I think most of us are fed up and bored with Covid and its mutations but well it's here and people will follow what they believe in. Lets remind ourselves of the Spanish flu which world wide killed more people than the Great war and continued for many years until it began to subside. We can't really control viruses very well. Their genetic make up is to find a host ,transmit and find more hosts and cause some deaths and they mutate. Many are harmless to mankind and serve to keep our immune responses functioning and some are real killers. Enough said.
Inevitably I'm interested in your mindfulness development. For me it can solve so many issues that rationalisation, stiff talks with self, have no effect....but when you reach that eureka moment, then wow you've found something. So it is good to get out of your head, give up on logic and be in the moment and observe things with intention. One eureka moment for me was when I discovered that I hold my emotions in my stomach. They are supposed to be processed by the limbic system in the brain but the stomach does contain a lot of serotonin so perhaps their is some physiology to it. However I have learned to take note of what my stomach is telling me as it can be more sensible than my head. This may sound crazy to some!
Last time I said I have a couple of questions to ask you, which you may or may not answer but as a novice with social media I want to understand so I'll ask someone with some expertise. They are the sort of questions I'd ask you if you would accept a cup of tea with me but I know you would decline!!
Q1. do you think that the rise of social media has had a negative impact on people's social skills and left them confusing assertiveness with aggressiveness? I realise the complete answer to this is multifactorial but I am limiting the question to social media specifically.
Q2. You may think I'm having a dig but don't over personalise it. I have an issue with the lack of use of names on social media(I don't mean domain names) but the names people identify with. A name is part of someone's identity and the use of it or lack of it in responses by writers does not always fully acknowledge this. Use of name as part of identity is something I used to teach my students and how you say it matters. I have spoken to a manager in a comms. team about this and got a 'well it depends' response so is it part of some written or unwritten rule in social media or a everyone else does it, so I'll follow suit behaviour?
I shall appreciate any valuable insights you can give me. Thanks in anticipation.
Somatic processing of emotions is common, I think. I get it in my throat, stomach and chest. Not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that I would turn down a cup of tea. You'd need to explain that one.
As to any expertise I may have about social media, it's very limited and mostly restricted to papers and articles about papers I've read, along with lots of personal experience.
Intuitively your Q1 is a good one, about the conflation of assertiveness and aggression. Instinctively I'd err on the side of our behaviours being affected by context, rather than changing per se. There is a non-zero but still very nominal cost to being a dick online whereas this is not so in 'meatspace'. Still, it's an area to look up and I will.
Re Q2 (I don't know why I would see your question as a dig) I think that pseudonymity is bound up with that Jungian narrative idea and a feeling of freedom that seems unavailable in our real lives. Again, I have no insights here but I can't help feeling that as a conscious entity of essentially unknowable relationship to the world my own or anyone else's name is an inconsequential fact about them. Maybe I just don't understand your point.
Yes I agree with your point about somatic symptoms being common, particularly in the case of anxiety, depression and stress but these can be remedied through gaining an understanding of it and learning techniques to manage this, such as relaxation techniques, acupuncture and massage therapy and in more serious cases medication. The clinical condition of somatising is more complex and needs greater intervention.
My comment on the cup of tea was a play on your previous newsletter when you declined an invitation for tea with Wigmore. If you would decline a cup of tea with someone with a high media profile then an irrelevant person such as me, I am assuming, would get the same response!
My second question about use of names is important to me, I won't give you the full psychological lecture but the use of a person's name helps to identify them as an individual, as a person. In a social context we often use a person's name, when we e-mail someone we use their name. My friend in the comms team sends out tweets but if someone has a reasonable issue then they receive a reply using their name. In this case it is to do with the corporate brand and their guidelines. A name doesn't say anything about a person, whom they like, hobbies etc but it still is part of their identity. So my question is why when you reply to me you not not use my name? Is this a social media rule or your personal preference? We might end up respectfully agreeing to disagree on this one.
Anything you find out about Q1 I'd be very interested to know about.
A BC consultant once said to me "people learn visually" and that was when I realised that one-size-fits-all psych/cognitive principles are unreliable, because I absolutely do not learn visually. Same with name use. Unless I know someone, the use of my familiar name seems *off* in some way. It kind of grates.
But it's certainly context-specific. Online the use of first names in replies is a first principle of trolling, which I hadn't really thought about before. While I wouldn't call it a 'rule', I'd intuit that interactions in digital space between strangers are really between avatars rather than people. After all, we never know whether someone is using their real name. So names, to me, are some distance behind the thought content in terms of significance.
Another thought (thanks for these curveball questions & assertions btw) is that my mindfulness practice is founded on separating what we *think* of as our identity from what we *really* are. Plus, you made me think about Sartre's wonderful (and rarely actually understood) 'hell is other people'. The concept of associating one's identity with an artefact one never chose, which is for other folk's benefit, makes zero sense to me.
Thank your for your thought provoking reply. I think that there are various models for learning and to become enriched as an individual we need to discover which methods suit us best, I know I use several because no one suits me in all situations. Ok if it grates when I use your name, I'll stop it out of respect but it goes against what I believe in. I get what you say about social media and people potentially being artificial. I am however a real person an trust that you are also. I agree with what you say about mindfulness and view it as a form of experiential learning. The limit I would see to mindfulness in relation to identity is that other's may see things in us that we don't see, these things may be positive or negative and feedback from respected others can be useful in helping us to grow an develop.
It's interesting how the original posting from you that says you'll learn nothing, can be changed into something where I have learned quite a bit. I may have to consider cancelling the cancellation to my subscription
Hi Mike
I think most of us are fed up and bored with Covid and its mutations but well it's here and people will follow what they believe in. Lets remind ourselves of the Spanish flu which world wide killed more people than the Great war and continued for many years until it began to subside. We can't really control viruses very well. Their genetic make up is to find a host ,transmit and find more hosts and cause some deaths and they mutate. Many are harmless to mankind and serve to keep our immune responses functioning and some are real killers. Enough said.
Inevitably I'm interested in your mindfulness development. For me it can solve so many issues that rationalisation, stiff talks with self, have no effect....but when you reach that eureka moment, then wow you've found something. So it is good to get out of your head, give up on logic and be in the moment and observe things with intention. One eureka moment for me was when I discovered that I hold my emotions in my stomach. They are supposed to be processed by the limbic system in the brain but the stomach does contain a lot of serotonin so perhaps their is some physiology to it. However I have learned to take note of what my stomach is telling me as it can be more sensible than my head. This may sound crazy to some!
Last time I said I have a couple of questions to ask you, which you may or may not answer but as a novice with social media I want to understand so I'll ask someone with some expertise. They are the sort of questions I'd ask you if you would accept a cup of tea with me but I know you would decline!!
Q1. do you think that the rise of social media has had a negative impact on people's social skills and left them confusing assertiveness with aggressiveness? I realise the complete answer to this is multifactorial but I am limiting the question to social media specifically.
Q2. You may think I'm having a dig but don't over personalise it. I have an issue with the lack of use of names on social media(I don't mean domain names) but the names people identify with. A name is part of someone's identity and the use of it or lack of it in responses by writers does not always fully acknowledge this. Use of name as part of identity is something I used to teach my students and how you say it matters. I have spoken to a manager in a comms. team about this and got a 'well it depends' response so is it part of some written or unwritten rule in social media or a everyone else does it, so I'll follow suit behaviour?
I shall appreciate any valuable insights you can give me. Thanks in anticipation.
Somatic processing of emotions is common, I think. I get it in my throat, stomach and chest. Not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that I would turn down a cup of tea. You'd need to explain that one.
As to any expertise I may have about social media, it's very limited and mostly restricted to papers and articles about papers I've read, along with lots of personal experience.
Intuitively your Q1 is a good one, about the conflation of assertiveness and aggression. Instinctively I'd err on the side of our behaviours being affected by context, rather than changing per se. There is a non-zero but still very nominal cost to being a dick online whereas this is not so in 'meatspace'. Still, it's an area to look up and I will.
Re Q2 (I don't know why I would see your question as a dig) I think that pseudonymity is bound up with that Jungian narrative idea and a feeling of freedom that seems unavailable in our real lives. Again, I have no insights here but I can't help feeling that as a conscious entity of essentially unknowable relationship to the world my own or anyone else's name is an inconsequential fact about them. Maybe I just don't understand your point.
Hi Mike
Thanks for your prompt response.
Yes I agree with your point about somatic symptoms being common, particularly in the case of anxiety, depression and stress but these can be remedied through gaining an understanding of it and learning techniques to manage this, such as relaxation techniques, acupuncture and massage therapy and in more serious cases medication. The clinical condition of somatising is more complex and needs greater intervention.
My comment on the cup of tea was a play on your previous newsletter when you declined an invitation for tea with Wigmore. If you would decline a cup of tea with someone with a high media profile then an irrelevant person such as me, I am assuming, would get the same response!
My second question about use of names is important to me, I won't give you the full psychological lecture but the use of a person's name helps to identify them as an individual, as a person. In a social context we often use a person's name, when we e-mail someone we use their name. My friend in the comms team sends out tweets but if someone has a reasonable issue then they receive a reply using their name. In this case it is to do with the corporate brand and their guidelines. A name doesn't say anything about a person, whom they like, hobbies etc but it still is part of their identity. So my question is why when you reply to me you not not use my name? Is this a social media rule or your personal preference? We might end up respectfully agreeing to disagree on this one.
Anything you find out about Q1 I'd be very interested to know about.
Thanks again
A BC consultant once said to me "people learn visually" and that was when I realised that one-size-fits-all psych/cognitive principles are unreliable, because I absolutely do not learn visually. Same with name use. Unless I know someone, the use of my familiar name seems *off* in some way. It kind of grates.
But it's certainly context-specific. Online the use of first names in replies is a first principle of trolling, which I hadn't really thought about before. While I wouldn't call it a 'rule', I'd intuit that interactions in digital space between strangers are really between avatars rather than people. After all, we never know whether someone is using their real name. So names, to me, are some distance behind the thought content in terms of significance.
Another thought (thanks for these curveball questions & assertions btw) is that my mindfulness practice is founded on separating what we *think* of as our identity from what we *really* are. Plus, you made me think about Sartre's wonderful (and rarely actually understood) 'hell is other people'. The concept of associating one's identity with an artefact one never chose, which is for other folk's benefit, makes zero sense to me.
So it's a combination of the factors you named.
Thank your for your thought provoking reply. I think that there are various models for learning and to become enriched as an individual we need to discover which methods suit us best, I know I use several because no one suits me in all situations. Ok if it grates when I use your name, I'll stop it out of respect but it goes against what I believe in. I get what you say about social media and people potentially being artificial. I am however a real person an trust that you are also. I agree with what you say about mindfulness and view it as a form of experiential learning. The limit I would see to mindfulness in relation to identity is that other's may see things in us that we don't see, these things may be positive or negative and feedback from respected others can be useful in helping us to grow an develop.
It's interesting how the original posting from you that says you'll learn nothing, can be changed into something where I have learned quite a bit. I may have to consider cancelling the cancellation to my subscription