Going public
Today, July 18, 2016, is the first day of the Republican convention in the United States. Just in case someone has been completely cut off from all communication for the past couple of years, this is a year in which the United States populace will elect a new president. (I am choosing to ignore the discussion about the relative roles of the electoral college and that of the individual voters.) Although one can hope that the trading of accusations and sharply worded barbs will now stop so that the candidates can focus on proposing practical solutions to some very weighty issues, it is unlikely that that will happen. I am personally in awe of anyone who can “stand the heat;” who has the courage, the ego strength or the thick skin necessary to not spend all their time and energy reacting to or defending against the criticism. Obviously, none of the candidates can consistently resist the urge to react, but I still admire the fact that they continue to put themselves in this position.
Anyone who goes public with their opinions, beliefs, or ideas leaves themselves open to criticism. This is true for anyone who shares their writing, art, music, dance or other means of revealing their opinions or emotions. Even I, with a limited readership, receive a fair number of suggestions or critiques which require me to use all my personal meditative and other spiritual resources. It is no small task to just listen and not get defensive.
I was thinking about this issue this morning while listening to an August 2006 Ted Talk by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. In 2006, Wikipedia had one employee, a board, many volunteers and a vision. Mr. Wales states that the “goal, the core aim of the Wikimedia Foundation, is to get a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet.” For all intent and purposes a lot of progress has been made in achieving that goal. On the other hand, if one now, in 2016, googles critiques of Wikipedia one finds there are those who are questioning whether the current process of recruiting volunteers, editing and making decisions about both what to include and what to delete is done from a biased viewpoint and is bogged down by the bureaucracy of the organization. In order to achieve their original goal they have to attract a very large, diverse group of volunteers to draft articles, to edit and to follow the procedures for ongoing review of the accuracy and relevancy of the information. The apparent fact is that their volunteers are mostly male which skews the nature of the new content. An article in technologicalreview.com summarizes some of the concerns about the limitations of the current structure of the organization.”
“Yet it (the foundation) may be unable to get much closer to its lofty goal of compiling all human knowledge. Wikipedia’s community built a system and resource unique in the history of civilization. It proved a worthy, perhaps fatal, match for conventional ways of building encyclopedias. But that community also constructed barriers that deter the newcomers needed to finish the job. Perhaps it was too much to expect that a crowd of Internet strangers would truly democratize knowledge. Today’s Wikipedia, even with its middling quality and poor representation of the world’s diversity, could be the best encyclopedia we will get.”
Perhaps, however, another version or another structure will replace the current one.
I am reminded of a line in in Lorraine Hansberry’s famous play Raisin in the Sun. Asagai, at one point in the play, says:
“I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village... But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all... and then again... the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and will not wonder long. And perhaps... perhaps I will be a great man... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course... and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire...
...perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don't you see that there will be young men and women, not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen... to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don't you see they have always been there... that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even... actually replenish me!”
Whether our death is a physical or metaphorical one, the end will come for all of us and for all our ideas. We will need a new vision or perhaps just a new version of the vision. The old will loudly or quietly die and a new one will take over. Perhaps it will do so haltingly. Perhaps there will be intervening attempts which will be ineffective or even destructive.
I am certainly not suggesting that the current negative barbs and accusations are helpful or good any more than I think that physical killing is good. I am suggesting that in order for progress to occur we both have to be willing to put ourselves and our ideas out there to be endlessly, at times, publicly critiqued. If we have had the courage to take that risk we also need to have the courage to listen and not react; to offer positive alternatives which will need tweaked or even discarded.
A scientist makes his or her living mostly by failing well. A medical scientist searching for a cure for cancer might spend his or her professional life finding out what does not work. Perhaps we learn from the scientist how to bravely experiment and be okay with failure.
There are pieces of helpful truth in what each of the presidential candidates say. There are obviously many in the United States and elsewhere who feel as if their needs and rights are not being addressed. If we simply dismiss them we will have learned nothing and will only confirm what they already believe.
If we want to be a positive force for change we have to be willing to risk sharing our ideas and be critiqued. If we are just going to react defensively then we are going to be part of the problem and not part of the solution. It may take a lot of practice to grow thick skin which protects us, but which does not keep us from listening and learning.
Written July 18, 2016
Today, July 18, 2016, is the first day of the Republican convention in the United States. Just in case someone has been completely cut off from all communication for the past couple of years, this is a year in which the United States populace will elect a new president. (I am choosing to ignore the discussion about the relative roles of the electoral college and that of the individual voters.) Although one can hope that the trading of accusations and sharply worded barbs will now stop so that the candidates can focus on proposing practical solutions to some very weighty issues, it is unlikely that that will happen. I am personally in awe of anyone who can “stand the heat;” who has the courage, the ego strength or the thick skin necessary to not spend all their time and energy reacting to or defending against the criticism. Obviously, none of the candidates can consistently resist the urge to react, but I still admire the fact that they continue to put themselves in this position.
Anyone who goes public with their opinions, beliefs, or ideas leaves themselves open to criticism. This is true for anyone who shares their writing, art, music, dance or other means of revealing their opinions or emotions. Even I, with a limited readership, receive a fair number of suggestions or critiques which require me to use all my personal meditative and other spiritual resources. It is no small task to just listen and not get defensive.
I was thinking about this issue this morning while listening to an August 2006 Ted Talk by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. In 2006, Wikipedia had one employee, a board, many volunteers and a vision. Mr. Wales states that the “goal, the core aim of the Wikimedia Foundation, is to get a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet.” For all intent and purposes a lot of progress has been made in achieving that goal. On the other hand, if one now, in 2016, googles critiques of Wikipedia one finds there are those who are questioning whether the current process of recruiting volunteers, editing and making decisions about both what to include and what to delete is done from a biased viewpoint and is bogged down by the bureaucracy of the organization. In order to achieve their original goal they have to attract a very large, diverse group of volunteers to draft articles, to edit and to follow the procedures for ongoing review of the accuracy and relevancy of the information. The apparent fact is that their volunteers are mostly male which skews the nature of the new content. An article in technologicalreview.com summarizes some of the concerns about the limitations of the current structure of the organization.”
“Yet it (the foundation) may be unable to get much closer to its lofty goal of compiling all human knowledge. Wikipedia’s community built a system and resource unique in the history of civilization. It proved a worthy, perhaps fatal, match for conventional ways of building encyclopedias. But that community also constructed barriers that deter the newcomers needed to finish the job. Perhaps it was too much to expect that a crowd of Internet strangers would truly democratize knowledge. Today’s Wikipedia, even with its middling quality and poor representation of the world’s diversity, could be the best encyclopedia we will get.”
Perhaps, however, another version or another structure will replace the current one.
I am reminded of a line in in Lorraine Hansberry’s famous play Raisin in the Sun. Asagai, at one point in the play, says:
“I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village... But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all... and then again... the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and will not wonder long. And perhaps... perhaps I will be a great man... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course... and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire...
...perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don't you see that there will be young men and women, not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen... to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don't you see they have always been there... that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even... actually replenish me!”
Whether our death is a physical or metaphorical one, the end will come for all of us and for all our ideas. We will need a new vision or perhaps just a new version of the vision. The old will loudly or quietly die and a new one will take over. Perhaps it will do so haltingly. Perhaps there will be intervening attempts which will be ineffective or even destructive.
I am certainly not suggesting that the current negative barbs and accusations are helpful or good any more than I think that physical killing is good. I am suggesting that in order for progress to occur we both have to be willing to put ourselves and our ideas out there to be endlessly, at times, publicly critiqued. If we have had the courage to take that risk we also need to have the courage to listen and not react; to offer positive alternatives which will need tweaked or even discarded.
A scientist makes his or her living mostly by failing well. A medical scientist searching for a cure for cancer might spend his or her professional life finding out what does not work. Perhaps we learn from the scientist how to bravely experiment and be okay with failure.
There are pieces of helpful truth in what each of the presidential candidates say. There are obviously many in the United States and elsewhere who feel as if their needs and rights are not being addressed. If we simply dismiss them we will have learned nothing and will only confirm what they already believe.
If we want to be a positive force for change we have to be willing to risk sharing our ideas and be critiqued. If we are just going to react defensively then we are going to be part of the problem and not part of the solution. It may take a lot of practice to grow thick skin which protects us, but which does not keep us from listening and learning.
Written July 18, 2016
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