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Why should you have that awkward conversation when you may never encounter that person again? Might as well skip it.
Specifically, you should have an uncomfortable conversation because you will never encounter that person.
You must practice voicing who you are in various situations, enabling you to regulate your emotions and engage your intellect while voicing your opinions.
Practice voicing who you are.
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The response to an event is often predetermined. (You will applaud or agree with the leader.)
The content becomes secondary to the context of being seen appropriately collaborating in the spectacle.
When appearance trumps consideration, we live a political/performative existence, not one of truth.
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We emit capturable data such as writing, but any AI (artificial intelligence) mimicking you is drawing from your emissions, not you.
We speak differently than we write and act differently in various contexts (code-switching).
There is still a tremendous gap between what we emit and who we are, also seen as actions versus intent judged one-dimensionally.
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The more you see yourself as productive, i.e., someone who accomplishes your desires, the more "you" becomes an act of capturing outcomes.
This is because actions for purpose become utility, and utility is a trait of objects: to pride yourself on your "use" ahead of your "self" is to subjugate your value to production.
Similarly, equating your identity with desire (and its fulfillment) is to relate to all things as gratification or blockage; reductionist othering converts everything into objects and acts.
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What are you going to do? Swoop in and take action… make it worse? Are you going to enact another cruelty in the name of justice?
Make sure you go beyond what you feel before you act.
Our natural instinct is to relieve ourselves of pain (negative), but many times in our thrashing for equilibrium we harm others.
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When you arrive to a surprise party it is a thrill. When you find out your job has been outsourced you are appalled, shocked, bewildered, and hurt.
What if we greeted each surprise without insecurity? Instead of your responsibility stolen as a personal indictment, what if we could see it as a burden lifted? A cause for celebration.
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I was offended and disappointed when a musician I liked was accused of sexual misconduct.
The attribution of this condemnation spreads a malicious web through their past endeavors. Like a toxin, we attempt to cut off the spread to ourselves.
It is curious to see the social damnation (values misalignment) as mendacious contagion (biological threat): as if there is subliminal essence hidden in the message that may spring forth to infect us now, even if it did not before.
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To own your actions is a false start: we all justify our actions.
“I was fooled. I was angry. I had to do it or else worse things would have happened. I did it to protect others. It was in my nature. It was right. I believed.”
After seeing the destruction spread from your actions, the temptation is to 1) not act anymore or 2) to overreact in the opposing direction.
Reasoning, while helpful, has the danger of 1) creating excuses and 2) solidifying the burden into motivating purpose.
The issue of owning what you do is the chain of responsibility that can weigh you down, warping your nature. Beyond owning our actions and learning from them, we must also be able to disown them (negate their influence).
partial idea from James Islington
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The joy of manual labor is not only the ability to produce something tangible.
More importantly, this is a skill you can get good at; your skill speaks for itself.
In white-collar office politics, there are seldom straightforward measurements. Every action is fraught with navigating the politics of choice and opinion, hierarchies, and turf management, while metrics are a sliding scale of ad-hoc rationalization.
Yes, you can still be micromanaged and overworked doing manual labor, but the appeal is in the objective proof that transcends petty politics.
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Everyone has a reason for their actions. (If not, we can create one for them.) "Reason" is synonymous with rationality, but to be "reasonable" is to conform or compromise, not to use logic. To "have a reason" is to justify a subjective position that seldom includes air-tight dialectics.
In short, we privilege reason but mainly use it to excuse our lack of it.
