Stoneless

Yesterday's post was written out of hurt.

Words were said about me elsewhere, days ago, that left me disturbed; in pain; feeling misused.  It happens.  I understand why it happens.  I say things here that lead it on, so of course there's no mystery.  But still, I'm human, I'm vulnerable to a cutting remark and occasionally, they will haunt me for several days while I puzzle my way out of it.

If I were the sort that cowered from a fight, I'd be afraid to punch back.  Unfortunately, I know I can punch back, I have a forum from which to punch back ... and I have a long history where the privilege of punching back was denied me through early abuse as a young man.  And so, there is a compulsion to punch back.

I was often told, "They're just saying those things to get a rise out of you; don't give them the satisfaction."  This is common advice.  Unfortunately, with some people, if they don't get a reaction, it doesn't mean they stop.  No, they see it as a challenge ... and they don't stop, ever, until they get what they want.  I learned early, if in fact you want bullies to stop ... scare them.

Outbully the bully.

This has a price.  So let me say clearly, anyone on the net has every right and justification for going after me as hard and as viciously as they please.  I've given them that right.  Exercising it would not put them in the wrong.

Imagine a horizontal scale.  Towards the left we become more and more destructive, to ourselves and to others.  On the right, we become constructive.  Imagine that everything we say and do fits somewhere on this scale, in terms of that act's consequences.  I push someone's car out of a snowbank; they get to work on time; that's constructive.  I fail to shovel my sidewalk after a snowfall; someone slips, twist their ankle; that's destructive.

Measuring yesterday's post, where does it fall.  I gave in to the hurt, so I wrote a post that many of my supporters would prefer I did not write.  Like this one, it's full of personality and is not about worldbuilding.  Additionally, the anti-establishmentarianism of the post contributes to the general feeling that my blog continues to be, without change, toxic.  Hate-deserving.  From that perspective, the post harms me and my reputation, displeases my avid readers, changes no one's mind and, in fact, wastes the 90 minutes I took to write it.

That said, yesterday's post also addressed a subject rarely examined.  It informed.  Among new readers, it helps establish my reputation as a well-read, multi-disciplined man of letters, that I'm clearly not interested in the white racist agenda, though I'm a very white male; that I'm clearly liberal; and that I'm not fundamentally dependent in my thinking upon pleasing other persons.  Yesterday's post was punching back ... but I didn't lie, I didn't make up falsehoods to support my position and I stand by every word.  It was written from a position of integrity.  From that perspective, was it really hate-deserving ... or does it only look like it is, as it was punching back?

Is punching back always wrong?  Or is punching back a means of correcting someone else's destructive behaviour?

If someone sets out to insult me, or my writing, or my belief system, or the effort I take towards D&D, are they doing so with an intention of constructive improvement ... or are they, like me, surrendering to a destructive impulse?

I thought long and hard about yesterday's response to the hurt I felt.  I didn't write, "Ya, look at this dolt, what a hack, yada yada ..."  I didn't link the source of my hurt.  I didn't address the actual comment at all.  I tried to address, rather, the reason why the comment hurt; and from what society-driven impulse it originated.  I believe I am not liked by most readers because (a) I write with an "authoritative voice," which implies that I'm right and you're wrong; (b) I hold opinions that virtually no one else holds; and (c) I'm inflexible.

Welcome to a large number of the criticisms I receive ... exactly the three words used here.  The fact that the website needs to say authoritative writing is NOT these things only goes to show how often it's accused of being these things.

My opinions derive from the many books I've read, the many people I've heard, met, and heard give lectures, the highly diverse array of materials from which I take my learning and my refusal to accept anything "on faith," ever.  Once I did take things on faith: the bible, the government, authority, love, the golden rule ... oh, many things.  I have scars all over me caused by the faith I had in those things.  Remove faith and wish fulfilment from your opinions and without a doubt, the new opinions you have will not sound like anyone you know.

I'm inflexible because I've done the research.  Because I've walked the walk.  Because I've defended my positions hundreds of times to hundreds of different people.  When those defenses have failed, I corrected my opinion, accepting that I was wrong and thus strengthened my position.  If I build a fortification, and someone comes along and destroys the west tower ... and I learn how and why the west tower fell, then the new west tower is going to be better built, better thought out, stronger and more able to withstand a siege.

Most people I know, when their west tower is destroyed, they pretend it wasn't.  They don't fix anything.  They just go on pretending everything is exactly the same, no matter how often they get punched in the face by others plainly demonstrating that tower isn't doing its job.  I've spent a lifetime placing every brick and firming up every juncture.  Yet some rube shows up and makes a big deal out of picking up and throwing a tiny stone, made of the first and last thought they've ever had about the subject.  And when this stone fails to penetrate my lifetime of evidence, consideration and argument on the subject, they become shaken and flurried that my wall didn't fall down.  "You never admit that you're wrong!" I'm told; though, in fact, it's because I've admitted I'm wrong thousands of times ... and corrected for those wrongs.

This is why I'm inflexible.

Still, my best readers would like me to return to great posts about worldbuilding.  And I would ... except that I don't have an unending storehouse of these great posts ready to go at any given moment.  I have to think of one; and that takes time.  And meanwhile, life is happening.  As a writer, I want to write ... and not always for the purpose of having something wonderful and new to say about worldbuilding, or because I've invented some spectacular new game functionality.  These things are not invented easily or often.  I just don't have them on tap.

I do wish I wouldn't get hurt.  It's not that I'd wish others would stop attacking me; I don't want to tell anyone else what they should do.  But I do wish it didn't hurt; that I was inured, or unfeeling, or like Quasimodo, made of stone.