Gotcha. So you’re saying that explaining my stance is compatible with sealioning.

Here’s the thing. I would love to have civil, honest, constructive conversations. Seeing that this can be perceived as malicious is very frustrating to me. I could be accused of sealioning right now. It seems like a trap: damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

What am I supposed to do if I want to have a civil, honest, and constructive conversations?

I don’t doubt there are people who sealion. I just don’t see myself as having a malicious intent. I’m being open about my stances and I want to see what people’s stances are. But, again, damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

I suppose there’s nothing left for me to do other than tell you that, if you believe I’m acting in good faith, I’d love to talk to you. However, if you don’t think I’m acting in good faith, then there’s nothing we can do to move forward.

Regardless of what you think and what you choose, I genuinely hope you have a good one. In the grand scheme of things, I hope we can all live good lives.

Ah. Thanks for the explanation.

Well, if I look at my posts and ask myself whether I’m sealioning, I do see that I ask many questions to others. However, I also see that I talk about my stances and my beliefs. That is, as far as I can tell, not sealioning. Sealioning seems to require work from others while not doing the work of communicating.

Here’s a post in which I lay out some of my beliefs and stances regarding .ml: https://lemmy.ml/comment/23293518

Of course, I could be wrong, but that’s how it seems to me.

To be fair, I did sign up a long time ago. However, I do have reasons to stay in .ml. Here’s a response I posted elsewhere: https://lemmy.ml/post/40683138/22907808

I’m out of the loop. What’s the context of this?

Thanks for the straightforward response.

It sounds as if it’s clear that .ml admins are pro-Russia and pro-China. I understand you’re also asking if I’m making content-flow choices.

I think it’s worthwhile to interrogate where I stand in relation to .ml and my identity.

The way I see it, .ml does have posts that mourn aspects of countries like the USA and posts that recognize achievements of China. I’m not sure I’ve seen posts praising Russia, like at all, ever (if anything, I’ve seen posts critical of how Russia is a hyper-militaristic society).

I take this to mean that .ml is not indoctrinated in the way that many of my friends are. Some of my friends think that capitalism is perfectly ethical, and they sweep under the rug awful things about capitalism. They sweep under the rug how capitalism creates systemic inequality, how capitalism optimizes for accumulation instead of human flourishing, how capitalism is short-sighted in its investment strategies, how capitalism cannot create infinite growth in a contained system like planet Earth. I see these kinds of analyses in .ml. And I do not see them as much in other places.

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying those analyses don’t exist elsewhere. However, I see .ml engaging with them much more. I could be wrong, and I’d be very interested if you can link to other communities that engage with things like, for example, classical economics instead of neoclassical or post-Keynesian economics. Anyway…

This might lead you to believe that I have a specific political project in mind that I’m supporting. And yeah, I believe in humanism, in human development, and in empathy-based ethics. However, I do not believe in static visions of the future. I do not think that there’s a Single Best Way Of Solving World Problems. I believe the world is a complex system and we need multiple simultaneous experiments at all levels to get more of what we want and less of what we don’t want.

And what is it that I want? I want more acceptance of diversity and less hatred. I want more people working in good working conditions and less shitty workplaces. I want more equality of opportunities and less hoarding of privilege by the wealthy. I want more people out of poverty and less people stuck in the cycle of poverty. I want more investments that care about the long-term benefit of everyone and less investments that care about the short-term benefit of elites. I want more people who can choose what to do with their lives and less people stuck with what they’ve got in front of them.

So am I anti-USA and pro-China?

• If you tell me the story that the USA is lagging in healthcare compared to its rich-country counterparts, then I want less of that. Am I anti-USA because of that?
• If you tell me the story that the USA managed to be an innovation power-house for a century because of its entrepreneurial state, then I want more of that. Am I pro-USA because of that?
• If you tell me the story that China has a demographic problem because of its gender imbalance, then I want less of that. Am I anti-China because of that?
• If you tell me the story that China is investing immensely in the development of green energy, then I want more of that. Am I pro-China because of that?

What I’m trying to say is that we have to look at reality with openness. I believe we should not stick to a simplistic story. I believe simplistic stories blind us to complexity and nuance. I believe we should not stick to easy stories such as “pro-USA” or “pro-China”. I believe we need to be able to break complex systems down and find what we want more of and what we want less of. I believe we then need to be able to accept that in complex systems we cannot know the end-state. I believe, instead, we need to try things out at multiple levels and see if we’re getting more of what we want and less of what we don’t want.

So yeah, I see myself as someone who sees in .ml the kinds of analyses that I don’t see elsewhere. Of course, I’m open to alternatives and am curious about where you stand and what you believe.

To understand what you mean, is that seal winking? If so, are you saying that maybe I’m not being forthcoming or honest? I hope that you and I and everyone here can agree that we’re trying to understand what we’re all saying and where we all stand. I’m not being sarcastic or trying to hide anything.

The goal is to have a good working environment to live good lives and do good work.

The fact that your boss pulled in other coworkers could be interpreted as a red flag, as something fundamentally wrong with your boss. However, without more information, I think this situation could be workable. In other words, there are things you can do.

Again, the goal is to have a good working environment to live good lives and do good work.

I think a good working environment is one where errors can be talked about openly and without fear. I do not think the solution is “praise publicly criticize privately”. I think the solution is for your team (including your boss) to create psychologically safe environment. How? By emphasizing the goal, the purpose of your work. By admitting to mistakes or lack of knowledge to accept fallibility. This is especially helpful if your boss does it. By appreciating when someone openly shares concerns or mistakes. By creating rituals or habits of inclusion, such as well run meetings or effective information-gathering methods.

Do all of those recommendations sound hard to implement and naive? I think for many teams they are. But the reality is that psychologically safe teams exist, and they perform better than teams that don’t have it.

If it’s hard to implement it, why am I bringing it up? Because I think it’s important know exactly what went wrong with your meeting with your boss. It’s better to have an accurate map that shows a steep canyon than a fake map that shows a nonexistent bridge.

So what do you do?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

• learn about psychological safety. Amy Edmonson is the authority on the subject.
• learn to have Crucial Conversations. It’ll help you now and it’ll help you forever.

If you vibe with what I’m saying, let me know and I can give you more suggestions. At the same time, it’s totally understandable if you don’t think my path is viable.

This also happened to me. I had an interview on the phone in which I got amazing feedback. I then had my second interview online and had trouble with my audio. After that, they ghosted me.

I understand that, in many ways, ghosting is normal. Still, that first call’s feedback made me think they wanted to hire me.

That’s alright. I understand that explaining takes time and energy. That time and energy is something I often choose to spend, but I also sometimes choose not to. I would ask you why you want to stop explaining things, but that would, ironically, require you to explain things. I’m not saying this ironically or sarcastically: I hope you can be understood easily!

To understand what you mean, could you rephrase or explain your ideas? I read your post and couldn’t understand what you meant.

Huh. I’m trying to understand what you mean. Your interpretation is that .ml is pro-China and pro-Russia. And, as you can see, my account is .ml. I’m not sure I would identify as pro-China or pro-Russia. What does it mean to you to be pro-China and pro-Russia?

To evaluate “clanker” as a word, I think it’s worthwhile to evaluate its function in context.

So, what function is saying “clanker” serving? When someone uses it, what stories does it make more or less likely? Does it bring more stories of kindness, playfulness, and empathy? Or does it bring more stories of cruelty, aggression, and callousness?

I will not answer those questions in this post, but I think those are a good starter point to evaluate “clanker” as a word.

To understand your question, do you mean in general? Or to go into the details of how it looks to apply the ideas? In general, I’d say my advice is to read the book Crucial Conversations and the book The Fearless Organization and learn the ideas in there. How does it look? From afar, Crucial Conversations and psychological safety look like better conversations. I can’t say they’re perfect, but at least I avoid some pits I fell into before.

Oh, and I can think of a few more:

• learning calligraphy
• learning my times tables even better
• learning about psychological flexibility and becoming more psychologically flexible
• mindfulness meditation
• using pomodoro timers and actually taking breaks
• using Getting Things Done in a psychologically flexible way
• hosting friends much more often
• learning to cook tasty vegetarian or vegan meals

Some time ago I learned about psychological safety and Crucial Conversations. Since then, I’ve seen them improving my life.

To test whether they actually work, I did a little experiment in my life. For some time, I played a little game where sometimes I followed the opposite advice to see what happened. And yeah, I saw the conversation quality go down. It really is not inconsequential to have a common purpose and being open to wild takes.

So yeah, I realized how powerful Crucial Conversations and Amy Edmonson’s research are and applied them to my life. And naturally my quality of life improved quite a bit.

Finding a good therapist. Within those sessions, some moments stand out: the ACT exercises that were experiential. Those exercises transformed many fucked up beliefs. I went from “the world is shit and I’m fucked” to “the world’s complex but I commit to be a kind person”.

I can’t recommend it enough: experiential ACT exercises.

Emily Nagoski’s Burnout has some practical advice, but the single most powerful thing you could be doing right now is mindfulness meditation.

Why? Because burnout usually comes associated with a set of bad experiences that we learn to shut out. That is why we need to re-learn to experience life instead of shutting it out.

How can you do it? I personally like the Healthy Minds app and program, but there are plenty online.

Other tips? Yes. Do Loving-Kindness meditation too. It makes you happy quickly and improves your relationships with people. This, in turn, improves your work.

How am I so sure? Check out Sonja Lyubomirsky’s meta-analyses. In them, she shows that the data overwhelmingly shows that happiness is associated with, temporally precedes, and experimentally induces success in work, relationships, and many other domains of life.

Finally, I’d suggest learning the basics of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Why? Mindfulness will reconnect you with your experience and avoid rumination, but ACT will also ask you to find meaning in your life. Work can be meaningful if you’re not ruminating and you do the necessary values work. I love Hayes’ A Liberated Mind, but, again, there are other resources out there.

Anything is possible if you can do anything…

Where’s my Lemmy Gold when I need it

I’m not saying humans aren’t responsible for the Anthropocene. I’m not saying we don’t have to save out planet. But we shouldn’t idealize nature.

Check out that thread. It’s filled with gems:

https://lemmy.ml/post/31109024