Would this feel different if people screamed when they wanted to scream, during Circling?
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later. This might make people marginally more accepting or it might not, I’m not sure on the distribution in individual psychology. For me I‘d just feel like a clown in addition to the other stuff.
What I’m hearing here (and am repeating back to see if I got it right) is the suggestion is heard as being about how you should organize your internal experience, in a way that doesn’t allow for the way that you are organized, and so can’t possibly allow for intimacy with the you that actually exists.
Partially, but I also think that you believe that [something] can be changed independently of the internal experience, and I don‘t. I‘m not sure what [something] is yet, but it lives somewhere in „social action and expression“. That might mean that I have a different mental makeup than you, or it might mean that the concept of „emotion“ I consider important is different from yours.
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later.
I asked because it is considered appropriate in Circling to bring emotions in the forms they want to be expressed in, including things like screams. Also the sorts of emotions people express in Circles run basically the whole emotional range, from pleasant to challenging.
I had the hypothesis that you were imagining a version where emotions had to pass through some external filter, like “politeness,” and so rather than ending up with an accurate picture of where people are at, Circlers would end up with a systematically biased or censored picture. I don’t think that happens with an external filter based on valence. That is, I think there are internal filters and people self-censor a lot (as part of being authentic to the complicated thing that they are), and I think there might be some external procedural filters.
I am somewhat worried about those procedural filters. Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
[Worried because of the “can’t allow for intimacy” point, and what to make of that is pretty complicated because it touches on lots of stuff that I haven’t written about yet.]
I remain sceptical of how you use internal/external. To give an example: Lets say a higher-up does something that makes me angry. Then I might want to scream at him but find myself unable to. If however he sensed this and offered me to scream without sanction (and lets say this is credible), I wouldn’t want that. Thats because what I wanted was never about more decibel per se, but the significance this has under normal circumstances, and he has altered the significance. Now is the remaining barrier to “really expressing” myself internal or external? Keep in mind that we could repeat the above for any behaviour that doesn’t directly harm anyone (the harm is not here because it is specifically anger we are talking about. Declarations of love could similarly be robbed of their meaning).
Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
This is going in the right direction.
Also, after leaving this in the back of my head for the last few days, I think I have an inroad to explaining the problem in a less emotion-focused way. To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
If I’m inferring correctly, the thing that’s going on here is your frustration is at both how the thing went down and that the person who did it is superior to you. If he ‘lets you’ scream, it’s not a fight or a remonstration, it’s him humoring you, which isn’t the real thing.
To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
Yeah, this is a really tricky question. I think the answer to both is “lots of effects.”
Sometimes there are confidentiality agreements (where people get into a high-trust state and share info and then by default that info isn’t widely propagated, so that you don’t have to be think as much about “I trust Alice, but do I trust Alice’s trust?”) but there aren’t any sort of “forgetting agreements” (where I share something shocking about me and you don’t want to be friends anymore and then I can say “well, can you just forget the shocking thing?”).
Given that it can have lots of effects on the social reality outside of Circling, the question of “are those expected effects good or bad?” is quite important, as is the question of “what standard should you use to measure goodness or badness of those effects?”.
A section of my draft for this post that I decided to move to a comment, and then later decided should be its own post, is about the “will Circling with people I know be good for my social goals?” question, which I answered with “quite probably not on the meta-level I think you’re thinking on, but I think it will on a different meta-level, and I think you might want to hop to the other meta-level.”
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
I think doing it with strangers you never see again dissolves the worries I’m talking about for many people, though not quite for me (and it raises new problems about being intimate with strangers).
The stuff above is too vague to really do much with, so I’m looking forward to that post of yours. I will say though that I didn’t imagine literal forgetting agreements—even if it were possible to keep them (and while we’re at it, how do you imagine keeping a confidentiality agreement without keeping a forgetting agreement? Clearly your reaction can give a lot of information about what went on, even if you never Tell anyone) because that would sort of defeat the point, no? But clearly there is some expectation that people react differently then they normally would, or else how the hell is it a good idea for you to act differently?
It could mean that the problem is gone, but it propably means you’re setting the cut later. This might make people marginally more accepting or it might not, I’m not sure on the distribution in individual psychology. For me I‘d just feel like a clown in addition to the other stuff.
Partially, but I also think that you believe that [something] can be changed independently of the internal experience, and I don‘t. I‘m not sure what [something] is yet, but it lives somewhere in „social action and expression“. That might mean that I have a different mental makeup than you, or it might mean that the concept of „emotion“ I consider important is different from yours.
I asked because it is considered appropriate in Circling to bring emotions in the forms they want to be expressed in, including things like screams. Also the sorts of emotions people express in Circles run basically the whole emotional range, from pleasant to challenging.
I had the hypothesis that you were imagining a version where emotions had to pass through some external filter, like “politeness,” and so rather than ending up with an accurate picture of where people are at, Circlers would end up with a systematically biased or censored picture. I don’t think that happens with an external filter based on valence. That is, I think there are internal filters and people self-censor a lot (as part of being authentic to the complicated thing that they are), and I think there might be some external procedural filters.
I am somewhat worried about those procedural filters. Like, if I have a desire to be understood on a narrow technical point, the more Circling move is to go into what it’s like to want to convey the point, but the thing the emotion wants is to just explain the thing already; if it could pick its expression it would pick a lecture.
[Worried because of the “can’t allow for intimacy” point, and what to make of that is pretty complicated because it touches on lots of stuff that I haven’t written about yet.]
I remain sceptical of how you use internal/external. To give an example: Lets say a higher-up does something that makes me angry. Then I might want to scream at him but find myself unable to. If however he sensed this and offered me to scream without sanction (and lets say this is credible), I wouldn’t want that. Thats because what I wanted was never about more decibel per se, but the significance this has under normal circumstances, and he has altered the significance. Now is the remaining barrier to “really expressing” myself internal or external? Keep in mind that we could repeat the above for any behaviour that doesn’t directly harm anyone (the harm is not here because it is specifically anger we are talking about. Declarations of love could similarly be robbed of their meaning).
This is going in the right direction.
Also, after leaving this in the back of my head for the last few days, I think I have an inroad to explaining the problem in a less emotion-focused way. To start off: What effects can and should circling have on the social reality while not circling?
If I’m inferring correctly, the thing that’s going on here is your frustration is at both how the thing went down and that the person who did it is superior to you. If he ‘lets you’ scream, it’s not a fight or a remonstration, it’s him humoring you, which isn’t the real thing.
Yeah, this is a really tricky question. I think the answer to both is “lots of effects.”
Sometimes there are confidentiality agreements (where people get into a high-trust state and share info and then by default that info isn’t widely propagated, so that you don’t have to be think as much about “I trust Alice, but do I trust Alice’s trust?”) but there aren’t any sort of “forgetting agreements” (where I share something shocking about me and you don’t want to be friends anymore and then I can say “well, can you just forget the shocking thing?”).
Given that it can have lots of effects on the social reality outside of Circling, the question of “are those expected effects good or bad?” is quite important, as is the question of “what standard should you use to measure goodness or badness of those effects?”.
A section of my draft for this post that I decided to move to a comment, and then later decided should be its own post, is about the “will Circling with people I know be good for my social goals?” question, which I answered with “quite probably not on the meta-level I think you’re thinking on, but I think it will on a different meta-level, and I think you might want to hop to the other meta-level.”
To the extent it’s possible, I think it’s good for people to have the option of Circling with strangers, in order to minimize worries in this vein; I think this is one of the other things that makes the possibility of Circling online neat.
That seems mostly correct.
I think doing it with strangers you never see again dissolves the worries I’m talking about for many people, though not quite for me (and it raises new problems about being intimate with strangers).
The stuff above is too vague to really do much with, so I’m looking forward to that post of yours. I will say though that I didn’t imagine literal forgetting agreements—even if it were possible to keep them (and while we’re at it, how do you imagine keeping a confidentiality agreement without keeping a forgetting agreement? Clearly your reaction can give a lot of information about what went on, even if you never Tell anyone) because that would sort of defeat the point, no? But clearly there is some expectation that people react differently then they normally would, or else how the hell is it a good idea for you to act differently?