Tag Archives: comments

More on faith and evil

A couple days ago I wrote: The paradox of religion, and this morning Miguel Guhlin responded with an insightful post: Skirting Paradox. I encourage you to not just read the post, but also to follow the links… grab a coffee and dig in, if you have any interest in faith and religion, this is a piece you’ll want to read and reflect on.

Here is my comment response, but it does not stand alone, it sits in reflection to Miguel’s thoughts and ideas and if you choose to read only one of the two, read Miguel’s thoughts above rather than mine below.

Miguel, thank you for sharing such an insightful post! It took a while to read because I paused to go to every link. I appreciate your links to scripture and your perspective on them. I wrote this back in March, From Faith or With Faith.

In honesty I did not remember writing this when I wrote the post above… the consequence of writing every day is that I often repeat concepts months later, not remembering what is unexpressed versus written thoughts in my mind. But the slant in the link is a little different, less harsh, less of an attack on religion (which I was concerned about, but you saw through in your response). This previous writing reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a religious colleague, whom pre-covid I often spent time with speaking of and about religion. In this conversation I said to him at one point: (paraphrasing) 

When I share my atheistic points, they are not intended to convert you. I do not perceive atheism as a religion to adopt, simply a lack of religion… there is no intent to change your mind on your faith… in fact I see how your faith grounds you and I see no benefit in you not believing what you do. 

But that is a conversation between two educators, two public school principals, both of whom do not share their religion/beliefs with students. This does not change the ideas above that you succinctly reduced to:

“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”

That is the thesis statement. That is the problem today, be it with evangelical beliefs on abortion versus the liberty of women over their bodies in the US; Or warring Shiites versus Sunnis in the Middle East; Or Chinese versus Tibetans in Asia; Or… Or… Or… the list is almost endless. Why would a benevolent, all-knowing, and un-interfering God want His/Her worshippers to impose their beliefs on others? When two people of differing faiths squabble, no finger of God comes waving down upon one of them. When that squabble leads to the use of swords or guns, no hand of God shields the supposed Righteous One. Instead, Man’s evil against Man is shed, and the God they love is no longer represented in their actions.
And there in lies the problem of religion, it does not remain in the ‘respective closets’ you mention. Instead, it manifests in hatred of the heathen non-believers. In fact, the wrath of God on non-believers in scripture is what turned me away from religion. I wondered as a teen, “What kind of cruel God would do this?
~ Coffee after Class

“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”

Faith in God will not ever end, but maybe we can find a humanist… (I fear saying Humanist with a capital ‘H’, for this too can become dogma worth fighting to protect)… maybe we can find a humanist approach to faith that invites love of life and liberty, dialogue not conflict, and faith without evil.

Thanks again for your insightful reflection.

On bias… continued

I wrote about measuring bias yesterday. This comment by Joe Truss (my uncle) adds a lot to the conversation:

To add to the importance of Dave’s comment: a critical aspect of bias is the effect our local environment and context have on our opinions about what is happening in the world at large. People are very poor natural statisticians. When confronted with two similar events we begin to think ‘this is how it is for everyone’. An even deeper ‘local’ event is when we are upset or depressed, the entire world seems to be in line with our feelings. When we feel bad, the world seems bad. 

See: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en

https://www.gapminder.org
Take the awareness test on this link. ;-)}

Take the awareness test. I started guessing correctly not because I expected the result I was guessing, but because I was expecting the result to surprise me. We really aren’t good at estimating statistics and we make so much of the very little data we do know… and this shapes our bias… poorly.

A cesspool of comments

Yesterday I popped into a TikTok Live event related to the pandemic, and I was horrified by the comments. The live event was a spokesperson from the Canadian government and put on by a news outlet account. I get it if there are a few hecklers unsatisfied with the way things are going, but these were the kinds of comments being shared:

“Are the side effects as low as ivermectin?”

“All these people need to be charged with Crimes Against Humanity.”

“You don’t need any shots”

“There’s no pandemic it’s a scam.”

“Wake up people.”

“Health Canada shifted to primarily pharmaceutical funding in 2018.”

“We listen to Malone!!!! Not you filthy animals!!!!”

“Time for a new government.”

“Not true!”

“The government is corrupt”

“I’m sick of these lies!”

“Evil pieces of 💩”

“We need to hire a hit team to take them all down.”

“There is no science, it’s called being bought by Pfizer”

“How can anyone believe there’s a pandemic?”

“this segment of propaganda brought to you by Bill Gates.”

“none of the vaccines work, it’s all a scam!!!”

“Hurry up you only have a 98.5% chance of survival.”

“Sorry, I don’t play medical Russian roulette.”

“Oh hey! It’s a terrorist speaking! Listen to your overlords, slaves.”

I cleaned up the punctuation a bit, and I didn’t put a few of these in all capitals, the way they were written. I also didn’t share them all, but none of them were positive. None.

How did we get here?

I appreciate the comments

A big thanks to everyone who takes the time to read my daily writing. In the last week I’ve had comment responses to my Daily-Ink on my blog, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If I had to choose, I’d love to see these comments on my blog because then they ‘live’ attached to my post, rather than living on a timeline that passes by never to be seen again. That said, I know that if I didn’t automatically post my blog to these platforms, people wouldn’t see them at all, and it’s just easier to respond on the platform you are accustomed to. That’s the nature of social media these days, they are designed to keep you on their platform, watching their advertising, and engaging with them.

This is why when you share an Instagram picture on Twitter, you don’t see the image on Twitter, you see a link to Instagram, but when you share an Instagram picture on Facebook, you see the photo. Instagram and Facebook play nicely together because they are both owned by Facebook. It would be just as easy to have Twitter do this too, but the competing companies both want your attention.

So, I realize that comments will come in on many platforms, and although I said I do have a preference, I am truly grateful to converse/like/interact on any platform where a comment comes up. I’m quite honestly honoured when anyone takes the time to engage with my posts. I know and appreciate that my mom reads them regularly, and beyond that, I am often flattered and amazed that I get responses from local and distant friends alike… from those I know in my daily life, and from those whom I’ve never met face to face but am connected to inline.

I marvel at the idea that anyone can be their own publisher and share ideas across platforms and across the world, and I thank you for taking the time to interact with my journal of public thoughts.

Blog comments on social media

This morning I read a comment Aaron shared here on my Daily-Ink, and then commented back on a link he shared.


Then I went to Facebook and commented on a post about a friend, George, who shared his healthy living before/now photos showing his progress. He started by saying,

“For the last year, I have been adding a “progress check” to my Instagram stories for my workouts. I have been teased about it, but It was a way for me to see a difference over time when it is hard to notice the impact of your work on a daily basis. Snapshots over time have given me a better idea of my progress.”

My response:

George, this is fantastic! I love seeing progress photos like this. What’s great is that you aren’t just dropping weight, you are creating a healthy lifestyle. As for sharing the photos… GO FOR IT!

Kelly, Jonathan, and I post workouts on Twitter and cheer each other on. I’m sure some people roll their eyes, but I firmly believe that being public pushes us when we need that push. There is both incentive and accountability to being public about our healthy living goals. You look awesome, and you will look awesome a year from now rather than yo-yo-ing… so share away!

💪😃👍

I know that my Healthy Living Goals have been positively impacted by my being open and sharing them publicly on not just my blog, but also on social media.

What I also notice is that I used to get tons of comments on my blog, and now they are all over the place. My blog gets shared to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn automatically when the post is published, and people will comment and respond on those platforms rather than on my blog. These comments live at a given moment, they don’t live on my blog, connected to my post, like Aaron’s comment(s) do.

Social media timelines scroll past for brief moments in time. You could argue that so do blog posts.. especially when they come daily, but I like the idea that these posts share easily searchable and longer living moments in time. And, if and when I go back to them, I like the idea that the comments are there with the post and not lost on my social media timeline, never to be connected to the post again.

But social media rules the day. I’d probably get 1/10 the readership of my blog if I didn’t post it on social media, and social media is designed to keep you on the platform… to keep you engaged and scrolling, and interacting on the site. I don’t think that will change any time soon.

There have been a couple instances where a blog comment on social media added enough value to the conversation or idea shared in my post that it inspired me to quote that comment myself, in the blog comments. However, it wouldn’t be sustainable for me to try to do that all the time. I don’t really have a solution, I think it’s just a matter of accepting that people will choose to comment on social media sites, and blogs are not as social (anymore).

No more Daily Ink posts on my personal FB page

If you read my Daily Ink post via my Facebook Story, or on my wall, please follow my Pairadimes Facebook page. If you read my blog post somewhere else, just skip to the last paragraph.

As I approach a year of Daily-Ink blog posts, after leaving this blog dormant for a while, I’m reflecting on the process. One thing that I like about when I hit “Publish” on my blog is that it gets auto-posted to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Pairadimes Facebook page. Then I manually go to the FB post on my page and add it to my FB story and my FB wall. I’m no longer going to do this. The challenge is that I often write my post either the night before it gets posted or I write it in the morning over an hour before I post it, (I like to have it done before my morning meditation and workout).

So, daily I have this task that I need to remember to do… and it becomes a chore rather than something I want to do. It also makes me feel like I’m ‘plugging my blog’, saying “Look at me!” And while I love comments and engagement on my blog, I do find I write better when I focus on the writing itself and not an audience of readers. Having my Daily-Ink blog automatically go to Twitter, LinkedIn, and my FB page is enough. Please follow my posts at one of these sites if you normally read my blog on my Facebook wall. Today is the last day I regularly share my posts on my FB wall or on my story.

~~~

And as a special request to all readers, I do love your comments! Comments make the blogging experience better. However when I get a comment on Facebook or LinkedIn, or in a a tweet, they are fleeting. They end up on my timelines, never to be seen again. However, I go back to my blog posts often, and a comment there becomes part of a historical conversation that becomes part of the blog. So as a special request, please comment on my blog posts rather than in social spaces. ~ Thank you!

I miss the conversations that used to happen on blogs

I can remember blogging and getting 20 to 50 comments that made the post into a conversation… a dialogue that I learned from. That rarely happens anymore. Part of this is that the conversation has moved. For example my Daily-Ink posts generate conversations on LinkedIn, and on Facebook. But I miss rich feedback that made a blog post feel like an engaging conversation. That doesn’t happen much anymore.

What made me bring this up is that I had two people, Brad and Bill, comment on my post about ‘Trying to find the Truth‘, and this conversation reminded me of the kind of commenting that used to happen more frequently.

Twitter conversations are fun, but the richness isn’t there like it is in a longer format blog post and follow up conversation in the comments. Facebook seems to invite compliments like, ‘thanks for sharing’ or ‘I really enjoyed this’, but seldom anything deeper as an add-on to a shared post. LinkedIn seems to have the better conversations coming from blog posts, but they get lost in the stream as opposed to being curated with the blog post.

Perhaps I need to make the effort Aaron Davis does to ‘Read Write Curate‘. Interesting timing that I went to find that link and stumbled on this quote Aaron curated from Bill Ferriter:

Here is Aaron’s full website, Read Write Respond.

Anyway, I’m going to make a commitment to comment more on the blogs I read. If I want to see this kind of conversation more frequently, I should also participate more myself.

Plus one – an audience matters

A couple days ago I wrote Publish button pangs, about the tension I feel before hitting the publish button on a blog post. I know it’s going to an audience and I want it to be perfect, even though I’m keenly aware that I will often make mistakes. Aaron Davis wrote a comment on that post and he shared:

This touches on Clive Thompson’s argument for the power of public:

Many people have told me that they feel the dynamic kick in with even a tiny handful of viewers. I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million.

There is a lot of merit in this quote that Aaron shared. I remember teaching science and introducing Grade 8 students to wikis back in 2007. I had one ELL – English Language Learner – in my class that was quite low, and I could never get him to edit and improve his writing after handing in something. Then we started our wiki and he had his own project page (it was on the now defunct Wikispaces or I’d share it here). On this sight I had a little widget called Meebo that let me know when people were on this site, and allowed me to chat with them (they got a random number as a username, and could change that to their actual name). I remember about midway through the project I started seeing this ELL boy online after 10pm and would often end up telling him to go to bed, via the Meebo widget, closer to midnight. After about 3 days of seeing him on this site late at night, I decided to go into the wiki history and see if there was any activity by him, or was he jus looking around? It turned out he was there editing his work! There were small changes, mostly grammatical, but there was no doubt that he was working on improving his page. See An Authentic Audience Matters for more on this idea project and idea.

When a student hands in work to a teacher, there isn’t an audience, there is an assessor. No one is ‘seeing’ the work, it’s ‘just going to the teacher’. When a student has to share work with the class, suddenly there is an audience. When a student has to share something online, then there is a ‘real’ audience… even if no one is going to the page, the perception of there being one more (or 10 more) people watching changes the student’s perception of the importance to do a good job.

One counterpoint to this Clive Thompson quote:

“I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million.”

Social media is changing this. One of my daughters, when she was younger, used to delete her Instagram posts that didn’t have a minimum threshold of ‘Likes’. Social media seems to put a bit more emphasis on popularity and a larger audiences. That same daughter though, was happy when Instagram made the shift to not letting the public see how many likes were on a post. She thought that was a great decision. So, with young students there is definitely a greater emphasis, pressure, or focus on the size of the audience.

That said, I do believe that the critical idea of having a ‘plus one’, having an audience that is bigger and unknown, increases the stakes for many, and helps inspire them to do better work. I know that’s true for me.

___

Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay

The learning doesn’t stop when I hit ‘post’!

Comments make blogging a rich experience.

Comments on four of my recent Pair-a-Dimes blog posts have blown me away!
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… The learning doesn’t stop when I hit ‘post’! 
Check out the amazing conversations: 

Thank you, thank you and thank you to all who have ‘joined the conversation’… I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from and with you!