Category: Is blogging mindful

Given our love for communicating with each other and our creative and technical talents, the development of the internet may have been inevitable for our species. However, powerful tools can be used for many purposes.

A New York Times article discusses the role social media played in riots in Sri Lanka. Karsten Muller and Carlo Schwarz conducted research on the relationship between social media and hate crime – “To establish causality, we exploit exogenous variation in major internet and Facebook outages, which fully undo the correlation between social media and hate crime.” (p. 1).

Leaders of several high-tech firms have begun to remove online content that is deemed harmful. That has resulted in questions about who should be doing the monitoring and what standards should apply given the sensitive boundary between free speech on the one hand and controlling the harm speech can do on the other.

Humans in general are subject to harmful mind-tendencies that influence our behavior. And there will always be those who are congenitally incapable of caring about what happens to others.

We need to pay attention and learn how to protect ourselves from ourselves even as we collaborate to make use of our many talents in solving the complex problems we face.

The internet may be just the incentive we need to actively work at building in a level of global culture that supports human thriving while protecting us from our worst tendencies. In essence, that amounts to moving to the next evolutionary stage for our species.

The joy I experienced with my initial posts could have easily lulled me into a false sense of security. But what I was learning in my investigation of the question, “Is blogging a skillful means for mindful communication?” had me paying careful attention. I experienced internal shifts as I navigated through the calm water, knowing there was a lot going on just below the surface.

Now as I choose to blog with eyes wide open, it seems both a reckless and marvelous thing to do. Given the topics I care about, blogging mindfully and with integrity makes it necessary to learn about myself as well as about how things really work in our world – with our potentially harmful human tendencies interacting with the powerful technology we have created.

Learning about risks and taking necessary precautions on a timely basis is important for anyone who communicates online. That kind of mindfulness is, unfortunately, highly relevant for our times.

There are good aspects as well. To face a global public without knowing who will read my blog is to symbolically invite responses from the universe. I have found the universe always sends useful messages when I make myself open to them (though not necessarily pleasant ones or in the form of blog comments).

Writing about timeless resources for wellbeing as a form of open invitation to the public certainly makes the timely and adapted to the audience requirements for mindful communication easier. By its very nature, writing about resources for wellbeing also requires a thoughtful and considered approach to praise. I also believe that it is beneficial.

Psychologist, Rick Hanson explains we need to cultivate wellbeing for lasting happiness. Engaging with resources for wellbeing tends to result in gratitude, which according to psychotherapist Amy Morin, has many demonstrated benefits from winning friends to better sleep. My hope is that those who find this blog might be inspired to spend time with resources for wellbeing that can add so much to life. They are also a good way to balance the considerable time we spend in front of screens.

Navigating the blogging shoals has made it clear to me that I cannot only write about the positive side of things. I need to continue my research into the downsides and risks of the online world and to write about that as well. Especially since the lovely surface of the water here can be so deceptive. The Facebook scandal confirmed my growing concerns and I fear there are greater risks to come.

Right now, technology seems well designed for exploiting mind tendencies while making us dependent in dangerous ways. The Center for Humane Technology proposes: “Humane Design starts by understanding our most vulnerable human instincts, so we can design compassionately to protect them from being abused.”

I am more committed than before to model mindful communication and to blog about both radiant refuges and the risks of communicating online in the hopes that we will take action to protect ourselves. The online world can be a marvelous place. Looking beneath the surface reveals that we live in exciting times. And being human, we cannot resist simply messing about in boats even where there are shoals.

The relationship in the photo above contrasts with audience challenges bloggers face. The diverse and attentive group at that concert was interacting in real time with the musicians.

I suspect that bloggers’ audience issues would be different if the advertising-based business model that underlies so much of what goes on in the internet did not apply. As Noah Kulwin explains in an New York Magazine article published on April 4th, 2018, “The Internet Apologizes for Corrupting our Elections, Violating Our Privacy and Hijacking Our Attention;” “To avoid charging for the internet – while becoming fabulously rich at the same time – Silicon Valley turned to advertising. But to sell ads that target individual users, you need to grow a big audience – and use advancing technology to gather reams of personal data that will enable you to reach them efficiently.”(p. 30)

“Likes” used on social media and blogs provide an incentive for doing the work of attracting an audience to see ads. According to the New York Magazine article Likes were intentionally used to modify behavior and it worked – we all like being liked.

But liking some things implies we like other things less. It also validates the idea of making snap judgments. What about structures that reward exploring, gaining a broader perspective or a deeper understanding? As discussed in the BBC broadcast interview on “How Do We Build a Better Internet,” emoticons are actually cultural engineering as they tell us what responses are appropriate.

In Braving the Wilderness, the Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Brene Brown discusses what is at stake in fostering “in crowd” / “out crowd” thinking: “Because so many time-worn systems of power have placed certain people outside the realm of what we see as human, much of our work now is more a matter of ‘rehumanizing’. That starts in the same place dehumanizing starts – with words and images. Today we are edging closer and closer to a world where political and ideological discourse has become an exercise in dehumanization. And social media are the primary platforms for our dehumanizing behavior.” (p. 74)

Another major issue is that bloggers may have little or no information about someone who reads their blogs. I find the idea of “lurkers” unsettling, especially given bloggers tend to use a conversational tone to share what is of personal interest to them.

In my writing, photography and workshop consulting work, when I am successful at connecting with a client around our common interest in a resource for wellbeing, it often leads to lasting friendship. Considering lurkers on this blog as potential friends feels like a natural thing to do and imaginary ideal friendships can be quite rewarding. After all, they do not require the sometimes emotionally demanding work involved with real friends. Researchers have found that close friends actually do have many similarities including how they react to videos so sharing personal information might feel safe.

However, while it might serve advertisers interests, sharing openly with strangers can have a huge cost. Andres Lustigman and Jonathan Ezor discuss some of what can happen without mindfulness of the risks, “Blogging A World Audience, And A World of Potential Problems.”

As media studies expert Nancy Baym explains in Personal Connections in the Digital Age, “most of the questions surrounding personal connections people form and maintain through digital media derive from the sparse social clues that are available to provide further information regarding the context, the meanings of messages, and the identities of the people interacting” (p. 9). Fear may make communication limited or superficial. On the other hand, attempting to bridge the intimacy gap or to enhance popularity by over sharing can lead to serious harm that potentially affects many as we learned with the Facebook scandal.

Because of how search engines work, blogs can attract a community that reinforces and amplifies views held in common (including harmful erroneous ones) in an echo chamber without reality checks. On the other hand, if disagreements arise, comment management can be demanding. Nancy Baym notes in her book referenced above, “The lack of social presence and accountability in a reduced-cues medium is seen by some as a platform for launching attacks.” (p. 66)

I find an amazing contrast between the simple joy and freedom of creating a blog post, and what is actually going on behind the scenes. It is not just about psychological tendencies taken advantage of, or economic business models, or technological innovation, or power to control online tools and data concentrated in the hands of a very small number of companies. There can be cultural, political, social, and other factors because this is about how humans behave given the tools to connect with and track each other.

This is the reality we face in our world today. As Jason Lanier who worked at Atari and Microsoft explains in the New York Magazine article cited earlier, “We wanted everything to be free, because we were hippie socialists. But we also love entrepreneurs, because we loved Steve Jobs. So, you want to be both a socialist and a libertarian at the same time, which is absurd…We disrupted absolutely everything: politics, finance, education, media, family relationships, romantic relationships. We won – we just totally won. But having won – we have no sense of balance or modesty or graciousness.” (p. 29)

We face information overload, complexity, stress, and high demands on increasingly limited attention spans. In Mindful Tech, How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives, Professor David Levy suggests we need to stop and think about how we are using our online tools and the effects they are having on us. Do we really want to exacerbate this stress and its power to feed our worst tendencies? In a blog post posted to Net Critique on March 27, 2018 –
“Distraction and its Discontents – Ebbs and Flows in Social Media Sensibility,” Geert Lovink contrasts the sick-making drain of our online compulsions with the relaxed open-ended exploratory conversation that is possible when “sitting next to each other in a café.”

If more and more of our social needs are being “met” online in what are ultimately unsatisfying and dangerous ways, we are at risk of ignoring the genuine resources for wellbeing we have available to us, not least of which are truly trusting and caring relationships. Are we undermining our ability to even recognize all the genuine resources for wellbeing that are there or their potential to make our lives much more fulfilling?

There is a positive side to this situation if we can bring wisdom to what we face. Not knowing our audience as full individuals or how what we put out there online might be used may force us to face ourselves, what we understand to be important, and what the universe is asking of us. The amplification effect of the internet can also show us what we are capable of as a species including what we might choose to ignore to our peril. Somewhere in all that is also the opportunity to reflect on aspects of human thriving worth protecting. Blogs and other forms of online sharing, for all their issues, are bearing witness to the great human adventure as we attempt to find our way.

This huddle of cows awaiting a storm reminded me that being face-to-face has benefits for more than just humans. In my investigation of whether (and how) blogging might be a mindful form of communication, I thought it would be a good idea to look into face-to-face interaction.

It occurred to me that Denmark is a country that places a high value on being together face-to-face. As it turned out, what I learned about their culture had some useful lessons for bloggers.

That Danes value face-to-face interaction is evident in their tradition of hygge. Hygge involves leaving troubles and drama behind as friends and family gather to share cozy nonjudgmental “quality time,” often with candles and something good to eat. Everyone contributes to the mutually-supportive atmosphere.

The hygge oath that Jessica Joelle Alexander, an American writer married to a Dane, and Danish psychotherapist, Iben Dissing Sandhal, include in The Danish Way of Parenting; What the Happiest People in the World Know About Raising Confident, Capable Kids includes a reminder to turn off cell phones.

Denmark consistently ranks near the top of the World Happiness Report that includes over 150 countries. The authors of The Danish Way of Parenting believe this is because of Danish child rearing practices that include:

play, authenticity, reframing, empathy, no ultimatums, as well as togetherness & hygge.

I find a number of lessons here for bloggers. For one thing, bloggers might want to consider how their balance of face-to-face versus online time affects their own wellbeing.

Meeting with those who share the blogger’s interests could lead to new friendships, not to mention blog followers. Face-to-face meetings might inspire blog topics and provide a more nuanced understanding of the audience a blogger cares most about reaching.

Approaches from the Danish Way of Parenting can be applied in various ways by bloggers. Here are some ideas that occurred to me:

PLAY: According to Stuart Brown, adults need to play too. Blogs can be playful to varying degrees and inspire play.

REFRAMING: Reframing can be modeled by starting with a narrow concern and then taking a wider and more positive view that puts things in perspective, while perhaps soliciting comments to open the discussion still further.

AUTHENTICITY: There is evidence that blogging in ways that display one’s authentic personality is likely to attract readers who can relate to you. Being authentic also helps bloggers to better understand what is important to them as they observe their own posts over time. However it is good to be quite careful to review potential impacts, as impacts that can matter more than intentions.

EMPATHY: There are many ways to use varied media artfully to demonstrate empathy. Telling stories in words, photographs and video can often help with understanding others’ feelings better. It is also possible to explain in a post how facial expressions and emotions relate.

NO ULTIMATUMS: It is even possible to model no ultimatums. This can be achieved by avoiding absolute judgments, and including alternatives with an intent to inspire exploration rather than dictating what others should think or feel. Open-mindedness and deep listening can also be demonstrated in how comments are handled.

TOGETHERNESS & HYGGE: In keeping with the spirit of hygge, bloggers could intentionally adopt a warm nonjudgmental tone for posts sometimes. That would likely help with the blogger’s own stress. Providing reminders of the warm support that humans are capable of providing each other might work for some bloggers and topics. As you would expect, bloggers share tips on how to create hygge in real life. In these scary times, a little warm coziness in the blogosphere might be welcome.

While applying lessons from Danish parenting practices to blogs might make them more mindful, there is a different kind of beneficial energy to face-to-face interaction (including to a lesser degree communication via video conferencing). Even limited face-to-face interaction with the right person who shares the blogger’s passion could lead to new insight and a more open and aware perspective. Then everything the blogger does might become more mindful.

I am exploring whether blogging can be considered a skillful means for mindful communication for academic credit. I am deeply curious about that, but I am also interested in understanding how best to use my own blog.

I am interested in communicating about radiant refuges and their many benefits. To me, the place in the photo above has that potential. As a graduate student in mindfulness studies, I came to think of mindfulness as the ultimate radiant refuge. Mindfulness reduces suffering while increasing wisdom and compassion and its stillness goes with you for when you need it most.

I tend to be optimistic and would like to think that blogging might be used as a form of radiant refuge, but I also have reasons for concern. After reading several books on blogging and encountering red flags, the word “vigilance” came to mind for good reason, I think.

There appear to be a great many fascinating interacting factors to consider. Like the salt marsh ecosystem in the photo, dramatic shifts to the landscape seem possible. For example, bloggers could move to social media platforms as I read is already beginning to happen.

There are certain considerations that always apply to effective communication regardless of the means used. For example, an understanding of one’s audience may be challenging at times for bloggers, but it still matters. In addition, blogging might be right for some writers/ subjects/ purposes/ times but not for others.

I plan to start by developing good working definitions for “blogging,” “skillful means,” and “mindful communication.” As I continue reading what researchers, and experts have to say, I will be on a mission to identify relevant factors that can help me answer the question I am addressing. I plan to use posts in the “Is blogging mindful” category as workspace for particular topics related to my investigation.

Once I have gathered sufficient evidence regarding key factors, and analyzed their combined impact, I will present and defend my conclusion regarding whether or not (or under what circumstances) blogging as it exists today can be considered a skillful means for mindful communication. I suspect that some of what I have to say will apply to other forms of communication that rely on the Internet.

Besides helping me to decide whether to use my blog as more than a place to record my reflections for my own benefit, other personal goals include becoming a more discerning reader of blogs, and gaining practical experience with them.