I totally know I suck at editing. Or writing. Yes, my posts are dumps of internal dialogue, a “save as” on my brain set. Can you recommend an e-book or something that would teach me this? At some level this is the issue with the Internet: everybody can publish, but most of us do not have access to a professional editor. I wonder if I could find an editor on Fiverr. It would totally worth me $5 per article.
Pop-psych, well, the issue is, 1. people suffer 2. there are basically NO ideas kicking around why. Any beginning is better than none. Even if the only result is someone disproving the whole thing in a good way gets us a step closer to some kind of a solution.
I see my role here as a non-scientific shaman healer trying to treat diseases by random herbs. It may work, out of pure luck, but even if not, you have to start your medicine somewhere, a real doctor executing a professional takedown on the shaman could accidentally solve the problem.
Can you recommend an e-book or something that would teach me this?
I would recommend practice. Take your text and cut in it half. Make decisions about what to keep, what to discard, what to compress—don’t worry too much whether these decisions are “correct”. Evaluate the results, but if you feel you must put something back, figure out what you’ll discard to make space for it.
Repeat this process frequently and you’ll get better at editing (and writing, too).
people suffer 2. there are basically NO ideas kicking around why.
I don’t think this is true. There are LOTS of ideas why—you might follow the academic guidelines and consider doing a literature review (if only for your own knowledge) first.
Any beginning is better than none.
That’s not necessarily true. Making Jesus your personal friend and Savior is also a beginning, to give an obvious example.
I see my role here as a non-scientific shaman healer trying to treat diseases by random herbs.
Let me reiterate that you are not the first person in the world to have discovered this problem. Start by reading a bit, maybe consider doing something a bit more scientific than “random herbs”? :-)
I have seen it in (mainly Central-Eastern) Europe. Why should it be US specific? Actually the US tends to have a lot of surveillane in schools. In e.g. Budapest or Prague you can easily spend your breaks without teachers watching you or anyone else who is not a student.
However I should also say it was NOT high school, actually by 14-18 these kids were mainly beyond the need to torture other kids. It was elementary school—and most prominently between 10 and 12.
After puberty bullying got a LOT lighter—they wanted to fuck the girls, not to torture other boys. Pre-puberty was worse.
I am familiar with Alfie Kohn’s online essays. He is an interesting fellow, a whole category of his own—he is that compared to US liberals what US liberals are compared to US conservatives. Terms like “optimistic” or “believes in the goodness of human nature” does not even begin to describe the idealism of his views. He believes e.g. students need NO motivation to study whatsoever, not even the nicest kind i.e. catch them doing well and praise them, he says no “doggie biscuit” is needed, because everybody has internal motivation. However in the online essays he never explained why—my impression was that he simply expects you to trust everybody’s internal goodness 200% or else you are not a good enough person or something.
I don’t know what this specific book is about, but I know his general ideas. I don’t think competing for grades caused bullying in Central Europe as I saw it. Nobody who was not an adult gave a shit about grades, kids thought getting good grades is shameful, it suggests you kiss the ass of authority, the teacher, like some snitch. It was way, way more “ghetto” than what Alfie (I think) suggests. Having a teacher ask a question, telling him to fuck off, getting an F grade, was a source of pride, it showed masculine defiance and strength and torturing weaker kids unfortunately too. At least for some kids at least.
Maybe practice editing more? If you suck at it, rewriting /editing your posts will only make you better at it. It might be a bit of work, it might take a bit of time, but it’s nice to take ten minutes of your time to save thirty seconds to a hundred readers (and more importantly to save all the time wasted by comments who misunderstood part of what you said and the ensuing back-and-forth).
(I personally don’t have much time to spend reading long preachy walls of texts telling me about my supposed self-hatred; I didn’t downvote your post but skipped to the discussion because the post itself wasn’t very engaging and seemed to get things wrong fairly quickly)
All of it. Then start over at the other end. Write the thrust of the article in one plain sentence. I don’t know what it is at the moment. Write it in bullet points. Write it in exactly 100 words. Never write a sentence when one word will do; never write one word when none will do. Think only about what truth you are trying to present, and why the reader should agree.
Also, while I don’t want to speculate about your life, it does read like an autobiographical ramble driven by unhappy memories. My personal reaction to it is just, “I don’t care about these people.”
I totally know I suck at editing. Or writing. Yes, my posts are dumps of internal dialogue, a “save as” on my brain set. Can you recommend an e-book or something that would teach me this? At some level this is the issue with the Internet: everybody can publish, but most of us do not have access to a professional editor. I wonder if I could find an editor on Fiverr. It would totally worth me $5 per article.
Pop-psych, well, the issue is, 1. people suffer 2. there are basically NO ideas kicking around why. Any beginning is better than none. Even if the only result is someone disproving the whole thing in a good way gets us a step closer to some kind of a solution.
I see my role here as a non-scientific shaman healer trying to treat diseases by random herbs. It may work, out of pure luck, but even if not, you have to start your medicine somewhere, a real doctor executing a professional takedown on the shaman could accidentally solve the problem.
I would recommend practice. Take your text and cut in it half. Make decisions about what to keep, what to discard, what to compress—don’t worry too much whether these decisions are “correct”. Evaluate the results, but if you feel you must put something back, figure out what you’ll discard to make space for it.
Repeat this process frequently and you’ll get better at editing (and writing, too).
I don’t think this is true. There are LOTS of ideas why—you might follow the academic guidelines and consider doing a literature review (if only for your own knowledge) first.
That’s not necessarily true. Making Jesus your personal friend and Savior is also a beginning, to give an obvious example.
Let me reiterate that you are not the first person in the world to have discovered this problem. Start by reading a bit, maybe consider doing something a bit more scientific than “random herbs”? :-)
Starting point: the problems of high school bullying etc that US nerds complain about are fairly US specific.
Idea why
I have seen it in (mainly Central-Eastern) Europe. Why should it be US specific? Actually the US tends to have a lot of surveillane in schools. In e.g. Budapest or Prague you can easily spend your breaks without teachers watching you or anyone else who is not a student.
However I should also say it was NOT high school, actually by 14-18 these kids were mainly beyond the need to torture other kids. It was elementary school—and most prominently between 10 and 12.
After puberty bullying got a LOT lighter—they wanted to fuck the girls, not to torture other boys. Pre-puberty was worse.
I am familiar with Alfie Kohn’s online essays. He is an interesting fellow, a whole category of his own—he is that compared to US liberals what US liberals are compared to US conservatives. Terms like “optimistic” or “believes in the goodness of human nature” does not even begin to describe the idealism of his views. He believes e.g. students need NO motivation to study whatsoever, not even the nicest kind i.e. catch them doing well and praise them, he says no “doggie biscuit” is needed, because everybody has internal motivation. However in the online essays he never explained why—my impression was that he simply expects you to trust everybody’s internal goodness 200% or else you are not a good enough person or something.
I don’t know what this specific book is about, but I know his general ideas. I don’t think competing for grades caused bullying in Central Europe as I saw it. Nobody who was not an adult gave a shit about grades, kids thought getting good grades is shameful, it suggests you kiss the ass of authority, the teacher, like some snitch. It was way, way more “ghetto” than what Alfie (I think) suggests. Having a teacher ask a question, telling him to fuck off, getting an F grade, was a source of pride, it showed masculine defiance and strength and torturing weaker kids unfortunately too. At least for some kids at least.
Kohn wasn’t suggesting bullying is literally and directly grade competition.
But probably suggesting a non-accepting value system is instilled by teachers insisting on grade competition?
Maybe practice editing more? If you suck at it, rewriting /editing your posts will only make you better at it. It might be a bit of work, it might take a bit of time, but it’s nice to take ten minutes of your time to save thirty seconds to a hundred readers (and more importantly to save all the time wasted by comments who misunderstood part of what you said and the ensuing back-and-forth).
(I personally don’t have much time to spend reading long preachy walls of texts telling me about my supposed self-hatred; I didn’t downvote your post but skipped to the discussion because the post itself wasn’t very engaging and seemed to get things wrong fairly quickly)
I just don’t know what to delete...
All of it. Then start over at the other end. Write the thrust of the article in one plain sentence. I don’t know what it is at the moment. Write it in bullet points. Write it in exactly 100 words. Never write a sentence when one word will do; never write one word when none will do. Think only about what truth you are trying to present, and why the reader should agree.
Also, while I don’t want to speculate about your life, it does read like an autobiographical ramble driven by unhappy memories. My personal reaction to it is just, “I don’t care about these people.”