MUSINGS ABOUT MUTINGS

To feel safe,

to only want to deal with easy going people, to only be looking for praise and confirmation, that seems to be a mega-trend on the internet (and probably long before its era), i.e. on the online channels where comments can be made under the publications.

The latest muting function on blurt also seems very welcome on blurt to some, not to others. I am probably one of those who see it critically.

I have been blogging since 2008,

I can say that I am an experienced blogger and moderator of the comments section.
In addition, I have dealt with the topic of "conflicts" in theory as well as in practice and have worked as a counsellor for families and social issues.

I wrote many articles to frame "conflict" as an opportunity and to get away from the habit of looking differently at what is called a conflict issue or a difficult person (the term "toxic" is often used here).

There is a huge difference between tending to be praised, seen, affirmed and liked and not expecting such things.

I am deliberately not talking about the counterpart, criticism. Insofar as I do not exhaust myself in the constant effort to be praised, seen, affirmed and liked, I am someone who also does not clearly praise, see, affirm and like others.

I am not particularly liked or do not want to be liked. Being "liked" is overrated in my view.

In a way, I have trained myself not to try too hard to be a liked person. I rate it rather low when someone "likes" me. It basically doesn't have any special meaning either. I do value earning respect. Especially when dealing with conflictual issues and argumentative people whom I cannot simply fob off with cheap arguments or flattery.

Since I am very practice-oriented, it seems like a damn good training ground to deal with precisely those people who annoy me.

There is no safe space from which I can banish all those who are repugnant to me, whom I find annoying or stupid. I would find it even less legitimate for me to extend this to visitors to my blog post page and to deny them difficult commentators or otherwise crazy visitors.

Who am I to decide that for readers? I let everyone do that for themselves, I certainly don't feel responsible for it. Does it mean, I stay away? No. I engage.

I am strongly reminded of an argument I had over twenty-five years ago

with a friend who was deciding for her planned party who should sit next to whom and to whom the presence of any other guest at all might seem unacceptable. But since all the guests in question had also been friends or family, I had asked her, "Yes, and why in God's name can't people decide for themselves who they want to talk to or how intensely they want to engage with each other? How can you know beforehand who can't and won't talk to whom?"

I see this as conflict avoidance. I think conflict avoidance is clearly underestimated in the eagerness to keep the unlovable and uncomfortable at bay. Giving priority to the feeling of being safe over what could also happen: that we get along surprisingly well, have a good conversation or even learn something important in the argument.

Even if there is a thunder storm between guests, that is at least human and normal.

But to avoid any discomfort, or to want it, is for me the more difficult variant of hosting.

In my experience, it is the consequence of this suppression of human imperfection, of disputes or discords between people, that leads to a further inability to be in contact at all.

So when I mute other users, I think to know enough about the person I am preventing from commenting on my blog site.

I think I have already listened to this person enough, dealt with him or her and, when I have had enough emotionally, I want to put an end to it. Very tempting. With just the push of a button, I get rid of the annoying one.

One might indeed agree and recall moments when fighting cocks set the scene and spoiled everyone else's time. But did they? I mean spoil "everyone" else's time?

Give it a fact check on the blurt official announcements and look if there is a balance between opposing views.

Would any of the opposing parties really want to have a clean and clear united opinion, like all answers are alike?

Is that really a reason to stop inviting some to the party? Really? Why?
What legitimate reason can there be? This is not a rhetorical question, it wants to get to the bottom of something.

But the very consideration in and of itself that my friend expressed had irritated me. It has not occurred to me myself to want to protect one guest for another or to think along here about who I can impose on whom. I was and still am irritated and even upset by such presumption to think for others. It is also a sign of "wanting to keep control of the situation".

Playing figures in the mind

To put it vividly, one could also use the image of such a host adjusting the figures in his mind, this one to that one and that one to the other one, behind which is the wish for a "beautiful and harmonious celebration in which everyone should be happy." Sounds very good, doesn't it? But why even think about it? Why go through characters and scenarios in your mind before the party is even underway? Why this uncertainty, this "I have to plan it all"?

Where is the will and the readiness to get involved in something that cannot be calculated and predicted?

In the years when I myself gave lavish parties at home, the part where things got wild was probably the most exciting and the most memorable, especially because afterwards you definitely laughed at and remembered certain very embarrassing scenes. For example, one guest urinated in his befuddled head in the middle of the living room. Another peed in the swinging hammock because of a pleasant dream that must have accompanied him in his sleep.

Why talking about online-safety in that way to get a clean comment-section?

Should I, because I am dealing with disturbed people, really put the pathological in the foreground and say that because we are all so terribly relationally disturbed, unable to maintain real human contact, also strengthen such inability by moving it from the physical biological reality of contact avoidance to the virtual one as well?

Should the provocative, the out of the ordinary, the offensive, the morally insulting, the obscene disappear from the scene?

I mean, who are we kidding? While people get upset here in the comments that someone they don't know, someone they've never met, insults, offends and otherwise provokes them, don't we watch streaming films and videos every day where this happens? Which is not to say that it should no longer happen.

The shocking, the violent, the pornographic wants to be shown because it is part of life. In an ideal world, none of this would exist, but this ideal is not real. Wishing it away and always "being good" is just as impossible as always being bad. If the provoking and shocking forms of communication are to be banned, they will show up even stronger. That is a matter of fact.

My friend told me she "doesn't like extremes".

Well, that is certainly something that many can agree with. But it is exactly the extremes, the shocking statements and images and sounds, that make you pay attention, isn't it? If I am not extreme in what I say (i.e. I do not exaggerate), I hardly get a hearing.

My friend, however, does not know that she herself also holds extreme views, she just thinks that she is moderate. As a result of her thinking so, oppositional statements appear to her as "extreme", she must inevitably assume from her point of view that the others are exaggerating, while she herself is not.

This is called classical denial.

We are all subject to this phenomenon when we regard "the others" as extremists, because apparently it is a very bad thing to be extreme. But there is a difference between the benefits of verbal extremism and being so, isn't there? The satirists, cabaret artists and royal jesters of all times knew about this fact and took advantage of it. I can use it as a stylistic device without immediately giving in to extreme emotions, can't I?
It seems to me that almost everyone in the media uses an extreme dialect, I would say that conversations all over the world are characterised by it.

Having certainty in one's views and beliefs is very seductive.

The seduction is to wish that there is a reality that is "like that".
While I wouldn't deny it, on the other hand I wouldn't make an absolute statement about it either, if only because it's a linguistic challenge.

It's like "you know the truth" but the moment you distribute it in your linguistics it becomes the target for those who know of a different truth. One truth cannot beat the other truth. It then becomes an endless game of hide and seek.

Playing it with a grim face and hatred in your chest will invite more of the same players. The art lies in playing it cool, in the sense of sincere. People know and feel the difference.

The crazy ones, who do exist, they are crazy for a reason.

They are an expression of the many who suppress their own needs of displeasure, anger, spontaneous joy and unconcern. Those who are supposedly calm and reasonable on the outside are angry, sad and neglectful on the inside. And even their humour is underlaid with pain and fake laughter. Because they don't admit that they have these many overwhelming feelings, they pretend that they are not irrational beings.

Ask yourself if you are not also crazy in this way and would want to absolutely control your comment section only for this reason.

So it is also for me to admit that I am very crazy at times, tormented by fear and anxiety. Which stems from feeling groundless, defenceless and small in a world that threatens to destroy me.

How trivial my desire to keep the comments section of my blog free of such crazies seems in comparison.

If I can't risk standing in front of the world like this, not knowing the answers to many things, not being the wise and just moderator who points everyone in the right direction, am I an idiot? Not at all. I am a person who, instead of forcing myself and others to always have an answer, can admit that I need help in finding the answers. Not closing the comments section as a space for conflict, but opening it up, seems to me to be a good method.

Thank you for reading.

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^{"Who does not stand on the board?"
People tend not to place such persons (persona non grata) whom they do not want in their lives. But it is precisely those who are the ones who should definitely be set up or, if this is too painful, those who are to be mentioned, because it must be clear that an important person is missing. You can either leave them there or take them off the board again. But now, knowing that this was done (!). In my penultimate article I mentioned the subject of excluding unpleasant people and why it is better to choose an integrative form of confrontation. If only as a substitute.}

This is an extract from an article of mine where I wrote about the psychological phenomenon of unwanted people in ones life and the impossibility to get rid of them.

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Picture sources:

Both photographs are my own. I made them during a one year counselling of a couple, whom I invited to place their family constellation on a board. One board is arranged from the husband, the other from the wife.

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