Judgment, idiots, and self-compassion

Because I like to write, I tend to write long comments. But then I realized this morning, that if I write a long comment, and it's really worth sharing, it won't get much exposure. In other words, a comment on a single post is lost in the river of Steemit. It doesn't show up with a headline in the feeds of my followers. So my followers are not likely to see it, even if there is a link on my profile page for my comments. Now that I'm considering the subject, I never thought to read the comments that others make. In fact, that link to a users comments is a unique feature of Steemit that I have not seen anywhere else.

So to avoid taking the effort of tracking back where this is coming from, and it is here on Steemit, I offer this comment recycled into a blog post. I guess you could call it "compost". The reason for the recycling is because I wrote something in response to a great article and because the article encouraged a response. And between you and me, I just love replies to my articles. I love feedback. Criticism, praise, it doesn't matter. I like to check my assumptions with correspondence.

OK, I'm going to track back to the article and the comments to lend some perspective. Social media is a big fat river in flood. Once you put something in that river, it's hard to find later. You can follow our correspondence starting with the article called, The Death of Conversation. It's a great piece by @son-of-satire and well worth the read. To me, it's a deep philosophical analysis of the consequences of the online echo chamber and search bubble that we encounter in social media and search engines. The internet has become like a mirror, reflecting back at us, all of our biases, needs, wants and desires (just look at the advertising wherever you go with your browser). It is hard to find a genuine exchange of ideas unless you go looking for. 

Fortunately, here at Steemit, we are not the product, our ideas and writing are the product. For there is really nothing else to sell here but content.

So @son-of-satire mentioned that he had little tolerance for idiocy and asked if I knew of a resource to help him with that. We were talking about the writings of Alan Watts in the same thread, but I felt that as good as Watts is about existential questions, he is not so well nuanced about having compassion for people that may be considered, "idiots". Now here is where I recycle what I thought was a comment worth sharing, modified for a new context.

I actually have a book you can use to relieve yourself of the need to pass judgement on others as "idiots". It's for parents raising kids, but seriously, how many of us have actually grown up? It's called "Raising Human Beings" by Dr. Ross W. Greene (I talk about it in a few of my blog posts here on Steemit) and it offers a basic premise as the subject of departure: "Kids would do better, if they could."

When I see people behaving "like an idiot", I set aside my desire to judge them for a moment, and consider the possibility that they lacked the capacity to do better. I use the words of Dr. Greene and suggest to myself that when someone exhibits challenging behavior, the person I'm observing lacked the capacity or skills to respond adaptively to the demands of his or her environment. When kids behave badly, we can call it "challenging behavior". When adults exhibit challenging behavior, we might call it a crime or a mistake, depending on the circumstances.

Once I started framing *everything* I see in the context of a lack of skills to respond adaptively to the demands of the environment, I began to see people in a whole new light. No longer do I take anything personally anymore. No longer do I feel the need to punish another for not getting it (whatever it was I wanted them to understand). With that came nearly infinite patience for people who simply lacked skills. Why?

Because now motivation is not a factor. I'm an optimist and assume ignorance before malice. I assume that people just want to be able to sleep at night, knowing they did the right thing. I assume that everyone is doing the best they can. I don't worry if someone wanted to bug me. When people are upset or angry with me, I let them be and talk to them until they calm down. Talking to someone tends to engage logic. And I mean talking in a calm tone, acknowledging them, without reprisal.

I practice this with my kids when they're upset. I allow them to be upset, and talk with them, slowly. I am calm to show them how to soothe themselves. As they learn to soothe themselves from their upset, they hear me talking and learn how to engage logic even after an upset. This is how I practice the gentle art of persuasion and I'd do it for anyone I know who is in crisis. I do this not because this is how the world is, for much of the world we see is in crisis. I practice this habit because this is how I want the world to be.

I've been practicing this for years and I am slowly turning it into a fine art. Anyway, I recommend that book, Raising Human Beings, to anyone, even if they don't have kids. For me, it gave me something I didn't expect to get: self compassion.