http://www.librarian.net/stax/1943/a-few-things-i-have-been-reading/ putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999 Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:46:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.librarian.net/stax/1943/a-few-things-i-have-been-reading/comment-page-1/#comment-62679 Information Wants To Be Free » Blog Archive » Charitable reading Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:35:50 +0000 http://www.librarian.net/stax/1943#comment-62679 [...] I know we can feel so distant from the people whose blogs we are commenting on (even when we know them), but we need to remember that there is a human being on the other side of this exchange who may be very hurt by what we write. There is a difference between being critical and attacking someone. I used to be a therapist and was a big fan of cognitive therapy, which posits the idea that you can see events in different ways depending on your world view, biases, or even just how you’re feeling that day. Someone getting an F on a test could think, “I’m an idiot and will never be good at anything” or they can think “well, if I study harder next time instead of watching Family Guy re-runs, maybe I’ll do better.” People obviously saw different things when they read my blog post on Monday. Some people saw a blogger who was trying to encourage people to not be afraid to criticize ideas that are thought of as “sacred cows.” Other people read it and saw it as an attempt to shame people into writing differently. [...] [...] I know we can feel so distant from the people whose blogs we are commenting on (even when we know them), but we need to remember that there is a human being on the other side of this exchange who may be very hurt by what we write. There is a difference between being critical and attacking someone. I used to be a therapist and was a big fan of cognitive therapy, which posits the idea that you can see events in different ways depending on your world view, biases, or even just how you’re feeling that day. Someone getting an F on a test could think, “I’m an idiot and will never be good at anything” or they can think “well, if I study harder next time instead of watching Family Guy re-runs, maybe I’ll do better.” People obviously saw different things when they read my blog post on Monday. Some people saw a blogger who was trying to encourage people to not be afraid to criticize ideas that are thought of as “sacred cows.” Other people read it and saw it as an attempt to shame people into writing differently. [...]

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