Are Writers Responsible for How Readers Receive Our Words?
I believe so — others even some I have admired, do not — what do you think?
“Use your NOW moment for the Highest Purpose- the creation and the expression of WHO YOU REALLY ARE. Decide who you are- who you want to be — and then do everything in your power to be that. It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent. You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how well it is communicated. And by how well, I don’t mean merely how clearly; I mean how lovingly, how compassionately, how sensitively, how courageously, and how completely. If you think your life is about DOINGNESS, you do not understand what you are about. Your soul doesn’t care what you do for a living — and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you’re BEING while you’re doing whatever you’re doing. It is a state of BEINGNESS the soul is after, not a state of doingness.” — Neale Donald Walsch, transcribing a channeled conversation with God
I feel compelled to write this essay after a back-and-forth with a writer and person I have admired. I wonder if I may have erred.
Yesterday, this writer and I got into a lengthy comment thread. I reacted critically to her tossing around words and phrases such as “carpet bombing” and “genocide” as if context, historical or present, didn’t matter.
As a writer and an editor, I feel context always matters.
I imagine you can glean the present geopolitical, ethnic, and religious context whence these terms arose. (Screw you, Grammarly, which wants me to insert “from”— Technically, from whence is redundant. Whence means, “from what place, source or cause,” so saying from whence is really saying from from what place, and I despise what my 11th-grade U.S. History her dubbed “verbal wordage.”)
I am all for agreeing to disagree or as I prefer, agreeing not to agree (in my three years on Medium, that’s my only piece ever chosen for further distribution). I also realize that two or more people can each express valid yet differing viewpoints and each may be true. Alec Baldwin said he didn’t pull the trigger. The FBI says he’s lying. He may have pulled the trigger yet be telling the truth. (See, My Takeaways from News that Alec Baldwin Charged with Involuntary Manslaughter, Cause of death does not mean that one caused death; a version of events may be factually incorrect but still be true).
I do not write this essay to discuss our disagreement nor to sway anyone to my point of view. I write now to discuss the rhetorical method she fell back on in our point, counter-point discussion, however, I realized that for full context, I need to quote our conversation in full.
The underlying theme of her essay is a critique of social media and the spreading of fake news. She writes:
Earlier this year, I purchased a book titled The Hype Machine: How social media disrupts our elections, economy and our health — and how we must adapt. The title sounds like a mouthful because the entire book is based on academic research led by author Sinan Aral. There’s an interesting section focused on a multitude of research done on Twitter (now X) that discusses how false news spreads significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth — sometimes by an order of magnitude.
It seems that truth does not travel as effectively as false news. While the truth rarely diffused to more than 1,000 people, the top 1 percent of false news cascades routinely diffused to as many as 100,000 people.
“It took the truth approximately six times as long to reach 1,500 people and twenty times as long to travel ten reshares from the origin tweet in a retweet cascade.” — Sinan Aral, ‘The Hype Machine: How social media disrupts our elections, economy and our health — and how we must adapt’
I guess it’s apt to say the truth here, hurts. Seems like social media audiences aren’t too keen with verification and authenticity when it comes to sharing what’s right. They prefer what’s wrong. Scoop the gossips, please.
There’s more.
False political news and urban legends spread the fastest and were the most viral. Falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth, even when controlling for the age of the account holder, activity level, and number of followers and followers of the original tweeter, and whether the original tweeter was a verified user.news.
Later, she wrote:
Here I was, unwell at the time, logged on because I needed entertainment to distract me from two things: my aches, and the carpet-bombing in Gaza.
I commented:
“There you go, confirming the research — Israel is not carpet bombing Gaza. Shame on you, [name deleted]. Are civilians being killed, yes, and that sucks. But carpet bombing — …(expletives and pejoratives restrained)”
She replied:
“Ha! Give me a better descript.”
Ignoring for the moment the “ha,” I replied:
“Targeted. If they were carpet bombing, which is indiscriminate, there would already be nothing left and they wouldn’t warn. Carpet bombing is to drop large numbers of bombs so as to cause uniform devastation over (a given area). Israel is targeting Hamas. Hamas uses humans as shields and drugged their terrorists with Captagon to make it easier for them to commit the atrocities on Oct 7th. https://www.google.com/search?q=hamas+captagon&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS1001US1001&oq=hamas+captagon&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTkxNzlqMWoxNagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8”
She replied:
“Look at the map Marcus. What is left? Semantics won’t change the fact of annihilation.”
I replied:
“Certain phrases are used for effect, which intentionally or not, you did with the choice of carpet bombing. This is not semantics. Israel is not an apartheid state, though yes, the West Bank resembles some aspects of apartheid. Israel is not engaged in genocide, another term tossed around indiscriminately, including by disillusioned and delusional Jews on the far left (I am Jewish by birth, culture, and ethnicity — I reject all religion as dogma but not God as I understand it — I take what I will and leave the rest, as some say). If anyone is engaged in an attempt at genocide, it is Hamas. Just read their charter.
I truly feel for the civilans in Gaza and Israel is not without fault — far from it — but read this simple story by Henya Drescher for root cause reality that the world does not want to accept because the world has always hated the Jews and thus we will always eventually lose in the kangaroo court of public opinion https://readmedium.com/is-standing-in-the-middle-the-most-moral-place-to-be-be375cd0fb2e. But I don’t feel enough for the innocents in Gaza to demonize Israel which you do with what you call semantics (though I have recently criticized the recently barely elected govt and the theocrats Bibi sided with for his own personal reasons in my one Pitfall submission https://readmedium.com/the-world-especially-the-middle-east-reflects-more-shades-of-grey-than-any-box-of-crayola-crayons-50dca751d2db). The fact is that for whatever reason for 1000s of years the world has hated Jews and sadly, even wonderfully caring and smart people such as yourself cannot see that their opinions are swayed by undercurrents of antisemitism that are insidious, often subtle, and subliminally persuasive.”
She replied:
“Funny that when I said carpet bombing of Gaza you were quick to assume the sides I distribute. As I have written, this isn’t about choosing sides, sympathy or lack of. It’s about ending the war. Period. In war, everyone loses. Look at the map and what’s left of it today. My concern is that the bombings, hostility and strikes end. This is no longer the time for history lessons. It’s leadership to cease fire. On all sides.”
I replied:
“I did not say you chose sides. That’s how you interpreted my criticism of your terms which I then expanded to other terms. You can examine your words and messaging and decide if they correlate with how you perceive your mindset and whether others will read them as you hope. You also tossed in the word genocide somewhere in your piece, granted without specific attribution, which may be worse as it does not apply to both sides.
Yes, all sides should stop, including the Haredi and settler movement in Israel, which still has a chance to happen while Israel remains a democracy, and Hamas should go away or reject their stated raison d’etre. If they don’t, which they won’t, so be it.”
She replied:
“Marcus, as with all my pieces, I let readers read and interpret how they feel fit. I don’t and won’t marshall them. I appreciate your points as always. We can agree to disagree.”
Upon reading that reply, I thought of a portion of the quote with which I opened this essay,
It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent. You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how well it is communicated. And by how well, I don’t mean merely how clearly; I mean how lovingly, how compassionately, how sensitively, how courageously, and how completely.
and decided that I would write this essay rather than reply to her with the quote.
Then, she really pissed me off. I saw that she edited this to her last reply:
“We need to come to a peaceful resolution, not work or act like it’s the final solution like the Wannsee Conference.”
OMG! Upon seeing that, I replied:
“There you go again, dog-whistling loudly equating Israel with Nazi Germany. Shame on you.” [emphasis added]
She replied with nothing but a laugh. I failed to see the humor, and responded with this humorous video clip from an old Saturday Night Live skit that seems perfectly appropriate:
So, taking us back to my title and subtitle, “Are Writers Responsible for How Readers Receive Our Words? I believe so — others even some I have admired, do not — what do you think?”
Taking poetry out of the mix, I believe that writers are responsible for the messages behind our words and that anyone who disagrees is just engaging in a form of mental masturbation — they may fancy themselves writers but they are just writing and having meaningless fun.
In Rama I create, with soul energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
