I'm so glad to have found your substack. I, too, have found some online places welcoming and others (unintentionally) intimidating. I think in the former, the moderator(s) put in a lot of effort into making sure it remains so, making people feel comfortable enough to speak/stay but not the kind of speech that would make some feel dismissed, or put on the spot, or lectured, etc.
I feel you about silence, the pressure to fill every moment with speech. It usually makes it harder for me to speak. the ability to sit next to each other in comfortable silence takes a special kind of--and probably stage in the--relationship.
Jun 13, 2023·edited Jun 13, 2023Liked by Laurie Green
Interesting how silence is highly valued in certain traditions and schools of thought, particularly in Asia. In most Asian philosophy literature silence appears as a fundamental requirement on the path to wisdom. It may be that the difficulty in Western societies to understand and accept silence is really a symptom of cognitive illness—a distancing from wisdom, that is. It may be a phase in the natural cycle of illness as a crisis of the self—collective self in this case—that hopefully will be overcome eventually. assuming society is a superorganism that, like any living being, always stands a chance to learn new skills, refine self-care skills, acquire wisdom and recover from maladies. But then, for that to happen, the cells of this superorganism have to engage in meaningful and constructive exchanges. Again, Asian tradition in general is very clear in showing that human interchange doesn't always require words! Come to think of it, most interchanges really occur outside the language domain.
I'm so glad to have found your substack. I, too, have found some online places welcoming and others (unintentionally) intimidating. I think in the former, the moderator(s) put in a lot of effort into making sure it remains so, making people feel comfortable enough to speak/stay but not the kind of speech that would make some feel dismissed, or put on the spot, or lectured, etc.
I feel you about silence, the pressure to fill every moment with speech. It usually makes it harder for me to speak. the ability to sit next to each other in comfortable silence takes a special kind of--and probably stage in the--relationship.
Interesting how silence is highly valued in certain traditions and schools of thought, particularly in Asia. In most Asian philosophy literature silence appears as a fundamental requirement on the path to wisdom. It may be that the difficulty in Western societies to understand and accept silence is really a symptom of cognitive illness—a distancing from wisdom, that is. It may be a phase in the natural cycle of illness as a crisis of the self—collective self in this case—that hopefully will be overcome eventually. assuming society is a superorganism that, like any living being, always stands a chance to learn new skills, refine self-care skills, acquire wisdom and recover from maladies. But then, for that to happen, the cells of this superorganism have to engage in meaningful and constructive exchanges. Again, Asian tradition in general is very clear in showing that human interchange doesn't always require words! Come to think of it, most interchanges really occur outside the language domain.
I really loved, and appreciated this. Thank you.