Call One Notes

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Call Two Possibilities

__Notes from the Call__

Participants / What they wanted to learn

  • BillAnderson would like learn or discover how to get beyond his familiar defenses. Oh, and when that getting beyond might be appropriate, and when not.
  • NancyWhite - would like to become better and blog based contentious interactions
  • Dennis Hamilton who thinks he knows and wants to know what are the lessons of Nixon? How to replace distrust and indignation with empathy and communication. Dennis blogs at Orcmid's Lair.
  • GraceDavis
  • ElanaCentor
  • DeniseTanton - Who hasn't a clue but wants to find some way to figure it out. Us and them generalizations appear in all sorts of situations, not specifically the blogosphere and the "Alist" vs "the rest of us" segment of the world.
  • EdwardVielmetti - on making transitions between being "one of us" and "not one of us" and "who are you anyways?" 6 o clock
  • LisaWilliams -- The flip side of Us. Vs Them. Where does the (very old) Us vs. Them impulse come from? (I am not sure how to call in)Oops, it looks like I missed this...it is 2EST! For some reason I had it in my head that it was 3EST. Well, next time I will know more.

add your name


Regrets:

  • JerryMichalski
  • JimBenson
  • KoanBremner

Introduce by way of sharing what you want to talk about (need to transfer from my paper)

  • Romantic unwillingness to be responsible for the impact of your words
  • Sometimes people who are like that don't realize how much they intimidate another person. The people who are intimidated are often as intelligent, but they can't bridge that abrasiveness. They don't know how and don't know want to. The most abrasive person doesn't want to take a step back. hard to facilitate between those people. Impossible sometimes. How to get those two groups of people together. Calmer understand the abrasive person is not doing it to be abrasive, but to be honest.
  • Is this an increasing situation? Blog/internet vs F2F? Freedom to be more abrasive online.
  • In in person groups, dealing w/ abrasive people, often the online behavior is consistent offline. Sometimes in person we use coping behaviors to diffuse that abrasiveness. Some online tools can slow down the participation of those who are being disruptive or dominating. In person meeting - stopped Q&A at the end, convert to Q session at the start an A at the end to avoid a person berating the questioner.
  • Piece of the pie: personal style. Being abrasive.
  • Being responsible. Aversion - simply walking away with those I disagree with. But it takes 2 to tango. Know enough about myself to be responsible for my own participation. Choose to turn someone else off. Something very personal. My interactions with others change if I change.
  • Smart to know you need to step back. Doing some facilitating by doing that. If more people did that, then we'd probably be better off online.
  • I want to find within myself the triggers. Criteria. When does the conversation start going bad? What are the points? The language? When you start using the word "you" a lot. Or clichés like right wing or left wing. Is that the point where you have to circle back. Characterize the behaviors and a plan to deal with each. Train ourselves to have dialog. Some sort of school of thought.
  • Requiring practice and practices for forwarding conversation. Still curious about... wondering... we have cultural permission for outrageous speech. Shock radio. People take on that posturing on political blogs. A long way from things you would not say in front of your mom. There is this strange, almost ... have you noticed a change, in print too, in the way people posture. Different from some years back.
  • A culture that glorifies an abusive sort of behavior.
  • Name calling... shock radio, Rush Limbaugh. Assumption that is ok to call people names. You hear it in the media. Kids call names. There is no way to disagree without labeling people. Lazy and easy. Not allow our kids or teammates to call names. Don't even realize they are doing it.
  • Cultural landscape changed with the 104th congress and the Contract with America. Newt Gingrich opened up a chasm and people filled it in. Maybe there is relaxing in blogs and speech. Polls looking glum.
  • Goes beyond politics. Race, gender, class. The ultimate us and them. The nazi label. People thought it funny, witty and clever, but in the texture of Gingrich's stuff it is vile, destructive and evil. Jokes about different cultures and we were too stupid to know better.
  • people use name calling within in groups to name who "us" is. Knowing how you refer to a group, self identify, being part of an inner circle or clique. You see it in companies with teams with crazy names. Group formation is part of human existence. You'd expect people to self identify positively or negatively with these symbols that transcend.
  • We're tribal. How can we become peaceful tribes.
  • there is a dark/light of this. Survival. Emotionally
  • have argued my point to the point of blindness. Adrenaline. Seductive. Listen to talk show, bringing people into this big drumming circle.
  • we all are part of a group. Need to feel part. Are tribal, but how do we stop ourselves from feeling the need to constantly and to the bitter end preach our cause. Even when the situation is deteriorating. The need to argue our side.
  • righteousness - a drug. Can we both be righteous without being at war. Righteous and indignation are not the same thing but they become mixed up.
  • Separating righteousness and indignation is important.
  • Language - another thing. The cycle forces otherness. You can't not be excluded. Get into mutual name calling which increases distance. No middle ground. Extreme polarization of the language. Almost an act of force which makes discourse impossible. Think of some of the traditional places, depending on what your parents did, about labor unions or management. No room to recognize that you are dealing with people. Public organized approaches are busy denying, always telling what is wrong with the other guy. No room, difficult to find a place to talk about it, find a place of agreement. Can be shouted down.
  • Power? Fear. Fear of losing power.
  • From "Once and Future King" (TH White) Somehow we need education because it can't just be might makes right. Name calling is might makes right. Feel trapped by it. Very seductive to get a bigger stick.
  • In my family, victims who see themselves knuckling under the power of others think the way to become powerful is to become like their oppressors/victors. The tendency is to play their game. It may not even be their game. When someone uses anger and forcefulness while complaining about being the victim.
  • I noticed at the BlogHer conference and reading blogs. one of the four people greeted us with a profanity I use in private conversation (F word). It was how she greeted the group. She was younger. Noticed in reading blogs there is a hippness, a rap language that is edgier, tougher, than my growing up in the late 60's language.
  • A lot less context in the textual world so easier to be us/them. Blogging brings diverse folks together.
  • Made a conscious effort to speak the way I would around my 6 children (22 to 7 years). I could write a lot more like others and it would still be my voice and me, but am afraid it would feel abrasive. And they would not understand me. A choice I have made. Didn't want to exclude. I'm already different from people who would come to my blog.
    • {orcmid:2005-08-23 My partner is a resident artist at an arts center and teaches pottery there. She has been working on cleaning up her mouth and not saying anything that she wouldn't want children to say around the studio. A practice like that ends up applying at home too. I am not so careful, and when I start F-ing this and that at the dinner table, she may chime in. It is easy to do. But she stops herself and reminds me what she is out to accomplish. So I am working on cleaning up my speaking and elimination of scatology, profanity, and gutter talk too. (I can remember back when I first heard a woman say f-- in public. It was at Sinatrama in Philadelphia, after being at a concert. My friend Terry said something like "Fighting for peace is like f-ing for chastity." I nearly fell off my bar stool. We were deep in Vietnam at the time, and it wasn't that out of line, just unexpected. It's not shocking now, in public speech, in print, or in films. I don't think it is the word so much as the lack of care for the sensibilities of others.}
  • Underline what you said. One of the things I noticed. You just demonstrated your care for someone else. How you conduct yourself. A lot of what we do is careless. So what I notice is that you have a commitment to having your message understood and trumps other choices. A key here.
  • Not always easy to do that, but I am an online moderator so I have a lot of practice. Sometimes feel like I'm being the moderator and not exactly me. When parenting a child I take on that role. It is part of who I am. Important to me to do that.
  • Wondering which blogher session? A remark about careless. On my blog I swear like a Sailor. Mommy bloggers are horrifically profane. A device of irony. A kind of care freeness vs careless ness. If one is feeling alienated is it alienation from youth culture which is more abusive. I'm a mom of a 14 year old. Sometimes I recoil. Sometimes remember my youth. That gives some of the bravado you read a bit of a break.
  • Again, it's the context
  • Bloggers are often taking on a persona who is not exactly, completely who they are. Nothing wrong with that. Just what they decided to share.
  • Too much generalization! More to it than just the blog does not 100% reflect who you are. It is super super hard to write to accurately reflect yourself. What you stick on the screen is some finite part.
  • So identity is part of this.
  • People tend to write for a presumed audience. The audience I write for on my blog is different from my mailing list. My mom reads the list. The pictures I stick up on flickr would give you no clue about what's going on. Multifaceted. Some are always on messages, some not.
  • how do I talk to someone who is repelling me? "When I read your blog, I feel like this, I know there is something there, I'd like to get to know you better. What do you want out of the conversation out of ***? Convince her to change? Know why?
  • To understand her intent so that I could know how to respond. Otherwise I fan the flames.
  • Email her and asking her for the conversation. Better understand. A student of this. Understand why she is comfortable when it makes me uncomfortable to increase my knowledge. Go into it without judgment, acknowledge that it is upsetting. Critical conversation.
  • The way to make it happen, I have to come back to the fact that the other is not making me upset. I'm upset. What's my piece. I'm the one choosing to get angry, sullen, whatever. It's really important - your blog makes me X - I don't know how you can have a conversation about that.
  • I actually had a conversation with *** after the blogher conversation. Very amiable. Was surprised she was so caustic to others online. Vox populi has dialog with her in the comments section. That can happen. She's very personable. I also think that the intent of A is - voiced by a conservative blogger - she is being groomed to be the next Michele Malkin. People are apologetic for people like this today. Limbaugh. Malkin. Their position as spokes people.
  • Then my righteous indignation rises up about ***'s actions hurting another person. That interferes.
  • Probably not going to find a middle ground with her. Is that so wrong? I can totally relate. Understand the indignation. Sometimes you can't find middle ground with people and that's ok. She is hurting people. From her perspective another is hurting people. Can't convince people.
    • {orcmid:2005-08-23 I did some digging around in +++'s blog, and I think we could cut her a little more slack with regard to +^+. I think not mentioning +^+'s name was a simple matter of not making it personal but having it be an observation about BlogHer and what was unexpected. I also sense that +++ is pretty fixed on the idea that sex and gender are the same thing, and all the talking otherwise is wrong-headed. Apart from that certainty, it strikes me that +++ is straightforward about claiming that particular viewpoint, and did not disparage +^+ in any specific way. I suppose we could be interested in what has +++ be adamant that having an uterus is the exclusive ticket to +-inity, and I'm not sure there's anywhere to take this. +++ has sharper things to say on a later blog about the composition of the BlogHer attendance that makes it clear for me that the objection is not particular to +^+ as much about people straying from their +^-uality. (I do hope these symbols come through on the post. Nah, the Unicode gets messed up. OK, well, have to do it with ASCII art, ok.) It certainly denies the claim of others to be recognized as not fitting that mold. I think this is ontological for +++ and it may be up to us to be tolerant in this case, praying that life experience will take the certainty out of +++'s posture.}
  • Can we then explore our differences? Find why we disagree and leave it at that? Will this change how we communicate with each other?
  • If we are trying to change other people? Or change how we talk?
    • orcmid:2005-08-23 Hmm. I don't recall this piece of the call exactly, but I don't think there's any payoff in getting people to change. We can alter our speaking and we can alter, most of all, how we listen, those seem to be what are most in our own power. That usually means having to give up something we might be attached to. I run into this all of the time. I don't always give it up; sometimes I can't even see what it might be (my ordinary condition of cluelessness). And I have seen how my willingness to give up something allows the unexpected to emerge and be created. And there's still room to say what concerns us, what isn't o.k. with us, and what doesn't work. And the resolution may be to not play in a particular game.

One more time round the circle:

  • Ed: interesting conversation. Don't spend much time in political blogs or energy with people who's stuff I disagree with. Block rather than engage. An interesting perspective on how you might actively seek out people you disagree with and come to terms.


  • Grace: Thank you everybody. Would really love to see this conversation continue. Like to invite conservative bloggers I'm really friendly with, pleased I have a dialog with.
  • Dennis: Very interesting and valuable. Hate to let it stop. So many neat threads. Interested in the question about civil treatment of commenters. Would loved to have done this F2F.
  • Denise: I loved it so much I drove with my cell phone. Really appreciate being a part of this. Hope we can do it again. Thank you.
  • Elana: Really enjoyed. I'm conflict adverse, personal life and I don't comment. I read stuff and I walk away. I do not give my voice to agreement, not particularly good nor enjoy. It might be nice to find my voice in disagreement better. Like to learn from those who do it or struggling with ways to do it well.
  • Bill: also hate conflict. Appreciate your point. We do need to learn how to agree and disagree and still act. That's crucial. I'm left with, touched so little, tho valuable and interesting, figure out how to do it again next, or in smaller slices. Nice big room, soft chairs, bottle of wine and lets talk. Chocolate for Nancy.
  • Nancy:
  • Bill: be more focused on one thing. Language, or rhetoric, might be interesting. Process and political approaches.
  • Dennis: we're getting acquainted here. Being focused would have been tough. This way we get to know each other and point to each others blog.

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