reinforced in that virtue by the friendship. We can't do that here. But what we can do is foster a sense of affection by being decent.
The most heterodox thing one can be in a time of cynicism, of angst, of hostility, of anxiety is be decent, be charitable, be merciful, be hopeful. Not in some platitudinous way; don't be a Hallmark card. But rather, give more than a passing damn.
We spend so much of our lives on these platforms, on our devices, in our little curated and cultivated spaces that we fool ourselves into thinking our lives aren't being defined by these platforms, our devices, our curated and cultivated spaces - that I am not my online self.
But you are - only to increase even more so. We all develop little cliques in these spaces. Most people who follow me follow people I follow. We're creating small communities of people randomly sharing their thoughts. What a valuable, precious thing it could be.
You aren't a different person here than you are off of here. This version of you is just as much you as work you, significant other you, friend you, parent you, child you, etc. It's illusory to think otherwise; we aren't just intersections of various roles, attributes, or powers.
So why be decent here? Because it's who you are. Why cultivate friendships with strangers? Because its who you are. Why give a damn? Because it's who you are.
Character is destiny because it's all you have. You are your character.
Character is destiny because it's all you have. You are your character.
