Hit reply.

I've been getting a lot of really great responses to the things I've been publishing. It's amazing how many more emails you recieve when you actually share an email address!

On that note, I've been thinking of the things I'm publishing as "letters".

My goal is to prompt responses - to create a dialogue.

With that being said, I do not plan to add public comments. Tonight I'd like to talk about why.

There seems to be something broken in public discourse.

What exactly is going on here?

One thing I remarked on recently is how weird it is to me that we hold people to the standard of never being wrong, even though we know that humans are by default going to be wrong all the time.

When we see someone is wrong, we go into attack mode. Hurry up and post your thoughts in order to score points.

This point scoring seems to be at least part of the weirdness I'm noticing.

Instead of engaging in conversation, a large amount of public discourse seems aimed at making comments that will score points, either with followers of the original poster or with opponents.

The comment is primarily structured in terms of how the public will view it, which adds a weird layer to it. Public comments hover in view in static perpituity.

We can continue to judge them for all time, and judge them we will.

Can you believe she said that!?

All this seems to put a strange incentive structure into public discourse that makes honest, mutually-beneficial conversations difficult.

This is unfortunate.

I love good conversations. I love talking to people. I am fulfilling my father's legacy by having children that are infuriated by how their dad can get lost in conversation for long stretches of time with anyone they happen to start talking to.

The way I would describe my best conversations are joint explorations of unknown territory to determine what is true and good.

Talking to people is a good way to learn new things. Learning new things is an exercise in making clear what was previous obscured or unknown.

The majority of the world is obscure and unknown to us.

I know next to nothing.

Think about that for a minute. In the grand scheme of things, how much do you know? How often have you been wrong about things that you thought you knew a lot about?

This happens to me all the time.

We are going to be "wrong" all the time.

Think of how much success literature essentially amounts to:

*Stop being afraid. Don't be afraid of failing. You are going to fail. The key is to keep trying. Keep engaging with the process. Ask questions and bring forth something new.

I added my own process philosophy twist to the end of that, but the point remains...

We know very little, and good conversations are one of our best "tools" for learning and growth.

When I look at public discourse, I don't see good conversations. I see echo chambers. I see people getting backed into corners and defending bad positions instead of learning.

What is going on?

These are just a few observations of something that is certainly far more complex than the points I raised tonight.

What do you think?

Let's circle back to how all this is relevant to what we're doing here.

Any time you read something here that you find interesting and want to comment on, please send me an email. This is currently my preferred form of digital dialogue.

I have not found anything better, yet.

I'm going to include the email address at the end of each "letter". Moving forward, you will also be able to just hit reply.

We are also experimenting with building a forum. We have a very small group trying to figure out how to structure things in a way that makes it worthwhile and enjoyable right now.

If you are interested in participating in that, let me know.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the great responses. Keep the dialogue flowing!

Life is good.

Reply to: rewildling@proton.me

Note: I tried to update the reply to email address starting on this post, but the confirmation email won't go through! I've spent over an hour trying to figure it out, so for now don't hit reply! Click that link to the email address above and send something there.