Well, it’s cold cold, even if it’s sunny, but that’s what happens at the end of November. It shouldn’t be a surprise and yet, yesterday, which was warmer, still was.
Hello winter.
Over on my new virtual home, Spoutible, there’s a little bit of a back and forth about investor badges. If you don’t know, Spoutible opened itself to investors, and one of the “perks” is a badge showing that you have invested.
I vacillated over whether I wanted to use it, not wanting people who couldn’t participate to feel left out, but ultimately decided I wanted to display it. As I said at the time, seeing everyone else’s did kind of play a part, so I understand people who are uncomfortable with the peer pressure.
But that’s not what this chat is about.
The thing is with Spoutible, we are all starting to learn how to talk to people we don’t know well again, we are all learning how to exist without agreeing on everything or liking the same things or wanting the same things.
That sounds simplistic but all previous social media platforms were built on splintering people, enraging them, whether it’s the intent to inspire bragging and jealousy on Facebook and Instagram or the sludge of abuse on twitter. The idea is to slip in a slender wedge and pry apart.
Factions don’t oppose tax cuts as well as cohesive parties who aim for harm reduction. Anger drives views.
And everything comes down to money.
That’s not Spoutible. Civil disagreement is not optional there, it’s a requirement and if you can’t live up to it, if you can’t treat everyone with humanity, you get beached. Which is suspended but much more fun to say.
Those tax avoiders don’t want us pulling together like magnetic dust. If we do, we might notice just how much they get from making us feel terrible all of the time. We might notice how much they take from us while giving nothing.
We might notice the harm to our minds and our souls.
We don’t have to all be the same to get along. We don’t have to like the same things, think the same movies are holiday movies, invest or not invest.
We do, however, have to agree to basic rules of humanity, which rejects all forms of bigotry, because that is how we should treat each other, no exceptions. There are no “differing opinions” on that, because someone’s humanity is not an opinion and not for someone else to assign or take away.
It’s those other places that told us there is always an us and always a them and the us is getting smaller and smaller. We don’t have to live in those other places anymore.
And I’m definitely not saying people should keep their feelings to themselves. Learning to understand the feelings of others when they differ from our own is starting to be a lost aspect of humanity.
We are the ones who can make it normal again.
And with that, I leave you to your Tuesday. Have a great day.
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