Personal Ethics & Social Media

Here's the question: How do I apply my personal ethical code in the realm of social media?

But first, a story....

When I was in seventh grade, I received a three-day out-of-school suspension for fighting. In gym class one morning, during a game of kickball, the class bully (a tough girl we'll call Veronica) began to berate and belittle a girl on our team who had mental and physical challenges (a sweet girl we'll call Sally). Sally had gotten the last out of the inning, and Veronica was pissed about it.

I hated gym class, but I hated cruelty and injustice more. So when Veronica started in on Sally and Sally looked like a deer in headlights, I spoke up without even thinking about it.

"Leave her alone, Veronica," I said.

"What the hell did you just say to me?"

What the hell, indeed? Here I was, a goody-two-shoes with pink glasses and a fluffy perm. And there was Veronica: wiry, scrappy, and probably twice as strong as me. I was booksmart. She was streetsmart. Even the boys were afraid of her, though most of them wouldn't admit it.

"I said leave her alone."

I think I started to walk away after that, but I must have turned around again because when she pushed me, I stumbled backward.

My father had taught me exactly one thing about fighting: Hit back. We had never gotten into the specifics of how to hit, but the message was clear: If someone else starts it, you defend yourself.

I pushed Veronica back.

I think she was as surprised as I was.

Then she shoved me so hard I flew into a wall.

In the second it took me to recover and start back at her, the gym teacher stepped between us. The fight was over before it really started, and I was secretly grateful. Veronica could have kicked my ass, no doubt. And no doubt, I would have gone down fighting.

Instead, we were dragged upstairs to the principal's office, and I spent the rest of the morning sitting there in my shorts and tee-shirt, waiting for him to decide on a punishment, and then waiting for my mom to come pick me up.

When the principal asked me privately if I understood why he had to suspend both of us -- even though I had been defending myself -- I said something like this: "I understand that you have to follow the rule of no fighting on school property. But I don't think it's right." 

I haven't been in a physical fight since seventh grade, but I've had plenty of verbal spars. I've challenged relatives who made derogatory statements about people who are homosexual. I've chastised family friends for making sweeping statements about people who are homeless. I've had calm debates and shouting matches with some of the people closest to me when conversations about race and nationality have gone awry. I've tried to correct co-workers' misconceptions about certain religious groups. I've argued politics with friends. I'm the one who speaks up in a group when someone tells a misogynist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise degrading joke. I'll tell a perfect stranger, "That's not cool," if they say such hateful nonsense to or near me.

I'm not pretending that I'm a perfect paragon of tolerance, acceptance, and love. God knows I have my own private prejudices and small-minded moments, no matter how much I strive not to.

All I'm saying is this: I'm generally not shy about speaking up if you slander a person or a whole group of people. 

In fact, I think silence can make you complicit with such slander.

So back to that question:

How do I apply my personal ethical code in the realm of social media?

The Internet is a vast and unruly beast of opinions. It's fantastic that anyone with a blog, Twitter, or Facebook account can share their thoughts. The power of being able to make your voice heard, and to find like-minded people, is great. The Internet is an amazing tool for learning new things and being exposed to different points of view, both of which are tremendously important to being a well-educated, broadminded, and kindhearted person. But the Internet, specifically social media, is also a minefield of ethical questions.

Last week, after the "not guilty" verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, I saw several Facebook posts that questioned why people and the media were making "such a big deal" about the jury's decision. The general feeling in these posts seemed to be that the media was "race baiting" and making a mountain out of a molehill. These Facebook posters couldn't understand why other people were upset enough to take to the streets in protest of the verdict. One person ranted against the "riots" taking place by "ANIMALS" across the country (this person's words and capitalization, not mine). When someone challenged this statement and pointed out that there were plenty of protests but no real riots happening, the original poster basically said, "Well, it's not over yet. We'll see." In that person's mind, the people protesting were "animals" who would no doubt resort to violence.

Okay. I need to take a deep breath.

I'm going to avoid getting into my specific opinions on the Trayvon Martin shooting and the Zimmerman verdict, because that's not really what this post is about. Suffice it to say that I disagree with the people who think that this case shouldn't be such a big deal, and I disagree with the implied statement that black people staging a protest makes them savages hell-bent on rioting. (Yes, non-black people protested too, and I suspect that the person who called the protestors "ANIMALS" would argue that this label applied to "rioters" of all races. But given this country's history of -- and current issues with -- non-white people being portrayed as less-than-human, the term "animals" is a loaded one, whether you mean it to be or not.)

But my question goes beyond these specific Facebook posts and beyond the Trayvon Martin case. My question is how do I stay true to my moral and ethical standards in the world of Twitter and Facebook?

If these statements had taken place during a face-to-face encounter, I would have spoken up and engaged in conversation about them. If someone had posted them to my blog, I would have dealt with them directly, either by responding in the comments or deleting anything I considered to be over the line. Conversations that happen in-person and those that take place on my own website are part of my immediate sphere of ethical responsibility. 

On the other hand, conversations that take place on someone else's blog or another website are outside of that sphere. I usually walk away from those situations without commenting. After all, the Internet is a vast and unruly beast of opinions, and a bleeding-heart liberal like me can't spend all day sticking up for what she believes in. One could argue that my ethical responsibility extends to those other spheres, of course. But this is the general policy that I adhere to in order to keep me sane.

Social media sites are a strange, in-between space. What's my ethical responsibility to speak up when these situations show up on my Facebook feed? It's not as though those people were talking directly to me. And it's not as though they posted these things directly to just my Facebook page. But there they were, confronting me as I scrolled through the status updates.

So what were my choices here? 1) I could have chosen to unfriend them or hide their updates, but most of what they post isn't offensive to me. (In fact, I mostly believe that their offensive comments was born out of true ignorance and not malice.) 2) I could have chosen to engage in conversation with them via the comments. 3) I could have chosen to be silent.

In this case, I chose to be silent. I didn't think that I could have a meaningful conversation about the issue through the medium of Facebook, and they're not people that I would choose to email directly about such a thing. In these particular cases, I felt that saying nothing was a better option. I chose to let those situations fall outside of my sphere of ethical responsibility. 

But I'm conflicted about this choice.

Right now, I'm thinking about the different spheres of responsibility as though they're social gatherings, parties, perhaps.

• On my blog: I'm the host; it's my party. I'm responsible for what happens here.
• In-person conversations: I'm an active participant, a party guest with a right (duty?) to speak up. I'm responsible for my actions and interactions if I've chosen to attend the party.
• Other websites: These are like parties in other people's houses, and I know that some of them won't be my scene. Sometimes it makes sense to avoid those parties altogether or to hightail it outta there if I happen upon the wrong kind of party.
• Social media: Facebook and Twitter are like huge warehouses where everyone has their own little party room, and we each have keys to the rooms of our "friends" and people we "follow." If I wander down a corridor to another room and pop in to see how that party's going -- or if a promo flyer for that party lands on my doorstep -- and it turns out to be ugly, what do I do? Leave? Kick that party out of my warehouse altogether? Tell them that their party sucks? Offer tips to help improve the party?
  

It's not a perfect analogy, I know. And I'm not trying to incite anger with these questions. But I think this is an important conversation for all of us who interact with others online.

What do you think? How do you handle these situations? How do you apply your own ethical and moral code of responsibility in the murky realm of social media?

I welcome your comments below, and I hope you'll join this conversation in a spirit of respect and thoughtfulness.

You Gotta Roller Derby That Shit! (Or, The Magic of Practice)

By the age of 36, I was used to doing things that I already knew I was fairly good at. It's not that I intentionally avoided new experiences or didn't want to learn new skills, but I had a pretty solid idea of where my natural talents and interests resided, and I tended to stick to those neighborhoods, which were populated with things like reading, writing, storytelling, teaching, and cooking.

Then I entered the world of Roller Derby and hot damn, this was a new part of town! I've written before about how I'd never played a sport, how I didn't like to sweat, and how I hadn't roller skated for two decades. Beyond the physical challenges, playing derby has meant some huge shifts in my mindset and perceptions of myself and what's possible.

One of those realizations has become my new mantra: You gotta roller derby that shit!

Let me explain.

Logic and experience tell me that the more I do something, the more I'll learn about it and the easier it will become. Although I knew this theory should apply to roller derby, I secretly doubted that it would hold. Every time I bemoaned my lack of skill and my slow progress, my husband, who grew up playing sports, told me that if I continued to go to practice and work at it, my skills would improve. My rational brain knew this made sense, but I just wasn't buying it. I worried that I was hopeless.

Still, I kept showing up. And then there was that one time near the end of last season when I finally had so much fun that I forgot to be afraid. This season started off better than I'd anticipated, and I could finally see that I was improving. Even my league mates commented on my progress. I felt proud, but I worried that it might be a fluke of some sort. But week after week I felt stronger, more in control, and more at home in this once-foreign neighborhood. Finally I had a realization...

Holy roller skates, it's true!

If you keep practicing -- even when you don't see immediate results, even after you've had to take time off for an injury, even when you have to leave practice and cry in the bathroom for a little while because your internal monologue won't shut the hell up with phrases like "You don't belong here!" -- if you keep showing up and doing the drills and trying the things you suck at until you suck less at them,  eventually you'll make progress.

We all practice. Pianists play scales. Actors rehearse lines. Writers string together a lot of words that don't end up in the final draft. Chefs perfect techniques and dishes through repetition and tweaking. And athletes do drills and go to practice.

Of course, innate talent can make the going easier. But it can also get in the way. I seem to have little innate athletic talent, so I know I have to work hard to be fair to middling. On the other hand, I know I have innate talent as a writer, which means I don't always work at it as diligently as I should. It's easy to let myself skate by on my "good enough" setting when it comes to writing, because my "good enough" comes easier than some other people's "fair to middling" setting.

But good enough isn't great. And I no longer believe that you have to be born with the most talent to become great. I think it helps, but only if you decide to keep showing up and working at it. In other words, you gotta roller derby that shit.

I don't really expect to ever be great at derby, and I'm okay with that. I just want to be as good as I can be , and if that's just "good enough," that'll be great.

But I do want to be great at writing. And in order to do that, I need to show up and put in more work more often. I need to roller derby that shit.

This means sitting down to write at set times even if I don't feel like it, just as I go to derby practice at specific times each week, whether or not I feel like it that day. This means writing the same essay again and again, the way I keep practicing my turnaround toestops over and over. This means acknowledging the inner voice that whispers "What if this is as good as you'll ever be?", and then turning away from that voice and trusting in the magic of practice.

I've worked as a freelance writer and editor for more than nine years now. I have a graduate degree in creative writing. I've seen my words in print online and on the page. And yet I know I have miles to go in deepening my craft and honing my skills. I go through serious bouts of worry that I'm as a good of a writer now as I can possibly be, even though logic and reason tell me that this isn't true. What if I'm never any better than this? What if this is as good as I get -- and it's not great?

Yeah, what if? But what else is there to do about it but to "roller derby" the hell out of it, and trust the process?

Indie Kindred Screening (this week)

7-9pm
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Private residence, Greensburg, PA
(address provided upon ticket purchase)

I'm hosting a screening of Jen Lee's documentary, Indie Kindred, this Thursday. Jen will be here as part of her coast to coast summer tour. This film brings together some of my dearest friends and favorite artists, and I'm excited to watch it for the first time this week.

Indie Kindred explores the possibility and potential of creative collaboration. Ten independent artists (singer/songwriters, painters, authors and more) share stories and insights about creating their own paths, finding others with similar passions, and the surprising benefits of working together.

If you're near Greensburg (about an hour outside of Pittsburgh in southwestern Pennsylvania) and want to join us for the screening, you can get tickets here. (I think there are just two spots left!) You can also check out other screenings around the country.

Loquacious: "Contingency" by Jennifer Bowen Hicks

Loquacious: full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language. Read more essays in the series here.

I love the mind and words of today's guest writer, Jennifer Bowen Hicks. Jen and I met in grad school, but it wasn't until my final on-campus residency that I spent much time with her. As I got to know her through her writing and our conversations, I came to respect her superb ability to think deeply and surprisingly about any number of topics. Jen has a lovely depth of spirit filigreed with a wry sense of humor. During a lecture she gave at VCFA, I found myself laughing aloud in a quiet room as she dead-panned some hilarious lines. (I briefly worried that I was being inappropriate until she thanked me, in an aside, for laughing at the joke.) As you'll see in her essay below, her mind makes fascinating connections and leaps, and her exquisite use of language seamlessly weaves together the various strands.

Contingency

By Jennifer Bowen Hicks

It's not the loveliest of words. It's not enamored, an Eastern Iowa hillside, open palm of a word with hints of amour. It's not malevolent, a word that's prettier than it ought to be. Contingency with its starched "t" smacks of paper stacks that have been nine-to-fived by a silk tie guy who knows Facts and enforces them with a red pen. Contingency both forebodes and plans; it's helpless and hubris. It's ________ in the event of____________, unless of course, _________.

If it's true for teenagers, it's also so for words: birds of a feather flock together, and contingency hangs with the likes of budget and contract and public affairs. Think: cost-benefit analysis, emergency medical plan, custody arrangements. I hate these things.

More to the point, I dislike uncertainty. Maybe it's because I was born into contingency, weighing 4 pounds and whimpering with my sad set of lungs. From the first breath my life was contingent on the next good breath (as all lives are, I suppose). Because tomorrow seemed tentative, my Catholic grandmother arranged for bedside baptism as a contingency against hell. I tell this story mostly for drama, because I turned out to be not half-dead, just a smaller than average screamer who needed her diapers cut in half until she could grow into them. But that pause! Before my mother and grandmother knew I would survive, they must have suffered joy mixed with trepidation. Hello, wail in the pitch of a brand new you, and imagine in that same greeting as far as anyone knew: Goodbye.

Maybe it's part of the bargain for every living-dying creature on this planet, but I feel I've spent my life saying Hello-Goodbye. My biggest complaint against new people and places is that they’re one too many, another one to lose. My parents divorced at an early age, and I never saw my father again; I never attended the same school for more than two years; my husband and I have hopped around the country so much we can box up a house and say farewell with our grumbling eyes closed. Now when I find a new friend, a knee-jerk dread enters simultaneously beside my delight. Will we move again? Will they? When my sons make me laugh with their dance moves or a funny joke, I feel equal parts joy and sorrow. What will their leaving look like someday? How final will it feel? Hello-Goodbye. My heart, in other words, makes contingency plans for losing what I love, even as I love it.

Poet Christian Wiman says contingency means "subject to chance.”"To me it means, "subject to change." A quicksilver state of unknowing. The electric second of quiet just before a dog bites. Wiman, who is dying of cancer, says, "Christ is contingency." Though I'm not Christian, I'm startled by the grace and courage of this assertion. The charged stillness, just before the shattering—in that waiting? —a holiness?

"What you must realize," Wiman says, "what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all." Wiman's contingency, inextricable from love and faith, is that there is no contingency.

Instead of reluctance, for a split second with a book in my hand, I allow awe. When Wiman's contingency tugs at my heartsleeve, I feel a flash of reverence. Wiman's contingency—just a word after all, a vessel—is imbued with a new spirit, his own. Such is the miracle of language. Post-Wiman, contingency, catches the corner of my eye as a container of light-refracted glass, less dog-bite pause, more grateful gasp. Wiman, facing his own death has been reborn before he’s even died, into a word. Contingency holds a piece of this poet who now labors in me, sanding softly the contours of my deepest aversion.

Dirk Wittenborn says, "We are the sum of all people we have ever met; you change the tribe and the tribe changes you." This surely also must mean, “We are the sum of all words we have ever read; you change the words and the words change you." Wiman redefined one word—less shirt-and-tie, more light and paradox—and that word might just alter me. Hello-Goodbye: exactly and wow. Whether Christ is contingency I can't say, but I do believe while we're planning in semi-darkness for the sun to rise or cease—on a relationship or a market share or a day or a life—we can access permanence through our words. Our contingency against contingency is language itself, that humble tomb that holds so many births and resurrections.

** ** **
Jennifer Bowen Hicks teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Her work can be found in journals such as The Iowa Review, North American Review, Defunct, and others. She's received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board for her prison work and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Susan Atefat Arts and Letters Prize, and a Loft Mentor Series Award in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota where she rears two children, too many hens, and occasional prose.

Mountains of Failure, Mole Hills of Disappointment

There comes a point when the things that aren't easy to admit morph into the things that aren't easy to hide.

They take up too much emotional space, and eventually it's just easier to confess them (first to yourself, and then to those you trust, and then publicly online if that's your thing in this Internet age). 

So here it is, my confession... My confidence is shot.

Call it a slump. Call it insecurity, depression, self-doubt. Call it making a mountain of failure from a few mole hills of disappointment. Call it setting unreasonable standards of personal expectations. Call it perfectionism. Call it death by comparison. Call it hysteria. Call it being an artist. Hell, call it being human.

Sometimes you need other people to believe in you until you can believe in yourself.

This has been one of those times for me. It came on fast and hard a few days ago, like some vicious emotional flu. But I can see now that it's been brewing for months and months, like an annoying case of the sniffles that won't go away and then one day blooms into a eye-popping sinus infection.

And similar to having a sinus infection, I've felt like I can't breathe for all the pressure in my head. I've been clogged up with thoughts like this: I'm falling behind or failing in nearly every aspect of my life, from physical fitness to financial management; from the laundry to the landscaping; from the house work to the freelance work; from the writing life to the domestic life.

People give me this good advice: Don't compare yourself to others. It really is good advice, and a point of view for which I advocate. I've been trying to gauge myself by my own progress. But that's its own problem: I'm not living up to my own expectations. My husband says I'm too hard on myself. I say that I know my potential and that I'm falling short of it. He points out that my standards are impossibly high. I scoff at this. He gives me a look. I give him a look right back. And then, I may, for a moment, concede that my expectations are a wee bit lofty, but it's usually just a matter of minutes or hours (days, if I'm lucky) before I'm looking up again at those expectations and noticing how damn short I am in comparison.

So I've spent a few days crying, making to-do lists, and cleaning my kitchen. I've distracted myself by playing endless rounds of Candy Crush and watching back-to-back episodes of Downton Abbey on DVD. And finally, the other night at 3:00am, while my husband was rightfully sound asleep and I was sitting up sad and lonely and horrified by my own lack of "success," I asked Facebook for a pep talk. And some lovely people on the West Coast and a friend in India responded. Then the next morning some lovely people in my own East Coast time zone responded. My husband spent the better part of the afternoon holding the space for me to wail and then gently helped me to see that the mountains of doubt were not insurmountable, that I had the power to scale the mole hills. I let them believe in me. I let their kindness in, and I began to feel better, even though my confidence was still in the red.

I'm not telling you this as a way to solicit your sympathy or to garner more pep talks. I'm telling you this because I bet you that you, too, have your own mountains and mole hills to climb.

My friend Liz says that we share our stories so others can nod their heads, feel less alone, and say, "Me, too. Me, too." I agree. It's all about connection. That's the reason I write: to connect with the world around me, to connect with the deepest, truest parts of myself, and to connect with others.

So that, if your experience resonates with my experience, you can nod your head and whisper, "Me, too. Me, too."

I've spent the last few days purging this slumping sickness from my system. I'm starting to feel lighter and clearer. Some ideas I've had for a long time are starting to coalesce, and I can see that I'm on the verge of creating and launching a several creative projects that I hold dear.

When I'm in the throes of woeful self-doubt and the labyrinthine path of indecision, nothing feels possible. And no matter how many times I go through this process, I never believe that those things almost always precede a significant shift and end up being the stepping stones to something new and good.

But just because I don't believe it, doesn't mean it might not be true.