These outcomes are downstream of the original bad actors! - Other people’s mistrust and wariness of you is not an assessment of your moral worth. Rather, it is a reflection their (imperfect) assessment of the context they are operating in
“I am worried for my safety” does not mean “you are a bad person” - I’ve been wanting to tweet for a long time about how to effectively signal that you are a good actor, but I always procrastinate because talk is cheap and it’s always more effective to just be a good actor than to talk about it.
Still, I feel like someone ought to talk about it - As a big brown man in a small not-very-brown country, I am very used to people assuming the worst of me, feeling nervous & unsafe around me.
If I seem charming and likeable, quite a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve always needed to be. It’s self-taught, not innate - The first & most important thing you have to learn as a player in the massive multiplayer human game is “it’s not about you”.
Until you learn this, you’re in for a bad time. Once you properly internalize this, you can let go of a metric fuckton of stress and anxiety and anger https://t.co/yjwABI2HlQ - (While other people’s assumptions about you are “not about you”, those assumptions, when acted upon, can still absolutely cause you unyielding torment and misery. They can ruin your life, dehumanize you, they can literally kill you for it. This is not to dismiss any of that.) - (I could talk about so many things here. Me being a literal blasphemy in the eyes of casteists. The misery my wife suffered for dating me. School, for effectively being child prison. All sorts of terrible things that happen to all sorts of people all over the world, every day.) - What I’m really trying to get at is something Les Brown once said:
You do not have to let other people’s opinions of you become your reality.
And as Nomi from Sense8 said, the worst, most unforgivable violence… https://t.co/YlK1pv2v25 - Do not allow ignorant or malicious actors assuming the worst of you turn you into what they think you are. https://t.co/bCXtffPCaE - - consider how you’re being
articulate how you see yourself
learn about the experiences of others
consider how and why others might not see you the way you see yourself
consider how you would like to navigate the inevitable confusion of people who don’t know you
They don’t actually know you, though.
Which means… https://t.co/ZmXBTxd8WB - It’s not about you https://t.co/unTvy9F8aR - 17. https://t.co/lIeC1pMulB - 18. Just realized this is another instance of the bad actor problem. Well-intentioned criticisms get lumped in together with bad ones. Each bad actor increases the cost of good faith for everybody https://t.co/vssRqoMTmX - 19. https://t.co/9nDsYaOauu
Rendering context...