Pearl-chucking

I have a few outlets for my writing, and most of the bits I write (for lack of time and mental focus, related but separate issues) are brief observations. Some of them I put here. Obviously, I guess. The short items that land here are mostly the ones I don't feel like explaining overmuch, would invite useless trouble by putting in a more well-read location, or don't add correctly to a given persona. Longer writings have their places, here of course being one. And here I tend to blather on in ways, and in unfiltered styles and wordiness, that I'd be embarrassed to use elsewhere.

The more common and often-read locations such as social media have a problem, though:

Too many wags, trolls, and sundry self-important commenters who see misunderstanding as a goal and distraction from anything real or true a mark of wit. Also, when visiting such sites I subject myself to a daunting array of sociopolitical jackassery, which I, in turn, find it hard to refrain from engaging. I know well that there is no reasoning someone out of a position they didn't use reason to achieve in the first place (an observation attributed to several), and switching from dialectic to rhetoric is more likely to cause more battle than discussion, even then having more effect on the observers than the original source of bad ideas. In most of these arenas I'm considered witty and jocular, an easygoing friend. Combat is less useful in such cases, and I risk driving away some of the reasons I'm there to begin with. Yet when some damned fool leaps in swinging a rubber chicken, or his dick, the temptation to lay waste is strong.

As I've mentioned here and before, I need to retain these personae and some of the less rational members of their communities for reasons of personal politics. I suppose it's also good for teaching me things like holding my temper.

When you put all this together, it looks a lot like the best choice is to drop bare minimum stuff in the social media feeds and avoid the drama of the dopes. It's been more or less my policy for a while.

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6)

So what's the problem? I protect myself by shifting real thought (though I have no illusions that I am the 2nd coming of Socrates) to audience-appropriate venues, and amuse the groundlings with Scooby Snacks. Pretty easy.

However: It seems that I've gotten a certain amount of useful notice along the way, which complicates things. My weakness for wanting a broad audience, even if inappropriate, because of some idiotic egotism that suggests my words could pierce hardened shells of denial and delusion, has actually borne something not horrible. People whom I respect have taken notice of my pearls of wisdom, seed pearls though they may be, and have encouraged me to do something more with them. Further, they have the knowledge and means of actually doing something more, and are cheerfully willing to share that knowledge with me. Obviously, I'm grateful beyond words, and will do my best to make the most of it. But it's not lost on me that I wouldn't have attracted this particular attention if I'd tamped down more successfully my lapses in judgment.

Yet this also aids my ability for self-control in the great and goofy flow that is social media, knowing that I don't need to respond to trollery even on my own posts. I may need to put the sacred where the untrained hounds can gnaw on it, but I can stay out of their reach, myself, by straight will.