Thursday, June 14, 2007

Post Deleted

I’ve taken the unusual decision to remove a post I added to my blog yesterday, in the light of feedback.

I am not afraid to post on controversial matters; or to question received understanding; or to write things that may cause some people to feel uncomfortable (and hopefully think differently as a result – I don’t write simply to make people uncomfortable); or to throw out there into the public arena something that I have not fully thought through first, so it can be developed by the response of others, as opposed to crafting an unassailable argument. I am not afraid to take such risks.

But when what I write is misunderstood, by people who generally try to understand me, I have to say, “May be I wasn’t able to communicate what I wanted to communicate.” And in that situation, it is sometimes better to give up, than to carry on attempting to clarify what you were trying to convey. I guess it depends on how important the matter is to you in the first place, and in this case I’ve decided to delete what I wrote. But so as to be accountable I wanted to acknowledge that a post has been removed, and give the reason why.

3 comments:

  1. Really?!

    I thought what you had to say was excellent.

    Admittedly I only read it thru bloglines quickly in the morning, but I thought the points you were making were great.

    Bah!

    I'm interested in what raised ire - please email me if you get a chance mate :)

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  2. Hi mate :-)

    Yes, I think what I had to say was good stuff; but perhaps I wasn't able to say it very well.

    Being misunderstood, and even misrepresented on occasion, is an occupational hazard!

    To be honest, the feedback I got was second-hand, so I'm not entirely clear what was so problematic. But the context was such that I chose to remove the post. Who knows? I might even reinstate it, but I'd only want to do that after having the opportunity to discuss it with those people...

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  3. I read it on google reader this morning (with feeds it seems that you can delete the stone but not the ripples). Respect your decision, but liked what you said too.

    Going to re-write it at some point?

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