Today began very early, actually extremely early... well, to be completely honest, yesterday never actually ended (I should probably go to sleep). In one of those spur of the moment type scenarios, one of the best Pirate Radio renditions was recorded and broadcast to the world. Our radio guru @r0nd0n aka Juan took over the mic and a 4 hour long conversation between @isaria @r0nd0n @scaredycatguide @swelker101 @aggroed and myself took place.
And we disagreed on Air!!!
And it was fantastic, it was productive and I'm sure I speak for everyone who partook of the conversation, it was educational. I think that in today's social interactions we need more healthy disagreements. Honestly, the semi anonymity that sitting behind a keyboard gives us users, has also had the side effect of damping the consequences of not being a civil grownup when engaging in discourse.
I'm not trying to be a hypocrite here. It's not like I've never done my share of trolling online, as a matter of fact I was messing with Alex Jones just hours ago. But there is a dire need to also debate the issues, brainstorm ideas, butt heads if you will, with the goal of achieving a balanced consensus.
Can we still be friends?
There is this idea, this toxic notion, that if someone does not agree with everything I believe in, in the way that I see correct, then that person cannot, and should not ever be called my friend. If the negativity of even reading that sentence is not obvious enough, there are many more dire consequences of living inside your echo chamber.
It's also pretty apparent to me, that most of the time "disagreements" are really ideas poorly communicated. Meaning, we might have the same goal in mind, just a different notion of how we get there. And if we attempt to step back, see the bigger picture, the commonalities and intentions become apparent.
What I'm trying to say is that, I don't want to be friends only with people that agree with me. I see value in our differences, and I'm completely aware that I can be wrong about something, and it's completely OK to revise my own convictions.
What about safe spaces?
I think this is where it gets confusing to some. Many people have this idea that a "safe space" is an environment with people that agree with all your beliefs. This concept, seems pretty distorted to me, and it comes at a heavy cost. Living inside echo chambers only weakens our ability to improve, and I can't think of something worse that can happen to a brain.
It's not a new thing, echo chambers have been around probably since the dawn of civilization, but maybe the accessibility of information today has amplified or at least facilitated their growth. Life becomes a search for opinions that agree with my preconceived notions of the world, and not a search for facts and truth.
Differences on Steem's Blockchain
If Steem is to thrive, it needs a healthy dose of all ideas. We can't simply become an echo chamber for one particular ideology, as much as it might sound frightening or painful to imagine on-boarding people you completely disagree with.
I guess if I had to sum it up, I would probably cheat and use an expression that has existed since before I was even an idea in my parents minds.
"Rome was not built in a day"
And I would add to that the speculation that those governors, engineers and workers, disagreed, fought and argued sometimes violently on every detail.... and maybe that's why it became as powerful as it did.
Food for thought as they say...
