Mastodawn

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

Hey friends it's your favorite Righteous Preacher of the Holy Word here to remind you Yet Again about Lashon Hara.

Lashon Hara is a despicable sin condemned by HaShem the god of the Jews. It is when you spread bad things about people which may be true but which have no useful or productive purpose to be brought up. The classic example is bringing up a mistake someone made a while back which they have since already apologized and atoned for, and have not made again. It hurts community and hinders learning

Shel For The Public

Mastodon's userbase may lean older than tumblr or so but many people on here are still young and don't advertise it; and also no matter how old you are you can still be in a process of learning.

After someone has already been confronted, been held accountable, made up for their hata (sin, literally "going astray"), and we've all moved on without another incident, we should acknowledge that this person has learned from their mistake and bring it up again only if they transgress again

otherwise why do it

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

when you just say someone's name or are somehow affiliated with someone, and another person brings up something they did wrong some while back, ask yourself why? what is the useful purpose of bringing this up besides to say "this person is Bad" and is it the entire story? sometimes this is a useful interaction and sometimes it is not. use your best judgement. if someone routinely is a broker of pointless nasty gossip, we call them Ba'alei Lashon Hara, lords of the evil tongue.

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

"But Puppy!Rabbi! Why does HaShem tell us that Lashon Hara is Hata?" Well when any and every mistake/misdeed you ever make is never forgotten and constantly mentioned, it makes people extremely terrified of making mistakes. If admitting to any mistake means it will be held over them forever, then learning and moving on isn't an option. So instead they tend to get defensive and insist it was not a mistake and refuse to learn, in order to hopefully stamp down the criticism. Nobody learns. No accountability.

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

If this kinda of extreme proliferation of Lashon Hara throughout a community becomes dominant, you get extremely paranoid anxious communities with incredibly toxic all or nothing approaches to each and every conflict. Your stance on any one person's mistake puts you into factions of social groups who condemn each other for associating with or defending each other. It rips apart communities and makes everyone miserable.

Absolutely confront people when they fuck up but when it's resolved, move on

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

Bringing this up cuz gosh i sure do remember chr apologizing for That Thing He Did pretty soon after being criticized and then undoing it. So why bring it up? You can keep personal grudges all you want but unless he did something else similar to that, which afaik he has not done anything like that since, then there's no reason to bring it up and make it a community issue all over again. It was settled. Let it rest.

Matt Cropp 🌲🌲Sep 13, 2017

@shel I only feel like I only understand fragments of what people are cryptically discussing, but this seems like an wise approach to conflict. Reminds me of this great article on social capital-based power politics in radical communities/spaces: https://emmibe.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/the-conversations-we-cant-have/

The Conversations We Can’t Have:

Social Capital and Violence in Radical Communities – There are conversations that radical communities need to have that are obstructed by accumulation of social capital and power. These are e…

Emmi Bevensee...

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

@mattcropp i mean there's multiple things happening at once and it's a total shitstorm where afaict a lot of genuine fuck-ups were made which are worth addressing but then a bunch of other stuff got dug back up that we'd already dealt with a while ago and i felt like i had to remind everyone again to look at timestamps and stuff and think about when it's useful and not useful to bring this stuff up.

Woozle Hypertwin Sep 16, 2017

@shel @mattcropp

In my experience, it's not simply a matter of noticing that an issue is old, though it's pretty much always good to wonder why something is being dredged up again.

I agree that the dredging *can* be (and often is) a deliberate attempt at shit-stirring.

...but sometimes an issue never did get properly addressed.

This is kind of why I feel like a community of any size needs to have a permanent record of disputes, and how they were resolved.

...but maybe that's just me.

Pan💔Sep 13, 2017

@shel just wanted to say ty for writing this. a social solution for a social problem ^w^

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

@pan hehe thanks. I feel like a broken record bringing it up every few months but I'm glad it's helpful. Thank God (literally) for the concept

Matthew Skala Sep 13, 2017

@shel Is there meant to be a connection between these paragraphs?

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

@mattskala which two?

Matthew Skala Sep 13, 2017

@shel "Mastodon's userbase may lean older..." and "After someone has already been confronted...". Since writing that reply I saw that this item is part of a longer chain, so it seems less completely out of context (in a longer piece there's less need for two consecutive paragraphs to relate to each other), but it still seems like an abrupt switch between two unrelated topics.

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

@mattskala No they're related. It's a way of saying "we can all grow and learn and just because you're used to a median age of 26 doesn't mean that someone who makes a mistake might not be a teenager who needs to learns"

"We all need to grow and learn, and so we should move on after something is addressed to let that happen"

Matthew Skala Sep 13, 2017

@shel Okay. The idea that youth would be an excuse doesn't come naturally to me, so neither did the need to refute that excuse. (strange that this didn't appear as a reply when I first posted it)

Shel For The Public Sep 13, 2017

@mattskala so like, when you're 16 physically you're basically an adult and mentally you could raise yourself but the point of having this adolescence middle period is to give you a time to fuck up a whole bunch and learn without having severe consequences for the rest of your life because we go "Ah, you are new to this Life thing still, you will learn" and give a pass

at least in theory obviously lotsa things get in the way of that