Virtue Signaling, the web as PKM, and stopping things

Virtue signalling, the web as notes and we all need to stop things sometimes. In many ways all the ideas this week tie into the one idea that sometimes we need to change our minds, and sometimes we need to stick with what we were already doing because it was good enough.

Hank Green and Virtue Signalling from the Left

Matt's post had me thinking again about what Rutger Bregman says in Moral Ambition. He posits that intersectionality is why it's harder to form coalitions on the left side of the political spectrum¹. We can't just agree to fight climate change together, we must align with the most militant person in the room on every issue.

So if someone is a vegetarian, I also have to condemn eating meat if I want to be part of the fight for climate change. It wouldn't be good enough to say that I hunt my own meat and avoid factory farming, all meat is bad.

You should read Matt's whole post there are a number of keen observations about rejecting people and how it can backfire.

Imagine you're going to a social event for work with one group of people you definitely want to hang out with and another group you're not so keen on. If you try to hang out with the group you want to join and they reject you, tell you that you're awful, and the group you weren't so keen on welcomes you, talks to you, and laughs at your jokes, well, now that's your group. In time, you'll start to talk like them, think like them, and act like them. - About the Hank Green Situation

The web as your note system

During COVID there was a huge push for a digital note system. I hoped on and picked Obsidian, but maybe I already had my own note system in the form of my blog.

Writing and linking to others enmeshes our thoughts and, as long as the link stays around, provides a pathway between different thoughts on a subject. It can also build a strong community of writers and thinking bouncing ideas off each other. In an ideal world we'd show up like the Inklings to bound ideas off each other in person, but few of us live in a geographical and temporal environment that allows this sharing of ideas.

Enmeshing your thoughts with those of others ties into the idea that you should be blogging, not just sharing ideas on social media. Even on the more open networks like Mastodon, you should be blogging.

Did we miss the forest for the trees as we saw new software that seemingly made connecting thoughts easier? Did this lead us to simply produce more notes about taking notes and provide little else of value? Do we take notes and tinker with our systems instead of producing any type of novel thoughts?

Looking at the links a site provides you could have two ways to view them. Links to others is is when they're working through others thoughts, and links to their own content is updating and referencing their own ideas. In theory a healthy site has some of both, and certainly just doesn't link out to only their own work since we all build our thoughts based on the work of others.

Also, thanks to Kev for pointing me down this rabbit hole on links.

Time to let go

Cory stopped developing his Navidrome client and I endorse that he stopped it's development.

I had someone reach out to me on a Discord channel I had setup for my YouTube endeavours saying they missed my channel and my streams where I researched books and talked about my thoughts. I miss those too. I felt guilty about not doing them anymore for a long time.

But, we need to recognize that there are seasons in our lives and that they pass. I no longer write as much about taking notes and Obsidian, because my workflow stabilized and to continue I'd have to go the way of many content creators, I'd have to manufacture use cases and come up with even more contrived scenarios to continue to show off Obsidian. I'd have to start reviewing a bunch of other tools I didn't use to keep the views coming in, and keep the paltry sums of money from YouTube flowing.

One crucial thing to do is to realize when you're done with something and then absolve yourself of any guilt associated with stopping it. Stop and move on to something else that inspires you now and don't worry if that means a total change of what your focus is.

Of course that also assumes that you're not supporting a family with the income derived from that thing. That you can actually stop. That you didn't jump on a bandwagon and devite every fibre of life to defining yourself as someone that "wrote about notes" and "had courses about PKM".