Writing is one of the most satisfying things I know.

It's satisfying partly BECAUSE a lot of what I write sucks.

Suckage is only the beginning. When a thought or feeling matters, you keep coming back to it.

What's more satisfying than - shade by shade, degree by parsec - realizing the truth of the feeling deep within that a thing mattered and you had this thing to say and could say it? At first your efforts proved it didn't matter and/or you couldn't say it.

But you kept fingering the scab the world had placed over this expression. Sometimes the scab arrives before the wound. Sometimes clear skin becomes a scab, and then blood, and then a cut, and then flint, and then an arrow fired in tune.

That's what saying something well is like.

It's satisfying to realize you have such good aim. As it were. The thunk of the arrowhead in the tree, split in the center of its found knot, resounds through the whole clearing for a sentience listening.

The annoying thing is, I'm inspired by genius, not really by keeping up with the Joneses. Most people's concerns are things I empathize with, but do not myself prioritize.

At the end of the day, you need a reason to get up in the morning. What is it that'll get you out of blankets in the morning?

I want to be a genius. It's stupid. Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds to say? You do.

But that can get me out of bed in the morning.

I'm not for cancel culture, as you might have noticed. But I'm not against what it's about accomplishing, at all. I'm for that.

Boycotting can be super effective. We vote with our pocketbooks and our eyes and ears. All that makes perfect sense, and a well-placed, well-communicated, well-delineated, forward-thinking boycott is possibly the best means of social change we have at our disposal. That's saying quite a bit, I think.

So we're all free to boycott anything we want to boycott. And if we get together and express why, clearly, then that just brings more power to the effort. It's great.

I am very much for good boycotting.

The way I'm not for cancel culture is simple - it's just about philosophy, namely my own.

I'm not treating a human as not a human, because a human is a human. Pretending otherwise is a lie. Because I personally don't consider that lie useful, I'm not going to be lying. That's all. I have compassion for all living things, and that includes all humans, however you feel about them. It isn't a comment on your or any situation that I have compassion for a person. I just do. That's how my heart and mind work naturally. It isn't difficult for me. It makes perfect sense and helps in all kinds of situations and all kinds of ways. If you stabbed me in the stomach, with a knife, I could probably still see your perspective and have compassion for you. Please don't do that.

And don't think I can't fight. I can. Have you ever broken someone's rib through a chest-guard? Maybe a recently-ex-army dude, ten years older than you, bigger? Well I have, by mistake. I was maybe 15. It was just a good kick. (A jumping back kick to counter a roundhouse kick... maybe the best timed and landed one of those I ever did.) It was automatic, actually. It felt like lifting a glass of water and taking a drink, or those first few moments of sprinting that just happen - easy, smooth, satisfying. A reflex that hit the spot. Before that, my brother and I fought tooth and nail hundreds or thousands of times, and of course there was all the sparring practice in class.

I know my way around a scuffle. But just like that guy whose rib I broke managed a "Nice KICK!!!!" through gritted teeth while bent double, I think I could still reach for your perspective and have some compassion for you if you stabbed me in the guts and stood there watching me bleed out with a grin on your face. I wouldn't let that happen. And I'd do the same to you first if it meant saving an innocent life. But I wouldn't lose compassion. Or only for approximately the instant needed to save a life.

So no, I'm not losing all compassion for whoever offended or scared or even hurt you. It's just not me to be like that. You know? I'm sorry that this upsets people, genuinely. But I feel it's a misunderstanding. They think it's a comment on them or their situation. No, it isn't. It's something about my core that you aren't changing.

So anyway, go ahead and cancel people, ignore them, act as if they aren't human, twist and exaggerate and otherwise misrepresent their words and positions and motives. You have the right to do those things, as do I. But I have the right not to, as do you. That's all. Does the completeness of that simplicity make some sense?

Public hazing of miscreants may be for a sufficiently good cause (it is), and sufficiently effective (is it?). This is quite possible, and I defer to any evidence. But I am not entirely convinced so far - I think a good boycott, even here in the realm of egregious prejudices and outright systemic murder in some rare but real cases, would work a little differently (on the basis of the science on boycotting and also on deterrents). The principle of a good boycott is that it needs to be what I mentioned: makes basic sense, well-placed, well-communicated, well-delineated, forward-thinking. When people can understand that you're working for a better world rather than attacking them or their beliefs - even if they totally disagree with you - they tend to get more accommodating. A good boycott is conditional: We will forsake this institution unless and until A, B, and C. It isn't declaring anathema and making the sign of the cross every time the hated item (previously human or otherwise) appears. That's just garden-variety hatin' on.

Which I deeply, deeply, deeply dislike. So if that's what I feel what you're asking me is about, then I will politely (or occasionally impolitely) decline.

Change is afoot. Take all the above with grains of salt. Waves of protest against Trumpism, the forward steps of #MeToo and BLM and the like - I don't necessarily know what's working and what isn't. But something is working. I believe that. More needs to work. So... how? What are the best approaches? What does science say?

You've got to live on your own terms.

It's all taken away at the end, some forever, some given to others. You rarely know anything much about the end, either.

So where does that leave you?

There is a hole in the universe for you to create.

This is what you give. What do you give?

You write something - an email. You see issues, ways to make it better. You do so. Now it's worse because it's no longer natural. You're interrupting yourself with parentheses to clarify. You're saying more than the recipient will probably want to know or think about right now. You can't go back. It wasn't good enough. But now it's worse. And you can push forward, but it's unlikely it'll ever feel as natural as the spontaneous version. At least... ok, eventually it can, but there is no way whatsoever to tell how long that will take, and the only good way to make sure is to put it aside for a week or two and read it with fresh eyes.

This is my life. Between spontaneous and polished, there's the undefinable sea of awkwardness - and saying too much and too little at the same time.

One of the things about "being yourself" when you're a guy is that you know this can scare people who needn't be scared.

To some extent that must be true for everyone.

My wish to just "be myself" competes with my wish to be understood as I am. Those are two different things, sometimes.

Typical example: you have a crush on someone. So you talk to female friends about it, because you feel it's this pressure and you wish you could just name the elephant in the room. But they're always like, "Oh no! Don't say that! You'll freak her out!"

Uh, ok. Fine. But it misunderstands me to be freaked out by that, and naming how I feel - and there's nothing wrong with it - is being myself.

Women often develop - thanks to society, etc - this idea that sex is bad and they'll be seen as inferior or immoral. It's tragic and unfair.

Ironically, guys can actually develop almost the opposite idea - that feeling a lot of affection for someone is wrong, creepy, possessive, crazy.

Things can go wrong - reality is kind of harsh sometimes, and that's as serious as can be - but affection in itself is not any of those things at all, and it's hurtful to present that attitude.

Something sort of unpredictable has happened in recent times. A small phenomenon. Not that important, but curious.

I have a few kind of flukish health issues. Yes I can also be a bit of a hypochondriac, but what many women say about doctors is true - sometimes doctors simply dismiss what you say. If you're a woman, that's more likely. And if you have anxiety, that's more likely. I can see when I get profiled as a person with anxiety. So I've learned to be more careful about how I reveal to a doctor that I sometimes feel anxious. I'm not interested in having the things I say waved away - evaluated, given an expert opinion on, fine, absolutely, and if it's reassurance I need, then that's what I'll welcome. But waved away or ignored - no thanks, not why I go to see a doctor. So I sympathize with women who feel ignored by doctors.

Anyway, the little phenomenon is just that since I went through cancer, surgery, and chemotherapy, people who know me well tend to respond to comments I make about health with "Well, you've been through a lot" or "Chemotherapy really does a number on you" or the like. Yes, I'm aware of both things. Quite true. But actually cancer was not the beginning of my life. There were issues before I had cancer. In fact, most of them. I'm very aware of things that have started since and likely as a result of the treatment.

A good example is the RSI I got in both wrists in 2016, which made me really afraid I wouldn't be able to use a computer normally again. Since 2016, I've basically quit guitar. It's sad. But guitar is too rough on my wrists.

Note: cancer treatment did not cause my RSI. I had it before. But it would come and go. Then I pushed things a bit too much in summer 2016 and made it a lot worse, and to this day I have to be careful. I no longer use a mouse or trackpad. I use a pen/tablet. That's my mouse.

But again, that wasn't cancer or chemo. Chemo did hit many of my tissues pretty hard. So it probably made me a little more vulnerable to RSI. Maybe significantly. But I already had that issue. I'm an introvert and a big computer user and typer and spend most of my life at that. There's nothing weird about getting RSI from that in your 30s, especially if you weren't very informed about ergonomics and good practices.

Anyway on the bright side I know quite a bit about the subject now and how to manage/avoid RSI.

This is going to sound egotistical, but sometimes the way to get through a creative block is to see what you're doing as (potentially) genius.

Most people - I think this is true, correct me - feel that creation, creativity, art, is something earned. Like, you have the talent, you put in the hours, and over time you earn the right to consider what you do artistic.

If you just jump in and try to do something brilliant, that's egotistical.

But that isn't how it works.

Art does have something in common with science.

Any experiment could be interesting. Until you do it and find out, you don't know.

Any creative idea could be brilliant.

Any person executing it could make something brilliant.

Every skill level is capable of expression, discovery, emotion, revelation.

So if you try to approach every creative thing you do as genius - or a chance at genius - that might be the right mindset.

It could rub people the wrong way. It could be detectable and kind of stink that you think you're great, or think what you're doing is great.

But if you can't think what you're doing is great, I doubt it'll be great.

It could be, but you've diminished its chances.

Yes it helps to be able to dissect and get realistic and bring in additional perspective.

However, creativity is not actually earned.

It's just like truth. Sometimes you stumble on it. And sometimes it takes a lifetime just to disprove a pet theory.

Anything you create could be brilliant.

You aren't working up to someday making something brilliant. (Once you have credentials, respect, permission, approval, pay, requests, etc.)

That could be now.

Reaching straight for it is actually part of the talent.

It's a part you can choose.

I've made 29 blog posts in the 17 days of 2022 so far - 6 poems, 23 thoughtish-essayish things. (30 including this!)

Half of those 6 poems are so tiny and sketched that they probably don't even qualify for the name. But I do have a couple more actual poems in reserve that I'm not yet ready to post even to a poem blog that no one reads. I have... some kind of process, here.

I accept that any expressive writing can be painfully revealing and show your imperfections magnified. So... when I write a poem that's definitely doing that, I often sit on it for a while, but usually end up just letting it go and posting it. I'll tweak a few words, phrases, or spacings the way I would for any other poem, but after a few weeks, I'm usually ready to accept the poem as an expression rather than a billboard of my problems. If people see the latter, they can. I share the former. The latter can be inferred. Interpretation is your business. I know I have problems. That's why I write poems.

One of the nicest things about poems (another one) is that it's ok to write a bad poem. You might feel embarrassed, but there's no requirement. You have full permission (from me, if you need me on your side here) not to feel embarrassed by a poem you wrote that didn't turn out wonderfully, or even turned out atrociously. It's fine. Fear of writing an atrocious poem stops you writing a beautiful poem.

You can of course feel that fear, and feel that embarrassment, and respond with hesitation. But you can just as much, and more, go past the hesitation and write more, and better.

One of my favorite things about a poem is you can take a feeling and a thought and follow both, and create a voice with them, a character, and that character is both you and not you. You can take it to feelings and thoughts and images that aren't real, or at least are presently fictional. And you can freely plagiarize from your own lived experiences. You can blend the two seamlessly, or seamfully.

In other words you can start with something you feel - maybe faintly, maybe intensely, maybe something you're reaching to feel out of curiosity - and you can elaborate. There is no need to be normal, socially acceptable, kind, good, accurate, etc. There isn't even a strict need to be interesting or expressive, though these make a poem worthy.

Now, you and I are human and limited, and even in creating with words known to be figurative, we will have fears, and will avoid some things and strive for others. But that's negotiable. That's between you and yourself, or you and the universe. No one can really tell you how to navigate that.

The worst aspect of writing poems - besides the embarrassment of expressing the very things you might express in a poem above all else and all other places - is cryptomnesia. Like, many of my best lines - I'm pretty sure they aren't mine. I'm just not sure where I saw them. And when I wrote them, I actually wrote them, word for word, sometimes through multiple iterations. I went through the whole process. I snuffled around for something, cobbled, and then tinkered. It's just when I was done I was sure I'd read that somewhere. Sometimes I even have an idea about what the rest of the poem or piece was like, but I can't find it. I can never find it.

If I *have* seen these lines before, I reinvent them without at first realizing it - but maybe that's not unlike intentionally reconstructing a memory piece by piece. It's easier to work your way to some place if you already sense that place exists. Stumbling blind back toward a feeling given to me (right now unawares) by a line I once heard is not exactly writing it, but it's sort of rewriting it.

Also, my memory is not good. I can't memorize a poem to save my life. I mean, ok, I can, but it takes constant practice and I soon forget. Words drift fast in my mind. I don't quote movies because I can't. (Maybe a dozen lines ever, and often paraphrasing.)

So... I tend to trust that I'm not remembering entire phrases and sentences wholesale without even realizing it.

But I probably am occasionally. And partly realizing, or suspecting.

Recently I lifted Emerson's "there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens" (one of my very favorite clusters of words) for a poem, but I dropped a reference to him as a "shaman" and a "priest." That's an example that was fully aware all along and I knew the source. Hopefully I'm transparent enough about it there without disrupting the flow. Whether that's ok is an open question to me, so I'm making a note of it here. I didn't use quotation marks but maybe should.

Anyway, that aside if it's an exception, I never mean to plagiarize.

Actually, I wrote a poem about falling in love while falling in love - you're already falling, and then you fall mid-fall into a deeper layer of falling. I'm certain I stole that image from somewhere. I feel it's important to say that. It isn't my image. But I don't know where I read it, other than it was a poem. Probably one published in The Paris Review. I'm subscribed to their daily poetry archive emails but only very occasionally read them.

Something I've learned over time that maybe younger guys who are also like me should know...

When you like someone, you feel she's really special. And that makes you feel special also. It's partly that you recognize how brightly she shines, and how uniquely. You feel special for getting it.

There's a danger.

First, women lead the way in many things. If she hasn't invited you to feel this way about her, she will feel weird about it and probably avoid you.

This is nothing wrong with you.

Nor is it wrong to feel that way. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Or they can tell you, and you can go right ahead and feel how you feel.

It's just, there are many things we can be honest and upfront about, and probably should. And there are a few things we're more selective about how we reveal, and that should also be true. Just as you probably wouldn't say "I want to fuck you" out of the blue, you probably shouldn't drop a feelings bomb on her. You might actually have more success with the former than with the latter, oddly enough. (Don't quote me on that. Just... sometimes women take it more in stride when a guy lets her know he wants her than when he lets on that he has feelings - early on. Early on, women expect men to be horny, but to be in control of themselves. Saying what you want like it's cool is a way of being in control of yourself. Letting her feel pressured with your feelings is a subtle way of not seeming in control of yourself. We can control our words and what we do. How we feel is ok and our own.)

The general advice that you're allowed to be as lovey-dovey as she is, but not more, and not sooner, is I think quite sound and reliable. She sets the tempo or the timeline on that. All you have to do is take the cue. She'll let you know how much is okay in that area. It's pretty simple actually. (But she'll also quite likely pressure you to be more affectionate, if you're following behind her in this way. You shouldn't let her pressure you too much. Then she'll feel like she's controlling you. Not good. Just... she puts out the line drawing, you color inside the lines or not. Maybe a little outside the lines when you know each other very well. Get it? When it comes to feelings, that's about how it works. By the way, consent with sex is different, more clearly defined, and no is no.)

You may want to let her know you like her by being sweet, gentle, tender, helpful, etc. This may feel completely genuine and honest and good and right, from your perspective, and if it does, then I believe in your intentions and motives. And she will probably notice but this probably will not work. Save it for later. Be kind but don't try to communicate your desire for her with kindness. You may think that should work. It might work very well on you. You might love it, yourself. But women are a little strange like that, and won't trust it. Also they may read it as you kind of making excuses for not being more of a man.

Above all do not show her consideration with the expectation that she will sleep with you, and if she doesn't, she is being a jerk. That expectation is no good whatsoever. Also, it doesn't work.

It has very little to do with her or you. It's just human psychology.

The thing is, you like her, you know she's special, you know she isn't perfect but you're totally ok with that. You want to be with her. You aren't trying to con her or manipulate her or pressure her. But you do feel this way, and that means something to you, and maybe it can mean something to her.

Here's what you're completely overlooking. And why would you see it? You wouldn't. But here it is...

Most women get approached quite often. If you're a relatively shy or introverted guy, any girl you're interested in has been approached by probably more than a hundred times more men than you have approached women. You have too little experience approaching someone. She has excessive experience being approached.

We have to accept that this is an extremely likely asymmetry.

What that means is that she sees the world as containing lots of options. Maybe they are mostly bad options in her mind. For that matter, maybe they are all bad options. And maybe you would be a good option but she doesn't see you as one... yet. The point, though, is that she understands dating as a world of options. And you understand dating as you really like her and want to be with her.

Do you see the disconnect?

It's not that she doesn't like people, get crushes, fall in love, etc. But her baseline is a world of options. And your baseline as the shy/introverted/sensitive/etc sort is that you're really only ever interested in one person at a time. Or close enough. By the time you like someone, it's really just her.

That's more or less ok. It's natural. For some guys it's just how life is. But when we take into account that asymmetry, there is a danger of her feeling pressured. And of you becoming too single-minded about this.

My suggestion is to take another cue from her: you actually do have more options.

When you really like someone, she is really special, and you are special for seeing it and feeling it.

What you want to remember, though, is that this is also a wonderful thing about you. As we said. As we just agreed, I hope. This is a way you feel. It doesn't belong to her. This is a way you can feel about many people - even if you don't think so right now.

Take back that little piece.

You can feel wonderful about her and turn around and feel wonderful about someone else - or be ready to. Because you know that as unique as she is, so are you, and so are others.

If you can take this step and really feel it, that makes you much more attractive.

That's all.

-

Oh, actually, there is one other thing. It is not "Does she like me? Does she not like me?" Stop asking yourself that. Think of people who appreciate you and trust them. Instead, ask yourself whether what you are doing is turning her on. It isn't that difficult to learn how to read whether a woman is turned on. You might be the kind of person who has no clue. Or you might be painfully aware but not know what to do. (I actually have really good radar, but it doesn't seem to help when I need it to, because I get so anxious, so I'm in the second category.) The trick is to treat women you like much the way you treat anyone else, in the specific sense that if you say something embarrassing, you might actually lose face with people, but you'll notice that it's generally quickly forgotten - often the very next time, it's like it never happened and probably won't ever come up (or if it does, you'll laugh about it). The "Does she like me? Does she not like me?" or "Am I turning her on?" thing is similar. Don't get fixated on it. Just keep existing and relating to each other if you have a connection. You might figure out how to perk up her interest. Try to be honest, of course - or obviously playful. The key is that whether she is into you is not fixed. It's more fixed for you as a guy than it is for her as a girl. It's more like whether she's in the mood to be interested in you, and that is a mood you can probably influence.

When people don't like your point of view but they don't know how to respond to what you just said, this is what they usually do: they respond to something other than what you said. They alter what you said until they can make you sound like a stupid or bad person. They make it easier for themselves and harder for you - unfairly, I might add. Probably most of the time they don't even realize they're doing this. And their lack of awareness of that makes it quite difficult to continue discussing - or even to get them to see the bad conversational moves they're making.

A common example of this is the Straw Man argument/fallacy, but I didn't call it that because I don't think people know they're doing it, and because it isn't always an argument. Sometimes it's literally just acting as if what was said was something else, and continuing on that basis.

This larger category might be called "convenient misunderstanding." And sometimes it's really quite proud, too. People are proud to misunderstand.

Every political party (group) has some flawed tendencies, and the opposite party (group) is probably right about some of them.

I didn't get it at first, but I started to understand the Republican complaint about Democrats' "smugness." I realized I was seeing these instances of people needlessly being jerks and ridiculing people, for example, who didn't buy into the concept of evolution. For me, the person being a jerk is a person being a jerk. For a convervative, that's a smug liberal, and I'm one of the same. Maybe my jerkitude isn't so extremely dismissive or demeaning or frankly dehumanizing. When I disagree with people, I try to make a point that I'm not dismissing them as people. I'm attacking the idea or its supports, not them, not people. But when I dismiss ideas I consider false, I also can come across as smug. Or dismissive of the people themselves, even if that's not what I'm doing. Impressions are funny things.

When you write, it's best not to use extra words. A way to do this is to get people to expect what you mean before you even say it. Then you either satisfy or surprise them. By looking ahead to what they think you're about to say, you can steer them cleverly.

The simplest trick is to remove little grammatical issues that will cause double-takes. They're called "garden path" sentences, because a person reads the beginning instinctively expecting one thing, but then you use the words in a completely different way grammatically. (Your intro "walks them down the garden/rose path," as the saying goes, with subtle deception.) This is often great in a poem, but in most writing it's often terrible, in the sense that it's powerfully weakening your hold on the reader's trust, comfort, expectation, and quality of surprise.

[I should put some examples here!]

Honestly I might not have ADHD if I managed to sleep 6.5-8 hours a night. But that's absolutely not how it is, no matter what I do. My weekly average is 4.5-5 hours, most weeks, a little more some weeks. And this is even though I rarely use an alarm these days and no one expects me to do anything in the morning. Around 5 hours on average is the best I can possibly manage, right now.

You could conclude that this must be my natural setpoint for sleep and how much I need, but that isn't true. After enough sleep deprivation, mammals sleep less and never rebound to the amount they used to sleep. That persists even though they show various signs of sleep deficit. So that's true of me as well. When I do manage to sleep 5.5+ hours, I feel much better, sharper, more energized, more normal. But I can't get that to happen more than a few times a month. And even then, it's because I slept much less than average in the preceding few days.

Depression and insomnia can both look just like ADHD. But ADHD can also cause depression and insomnia. Most people with ADHD have irregular sleep patterns by nature and their impulsivity worsens this further, and most people with ADHD are first diagnosed with depression that sets in as a consequence of their ADHD. It's just that when the depression goes away, they still have the ADHD tendencies. That's how I was diagnosed also.

The Magician's Nephew is the first book that had me thinking about what it would be like to be a writer.

There was a moment when I kind of felt the presence of CS Lewis behind the world I was inhabiting as if he were Aslan - I knew he was there, pulling the strings as it were, but it seemed so real. So the thought was something like: I could never do this, I can't fit all this in my head, I wouldn't have the talent. Ever. But I wished I could, and thought maybe I should write. I thought maybe I can write short stories, not whole novels.

That was 2nd grade. Or maybe 3rd grade. I kept rereading those books. It might not have been the first time through.

When I was in high school, my tendency to wait until the last minute and scramble evolved. I wrote some papers that turned out well by staying up all night. But then it stopped working well. And then it stopped working. I'd stay up all night trying to force myself to get started. Then I'd go to school feeling like hell. Then later it was that I'd go to school and get punished in every class for everything. Because I was too out of it to manage the frustration of choosing which I'm-way-behind-on-this pile to start, and then find a working pencil. And then use it. And keep using it. So I was in a painful free fall for a while.

What happened was that my HPA axis got overwhelmed and numbed. This is typically called depression. You experience so much panic that in exhaustion you stop responding even to panic. It's like a drug tolerance, only the "drug" is adrenaline or panic - what you were previously relying on to kick you into gear. For a while caffeine - or even the initial boost of missing a first night of sleep - can perk you back toward pseudo-normality. But then it doesn't really work either. Then nothing works. (It's like kicking a dead horse, only "kicker" is the world, seemingly all of it, and "horse" is you.)

So - it turned out I had a sleep disorder - I'm not just a night owl but kind of irregular about that, too, so it's tough to schedule - I also can't keep to much of a consistent pattern. And it turned out I'd run into major depression. Obviously.

But the core of what was going on there was actually ADHD. That took me longer to ascertain. (Even after the diagnosis, I wasn't sure for many years.)

Staying up all night to try to force yourself to focus, using caffeine, and not even managing to focus and get it done. Doing this many times and hating yourself for it.

That's ADHD. It sucks.

But it's also kinda cool in some ways - I mean, if it doesn't kill you, etc.

I just did exactly the same thing with a job interview I'm about to call off, because I'm tired and have prepared nothing and am not into masochism actually. If it'll be like this the first time, knowing me it isn't going to get much better. If I couldn't put the slides together last night, in this case that's because I don't give a fuck about putting together slides and I cannot manufacture giving a fuck about slides. If I did care about these particular slides enough, I might have done it - might have. But I know that I do not care about them. That bodes poorly for the job. To do the job, you have to actually do it - and be able to get yourself to do it with some kind of predictability.

Different people have different mental styles. With me, I think it's really important to hear what people actually say - before you try to interpret why, and read between the lines, and follow implications. It's so common it's maybe even the normal thing to listen for WHY a person says a thing, and often then ignore WHAT they actually said... or else address it in an unfair, underhanded, too sure, or half-baked way. We assume the motives are the main thing, and we assume we know what those are.

It seems to me that telling someone WHY they said a true thing (or a likely/plausible/understandable thing), and focusing on that, is an express lane to trouble. It's just going to lead to bad conversations.

Now, you can address why they said the thing *as well*. But I think it really behooves everyone to address WHAT's actually said at face value. If we aren't doing that, we aren't having a proper conversation. It's always going to feel unfair if people aren't actually responding to each other directly. It's talking past each other.

Ultimately, you never know exactly why a person says a thing. Let them illuminate you on that. Don't try to dictate to them why they said it. That's going to come across as conversationally gross. You might be right, but the truth is you cannot be sure, so they are the main authority, and you are there to suggest motives inside themselves they might not have noticed or admitted out loud. But I think by far the best way to do so is in the context of listening to them carefully and treating them like real people. You don't get far with people by trying to stick a pin through them or superglue them to the worst interpretation. Even if the worst interpretation is correct, there were probably other motives and factors, so you'd still likely be (over)simplifying. Until you understand it how they do, you don't completely understand it - where "it" is what they're saying and why.

It's much less important to me why a person SAYS something than why they BELIEVE it. That is, I want to know their evidence and logic and experience. Just the fact a person thinks something is pretty meaningless to me. Who cares? Everyone thinks stuff. Everyone who's ever been wrong thought stuff - and it was wrong. Thinking a thing is not important, in a sense. But WHY you THINK that? Here's where you can make a real difference.

I'm much more interested in THAT why than in the why that gets a person to speak up in the first place. People are free to speak. They don't need to justify speaking in the first place, and you don't need to know exactly why they're speaking. In a sense it isn't really your business. By all means be interested. Even ask. Why not? But if you can't listen to someone until you know the why of their speaking up, or if your interpretation of the why of their speaking up makes you unable to focus on their actual, expressed words and sense - then I think you aren't really listening. You're half-listening and then imposing. And that's all too human. It's very normal. I just happen to think it's a mistake, because I've seen what it regularly leads to, and how much better things are when you use a better method. My why here is personal experience. But on some level isn't it always?

I actually tend to think of myself as a writer, and I just use a broader brush about it - I mean if I'm teaching in person, that's a kind of writing, if I'm coding, that's a kind of writing, if I'm making music, that's a kind of writing, and obviously if I'm writing a post or essay or story or poem, that's a kind of writing. I'm a writer. But I write in different formats and prefer it that way.

Sometimes I write a poem and even though my poem blog is hidden these days, I find the poem too raw, too honest, too exposing. Heartfelt doesn't make it art. So I'll save it as a draft, not publish it to my poem blog. I can't stand the idea of someone actually reading it.

Eventually, though, I'll probably hit "publish." With a few weeks or months of distance, I don't feel so extremely emotionally autopsied. Maybe it's ok to let people - even the imaginary people who can find my poem blog and would actually want to read it - see the reality.

In writing, or really any art, the trick is to give just enough information that brains fill in the rest. When you start brains filling in, they experience things like excitement, intrigue, suspense, wonder.

In any expression, there are really 4 layers:

1. made explicit
2. automatically intuited (the audience might even think this was made explicit)
3. can be figured out
4. will probably never be figured out

If you can maximize the second one, you're doing really well.

You can't offend me into believing you aren't human. Offending me doesn't make me stupid or insane. You are human. Offense is irrelevant to that point.

So no, even the people guilty of the very worst things do not become inhuman in my mind. Maybe sometimes temporarily. The guy who decapitated a journalist for ISIS in 2014 - Jesus Christ. I couldn't/wouldn't watch that, and I felt something we can agree to call hate. But I recognized anger+disgust, two feelings put together, knew what this was, knew why, and moved on.

Hitler was human. I imagine I would dislike him if I met him. And I detest what he stood for and what he did with his time on Earth. But I am not one of these people who think the worst actions magically make him not human.

I find it important to say this kind of thing because I've learned that if you aren't very clear on it, most people will not get it. And that can actually hurt sometimes, temporarily, at least. It seems weird to me that someone wouldn't get it, but it's going to happen constantly, so you'd better get there early and do something about it.

If not, you'll have way too many conversations in which someone is angry with you because you are not acting as if some other person, guilty of one misdeed or another, is inhuman. No, you see, when you get angry with me about this, it seems you're focusing on the wrong thing. It isn't that I believe that person's actions weren't bad enough to be called thoroughly objectionable or possibly downright evil or completely fucking evil. It's that none of that makes me see a person as inhuman. Ever. When I say I see Hitler as human, if you think that has any iotas to do with approving of his evil, or with disapproving any less, then you are simply mistaken. I use Hitler as an example of the utmost evil. But there *is* no evil that means a human is not a human. That isn't how it works. (That's what I think, anyway.) That's all. I'm simply being honest about how reality appears to be when you stop trying to project your ideas on it and let reality speak for itself.

So I'm going to suggest an experiment. You may not like it, you may not do it, but anyway, I'm going to suggest it.

Imagine another version of yourself, the same in every way except one: this other version of yourself murdered someone.

You think that isn't possible?

You might think it's impossible. Or you'd grant it isn't impossible, but you would never choose that, so it isn't really possible. But it's possible, you just wouldn't choose it. You want credit for that. And - ok, good, I'm glad we got that out of the way. Credit given. Please, please deserve the credit always.

But the thing is, it's possible. You could be confused enough, your judgment or intelligence could be affected enough. And if it were your judgment that was off, you'd probably imagine today that you must have totally lost your mind - so much so that you'd no longer really be yourself. Right?

Well, that's a nice way you have of protecting your ego.

The truth is, it's possible. And losing your judgment in this matter could mean something subtle. Imagine a few nerves stop firing. Just... a few in the right places. Or the wrong places. With just the right links - or the wrong links - in your mind clipped away, you could look and act and feel just the same, yet... you'd also become a murderer.

We don't really want to imagine this, most of us, most of the time. That's more than understandable. I don't enjoy this thought experiment myself. At times it's made me very uncomfortable. Do I really enjoy telling you - and implying about myself - that we could be murderers without being much different? And we'd be just as much ourselves in every other way? It makes me uncomfortable to think, and uncomfortable to say. And I don't particularly want to make you uncomfortable, either. But I do think it needs saying.

I'm very grateful for whatever connections exist in my mind to prevent me from doing bad things, and make me want to do good things. They're enormously useful, and if I lost those connections, I really hope I'd be put in containment or out of my own misery... before I did any real damage.

But the thing is, I'm grateful because I know they - those brain connections - didn't have to be there. It could have been another way. I'm fortunate that it's this way. I myself am fortunate. My being a good person, a decent person, understanding, considerate, helpful, honest, non-judgmental, etc - all of these are things that in part were given to me. It could have been another way. And recognizing that makes me realize there are others less fortunate.

Just as some are less fortunate and born in poverty, or with an illness that prevents their earning a living, in much that same way, others are less fortunate because they are more likely by nature (sociopathy, etc) to become criminals. We have to hold people - and ourselves - responsible for actions. But that's a practical concern. It doesn't change the fact. Empathy, self-control, and moral judgment are natural capacities that are unevenly distributed among individuals. That it's inconvenient to consider the fact, or difficult from some policy or messaging perspective, doesn't make it the slightest hint any less a fact.

And ultimately, I think we make the most progress by understanding the facts, not from playing image games about what's acceptable to say out loud.