How to Mind Your Manners on Medium

Asking vs. Attacking, and how to choose the high road

The stresses of our times can make awkward and unhappy bedfellows with our collective — and very legitimate — frustrations with our flawed leadership. That said, those anxieties don’t get relieved if we attack people whose intentions we clearly don’t know and can’t know, on the basis of a quick comment.

It would also be a perfectly legitimate argument that when you and I get busy, as I am with articles, client work and doing my best to stay exercised during quarantine, it’s easy to drop a comment too quickly without clarification. Sometimes I do that. I own it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s perfectly all right for the recipient to assume ill intent, without offering the courtesy of asking first.

This morning, in between exercise sessions and a battle with a medical billing company AND trying to get an article ready to publish, I rather quickly perused a piece that spoke to Federal money policy. Look, I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground about the Fed, despite the fact that I briefly worked as a banker. That is not in my wheelhouse. But I did see a comment that I happened to agree with because of a term: heroic. The term had been misused, and I wholeheartedly agreed with the notion that the commenter felt that the term had been misused and was out of context.

Given that I was in a hurry, I copied and pasted the definition of the term heroic to my comment- and here’s my point:

IT WAS MADE IN FULL SUPPORT OF THE COMMENTER’S REMARKS.

Here’s what I got back moments later:

I too have a dictionary. Are you making some argument? I don’t see any argument there, just poorly-done cut and paste.

I’m going to assume what you mean is that one of these six definitions fits the bill.

I’m sorry, but I still don’t see the Federal Reserve of having any of these qualities.

If you think that injecting liquidity into the markets is going to fix everything as in your “only to be undertaken to save a life heroic surgery” meaning, I think you will be sadly disappointed.

This phrase:

The Fed is contributing in we believe truly heroic ways that are unbelievably important to the future recovery of this country.

is pompous and overheated, and semantic quibbles about “heroic” aren’t going to fix that.

The whole reason that Americans banks are constantly failing and constantly being bailed out by the Fed is precisely because they know that the Fed will always be there for them. Look into the idea of moral hazard.

The Fed’s 40-year-old encouragement of irresponsible banking practices is the very reason that the economy is such a house of cards, and is also one of the reasons explaining how the 0.1% looted the economy and left the bottom 40% with nothing. (author bolded)

Well. That’s interesting. First of all, again it’s my full responsibility for not clarifying why I put the definition on his thread. (this comment, per the author, is deleted; I wish to keep this person’s identity a secret) That’s a legitimate point. However..

…the author outright maligns me without any justification whatsoever, because it seems that he couldn’t imagine that this writer might in fact be supporting his points. That’s not without good cause. Except, in this case, he was a little off the mark.

This is where we are and what we sometimes do. The online conversation has gotten to the point where too many of us automatically assume ill intent. Unless the commenter has made themselves very clear, and trollers usually do, then you and I have no idea whatsoever what they are thinking, what their intent is or what they really mean.

To this point, I recently received Medium comments from two very smart men whose remarks could easily have been misconstrued. I explored with both, both turned out to have very valid and understandable points of view, and we have continued our respectful conversations as online friends.

I would posit that at least one reason we are still online friends is because I didn’t make the inappropriate assumption that a) they were attacking me and, what’s more important, b) I had the slightest idea what they were thinking.

Because I can’t know what anyone else is thinking.

A couple of very important points here:

You and I do not have access to anyone else’s thoughts or intentions- even if they seem to clearly state so. Because sometimes when someone says X, what that means to them isn’t what it might mean to you or me. It’s the nature of language, and it’s also the nature of how we see and hear through filters, prejudice our experience, assumptions, culture, religion, etc.

You and I only have measurable behaviors. That would include words, but…

You and I do NOT have access to the intent behind them, especially if those words come to us cross-culturally, and certain terms even in a shared language like English may well have vastly different interpretations elsewhere. To this I tag my Illumination friend Indra Raj Pathak, who was kind enough to walk with me through the exploration of a term which not only allowed us a deeper understanding, but also led us to reveal a shared love of the great Indian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Such a thing would not have been possible had Indra not taken a breath, had I not taken a breath, and we allowed ourselves to explore as opposed to assume.

I had much the same kind of exchange with Hermes Solenzol Ph.D., who was patient enough to work through some exchanges about terminology which also allowed us mutual respect and continued friendship.

I am deeply grateful to them both for taking the high road.

The choice- the measured, emotionally-mature CHOICE to take a moment, breathe in and ask first is not only a critically-important step in self- management but also a moment of grace. It’s hard damned work.

I am not privy to anyone’s current conditions. I have no idea what kinds of pressures people are under. The losses anyone bears. The pain anyone may feel. Those are private to them unless they choose to share them.

Nobody is privy to anyone else’s inner world, even if you’ve been married sixty years. To assume we know is incredibly arrogant, it’s rude and it’s offensive, because we dishonor that person’s private thoughts.

Nobody woke up this morning and made me God, that I had access to the innermost chambers of any other human being’s heart or mind.

It’s fair to dun me for not being more clear. However, it’s also fair to suggest that perhaps, we might offer the commenter the grace that you and I might want. You may have just lost a grammy. Your child might be ill. You yourself might be dealing with the illness, or quarantined with an abusive partner. You may be so badly stressed out that your nerves are little more than frayed threads.

When you throw a hot stick of verbal dynamite at someone online (in any form) be it on Medium or anywhere else, it is landing on the lap of a living, breathing human being who may well be in terrible pain. Your vitriol is likely to cause even more pain.

Trollers usually are in pain, or else they probably wouldn’t behave this way. But, I don’t know. All I can see are online behaviors which could well speak to deep pain.

But when a comment isn’t clear, kindly watch out for leaping to conclusions that may have no basis in fact. Those conclusions may well speak more to our own inner world than that of someone else’s.

I responded to the above comment with a calmly-worded explanation that expressed my disappointment at not being asked to clarify my comment, and I also took full responsibility for being more clear in my initial post. That person and I perfectly fine now and are sharing thoughts and ideas in that way that people who have walked through a conflict can do when they have given each other room to be human. Again, because I didn’t hurl invectives or get ugly because his response might have been a bit out of line.

Look, I’ve done this myself. I am not at all proud of the times that I didn’t control my tongue, or curb my reactions. But that’s not the standard I choose to keep, nor a habit I choose to continue, even rarely.

It can sometimes be very, very hard to back off, breathe in and sit with a response that appears to be ugly. Truth? In some cases, if not many, if you and I choose the high road, if you and I choose to offer a chance to interact with courtesy, people may well take it.

In any case, WE are the ones in charge of that offering.

WE are.

When you and I choose the high road, everyone wins.