Tag Archives: empathy

Shades of grey

Just a simple reminder that we don’t live in a dichotomy. The world isn’t either black or white. Most ideas sit somewhere in between.

Nuances in politics, in culture, and in our communities create opportunities to learn, to explore, and to be empathetic. Not sympathetic, empathetic. I remember interviewing a friend of my aunt’s for an essay about discrimination. He was in a wheelchair and I quoted him in my paper, “The only place sympathy belongs is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

We don’t learn if our ideas aren’t challenged. We don’t learn by talking but by listening. We can disagree. We can even argue and debate. We can research and support our ideas. We can walk away… and maybe we can change our minds. Maybe we can find the grey that allows us to coexist without feeling like we have to change others minds.

Nuances. Empathy. Shades of grey.

7-Sins-Collage

Here are the 7 Sins, and here come the 7 Virtues?

In January, I wrote a series of posts called the 7 Sins:

  1. Gluttony
  2. Envy
  3. Pride
  4. Lust
  5. Wrath
  6. Greed
  7. Sloth

I plan to write a series of 7 Virtues over this coming week, in addition to my regular daily posts, then auto post them the following week while I take a social media break. I will be deleting my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Apps off of my phone and only using my phone or a laptop with notifications turned off for my sabbatical. On that note, if you regularly read this blog from my Facebook Story or Facebook Timeline, please ‘Like’ this FB page, because during my social media break I won’t be manually adding the posts to my Story or Timeline. You can also get Daily-Ink by email.

Here are 7 Virtues that I am thinking of writing about: (The order might differ.)

  1. Love (including Chastity and Loyalty)
  2. Discipline (including Patience, not just Diligence or Temperance)
  3. Empathy (including Compassion)
  4. Integrity (including Honour and Courage)
  5. Kindness (including Charity),
  6. Humility
  7. Forgiveness

Am I missing anything? Any suggestions?

The size of your digital footprint doesn’t matter when it comes to viral social media shaming

When I started building my digital footprint, I saw a positive side-effect. If I googled David Truss, the first few pages belonged to me, or were about me. It got to the point where I actually felt bad for someone who shared my name. I mean, if you share the same name as someone famous, it makes sense that you will search your name and see that famous person. But if you are a young David Truss, you don’t expect to be inundated with information about a Canadian educator that no one has ever really heard of.

This gave me an illusion of ownership of my digital footprint that no longer exists. I used to tell students and educators that if you created a long tail of good things on your digital footprint, that would protect you from negative attention. For example, if someone wrote a blog post that said something mean about me, unless they were famous, or unless it was a major news publication, that article might end up on the 5th or 10th page of a Google search of my name. Essentially, it would be buried behind a trail of positive things I’ve done. That illusion no longer exists thanks to social media and #hashtags.

The reality is that everyone is one public, stupid mistake, one careless tweet, or one embarrassing Facebook post away from public humiliation that can last for years. And with respect to the public mistake, it might not be something recent, but could also be something that is dug up from the past. I didn’t grow up with cell phones and ubiquitous access to digital photos, but I’m sure that there are some embarrassing photos of me in my youth, sitting in photo boxes, in other people’s photo albums, or stored in basements or garages. I’m also sure that at least a few of my 30,000 tweets and several hundred blog posts, over 13+ years, have not aged well and can be seen as either rude, condescending, or even embarrassing.

Nowadays, it’s all too easy to be publicly shamed by something in a way that can go viral and absolutely overshadow your digital footprint, no matter how big it is. Viral videos and hashtags can create a storm of unwelcome attacks to you and any digital footprint you might have built. This is horrible. Imagine only being judged by you worst indiscretion. Imagine trying to escape that indiscretion a decade or more later, but that’s what comes up when your name is Google searched. Is this the kind of society we want to live in? A person can commit a crime, serve time, and move on… but a single tweet can haunt someone for years afterwards.

I really enjoyed this piece on Public Shaming on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’: (*Language/Profanity Warning)

Which led me to watch this TedTalk by Monica Lewinsky on The Price of Shame:

“The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars.”

This one quote from Monica Lewinsky underlies how systematic this issue is. It’s not just about a bunch of individuals deciding to bully and shame someone, it’s an entire media industry that feeds off of it. But as she later says, quoting Brené Brown, “Shame can’t survive empathy.”

We have the power to be good and positive in our actions. Not feeding the clicks of scandalous headlines and not sharing in the bullying and shaming of others. We can block and report negative people who focus on attacking others. We can be kind and forgiving.

Our online actions can feed a system that rewards the shaming of others, or our actions can reflect the same sort of empathy we would want others to give us if our worst indiscretions (past or future) ever became publicly viral.

Empathy and forgiveness

Last night I (re)read, “(Digital) Identity in a World that No Longer Forgets”, by Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt. I say ‘(re)read’ because I thought I was reading this article, written in October 2015, for the first time… but when I looked at it again today, I saw the first comment on the article was by me. The internet might not forget, but I do!

In the article, this sentence really struck me:

“In a world where forgetting is no longer possible, we might instead work towards greater empathy and forgiveness.”

We need to recognize that people are allowed to make mistakes. Take the time to read the article by Alec and Katia. These things matter when measuring the severity of someone’s digitally inappropriate contribution: Context and intended audience, intent, history, authorship, and empathy (and forgiveness).

If we treat every transgression on the internet with the same level of disgust and anger, then comparatively we are reducing the level of anger and upset over truly appalling and disturbing comments and behaviours. Furthermore, we are creating an unforgiving and un-empathetic society, that does not allow us to apologize and/or learn from our mistakes.

I’ve written about this in my post ‘Resilience #OneWord2020‘, and I’ll end with a quote from that post:

In Online Spaces:

People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionallyhurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.

Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry.

Asking your kids the right questions

Here is a long, but interesting article in the Atlantic, “Stop Trying to Raise Successful Kids“.

In it the authors, Adam Grant & Allison Sweet Grant, say:

To demonstrate that caring is a core value, we realized that we needed to give it comparable attention. We started by changing our questions. At our family dinners, we now ask our children what they did to help others. At first, “I forget” was the default reply. But after a while, they started giving more thoughtful answers. “I shared my snack with a friend who didn’t have one,” for example, or “I helped a classmate understand a question she got wrong on a quiz.” They had begun actively looking for opportunities to be helpful, and acting upon them.

This reminds me of a post I wrote 11 and a half years ago when my kids were 6 and 8, “Who have you help today?”

I used to ask my kids, “what was your favourite part of the day”, then I added “Who did you help today?” And as I mentioned in the post reflection:

It was only a matter of weeks before my oldest daughter’s ‘favorite part of the day’ was also the answer to ‘who did you help today’.

A question like this is so much more powerful than, ‘What did you do at school today?’, or ‘What did you get on your test?’, or ‘Did you have fun?’ Simply asking the question, “Who did you help today?” tells a kid what you value.

Angry people

It was many years ago, but I remember the situation well, having told it a few times. One of my online teachers was dealing with a student who was cheating. It was obvious, yet the student refused to admit it. His work was plagiarism of a student who had already completed the course… it wasn’t exact, but paraphrased sentence by sentence. This wasn’t done on questions with a single answer, it was done on two assignments where students were sharing personal opinions. Even if this student shared similar views to the original author, the essays could never match so well structurally, sentence by sentence, and idea by idea. The student’s father got involved and treated my teacher poorly and so she asked me for help.

When I called, I got a mouthful of rudeness, I could barely get a word in. I tried to explain but didn’t get a chance. Then the next day the student called me. He was condescending. He asked me how long I’d been out of the classroom, and asked me if I understood the word ‘collaboration’. He got to me a bit and I gave a bit of a snarky response. At that point his mom jumped in and I realized that I had been on speakerphone. She went on a full tirade.

I should have hung up. I should have ended the call. But two things played in my mind. First, that I should not have been snarky, second, that if they were underhanded enough to bait me like that, they were probably also capable of recording the call. So I listened to the abuse. I let her rant, I would occasionally begin to respond, only when asked, and then I would be cut off with another attack. And I took it. One thing made it bearable…

I’ve met a number of kids who have had a challenging parent in my career as an educator. A parent that was overbearing, or over-controlling, or unreasonable. I’ve met some kids that have both parents come in like two mamma bears protecting their kid, and while they might or might not be dealing ideally with the situation, they are genuinely caring for their child. I’d never met (albeit this was just over the phone) a kid before who had two completely angry and bitter parents.

I thought of what this kid’s experience at home must be like? I wondered if this kid had a role model that didn’t treat the world like it was against them? Did his parents treat him like they treated me? Did he have siblings or did he face their wrath alone? I imagined what it would be like for me if when I did something wrong, rather than my parents calling me out, they doubled down and defended me? I sat on the phone listening, but the abuse I took didn’t hurt. I felt genuinely sorry for this kid. I hoped this way of dealing with a problem that he was experiencing was not the only way that he experienced problem solving at home.

In the end, I gave a choice to the family. He could redo the essays, he could take the zeros for plagiarism on these two assignments and move on, or he could drop the course. I told the teacher that all email correspondence with the parent should be cc’d to me as well and that any phone calls should be directed to me. I didn’t want her to have to take any abuse.

There ended up being one more similar issue, and my conversation with the kid’s dad at that point actually went well for me, but I again felt sorry for the kid. I felt empathy. I wondered if the lack of face to face communication made my first interactions challenging, and maybe, hopefully, it would have been different had we met in person. I wondered if this kid’s parents were always angry or if this experience triggered something awful? I wondered what they were dealing with in their lives that I don’t have to deal with in mine?

I don’t think I would stay on the phone if something like that happened again. I don’t need to take the abuse. I know that I won’t be as likely to be snarky, even to someone treating me in a condescending way. But the best lesson I got from this was to remind myself that when I’m dealing with an angry person, I don’t know why they are so angry? I don’t know what their lives are like? And I don’t have to live the angry lives they live.

I get to choose my disposition. I can feel empathy for people that give themselves less choice than I have. I can move on after these interactions without feeling bad, if I know that I handled things as best as I could with the resources and experience that I have… and I need to remember that this applies to them too. They did they best they could, given their experiences and circumstances. I don’t choose to look back on this experience with anger. I’m not upset that I didn’t handle it better. I don’t pretend that it didn’t have an effect on me or I probably wouldn’t be writing about it now. But I will meet more angry people in my life, and I believe that I’m more resilient and more prepared for that time, thanks to this experience.

___

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Empathy, Not Technology, Is Core of the Problem and the Solution

danah boyd | apophenia » “Bullying” Has Little Resonance with Teenagers

[…] When I first started interviewing teenagers about bullying, they would dismiss my questions. “Bullying is so middle/elementary school,” they’d say. […]

[…] Of course, teens do take it seriously. And they do misinterpret when people are messing with them. And they do take minor social infractions personally. And then things escalate. And here’s what makes bullying so difficult to address. So often, one person thinks that they’re not at fault and that they’re simply a victim of bullying. But those who are engaged in the bullying see it entirely differently. They blame the person and see what they’re doing as retaliation. None of this is communicated, of course, so things can quickly spiral out of control without anyone really knowing where it all began.[…]

Empathy, Not Technology, Is Core of the Problem and the Solution

[…] We need interventions that focus on building empathy, identifying escalation, and techniques for stopping the cycles of abuse. We need to create environments where young people don’t get validated for negative attention and where they don’t see relationship drama as part of normal adult life. The issues here are systemic. And it’s great that the Internet is forcing us to think about them, but the Internet is not the problem here. It’s just one tool in an ongoing battle for attention, validation, and status. And unless we find effective ways of getting to the root of the problem, the Internet will just continue to be used to reinforce what is pervasive.

via zephoria.org

– – –

Finally, a well said and researched article that recognizes that the Internet is not the problem… It just amplifies the issues already present.

The bullying that Ann and her brother endured was as cruel as anything that happens on the internet and back then, before cell phones, cell phone cameras, MSN, Facebook and YouTube, it didn’t matter if the information didn’t go beyond the class or the school because that was the scale of the ‘whole world knowing’ anyway.

Blaming the internet or technology for making bullying worse is like blaming a gun for shooting someone. It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.

We need to develop empathy from a young age, infuse caring across the curriculum, and as Dana says, stop validating negative attention and start breaking the cycles of abuse that escalate into hurtful scenarios, (both on and off the internet).

“Empathy, Not Technology, Is Core of the Problem and the Solution!”