I find this comment pretty patronising, and echo Amber Dawn’s point about this leading to discussion only being accepted by those who are sufficiently emotionally detached from an issue (which tends to be people who aren’t directly impacted).
To me, this comment sounds like it is saying that if you are angry about this then you are being irrational, and should wait to calm down before commenting. Anger can be a perfectly rational response, and excessive tone policing can suppress marginalised voices from the conversation.
Thanks for the pushback (I also appreciated Amber’s response). I agree that there’s a risk of taking the direction of my comment too far, and I agree that anger is a fully valid emotion and it’s fully valid and informative/useful to communicate it here.
What I do still believe is that anger makes productive discourse more difficult, and I think that many comments here are cases of that happening. When I get angry, I’m less patient, I feel more like I’m in a fight and that I want to win an argument as opposed to understand the situation better and contribute my perspective to a shared process of understanding and decision-making. In case you’re familiar, in EA terms I think that anger moves me away from a “scout mindset” and towards a “soldier mindset”.
I’m currently not convinced that in this discussion, and in the EA forum in general, sharing emotions is discouraged to a degree that is worrying and discourages affected groups and individuals, and I’d be sad if that impression is false. What I see as discouraged is uncivility, uncharitability and snark, and I suspect it only seems like there are more downvotes for emotional comments because of the “anger → impatience” mechanism.
I find this comment pretty patronising, and echo Amber Dawn’s point about this leading to discussion only being accepted by those who are sufficiently emotionally detached from an issue (which tends to be people who aren’t directly impacted).
To me, this comment sounds like it is saying that if you are angry about this then you are being irrational, and should wait to calm down before commenting. Anger can be a perfectly rational response, and excessive tone policing can suppress marginalised voices from the conversation.
Thanks for the pushback (I also appreciated Amber’s response). I agree that there’s a risk of taking the direction of my comment too far, and I agree that anger is a fully valid emotion and it’s fully valid and informative/useful to communicate it here.
What I do still believe is that anger makes productive discourse more difficult, and I think that many comments here are cases of that happening. When I get angry, I’m less patient, I feel more like I’m in a fight and that I want to win an argument as opposed to understand the situation better and contribute my perspective to a shared process of understanding and decision-making. In case you’re familiar, in EA terms I think that anger moves me away from a “scout mindset” and towards a “soldier mindset”.
I’m currently not convinced that in this discussion, and in the EA forum in general, sharing emotions is discouraged to a degree that is worrying and discourages affected groups and individuals, and I’d be sad if that impression is false. What I see as discouraged is uncivility, uncharitability and snark, and I suspect it only seems like there are more downvotes for emotional comments because of the “anger → impatience” mechanism.