So, I’ve decided to write. About what, you may (fairly) ask – the truth is I don’t entirely know, yet. The closest definition I could reach of what is to come is: a mixture of thought exercises, ponderings about life, society, human relationships, and the broader impact each of us have from our individual actions, small or big.
Let’s get a bit about me out of the way – because this will invariably inform what I write. First and foremost, I’m not a US citizen. I don’t live in the USA, I don’t wish to live in the USA, and English is not my first language. Why write in English, then? Well, I’ve found writing in another language allows me to structure thoughts in a different manner than I would in my mother tongue. It carries less baggage, less emotional burden, less shame. There’s also the wider number of people who can read English. I say this because you might, otherwise, read these texts as being about USA political happenings – they not, well, not only. Things that happen in the US obviously inform my life, but I am not a citizen, a voter, and I have no intention of swaying US politics, merely to – maybe, just maybe – sway humans.
I also think it’s important to attempt to describe the lens by which I view the world, my reality. I am a millennial, queer, adult man who grew up in a Christian household, is autistic and has spent a great deal of time thinking about society, politics, humanity, and the internet. My growing up wasn’t particularly happy, as you can imagine. But I’ve found my community, I’ve found my place in the world, and I’ve found happiness. This thing, the internet, has, quite literally, saved my life as a depressive suicidal teenager – if it wasn’t for the communities I found online, I wouldn’t have survived.
I consider myself a pacifist and have thought a lot about what that means online: online violence isn’t physical – of course – but it exists, and I don’t like it. I also don’t like it when people aren’t fair, just, and honest, which makes the world an interesting place to navigate. Nowadays, I work in Trust and Safety for internet platforms (I won’t name my employer), and how we build a safer internet matters a great deal to me – including the promises of a free and open internet from when I was growing up, including the (somewhat) old news promises of privacy legislation. Overall, I care a lot about people’s experiences in this world, and I think about that quite a bit. The one thing I promise is intellectual honesty. I’m not trying to manipulate you, or anyone. I’m not going to write something I know to be false, and I am open to changing my views on things. It may be hard to get me to change my views (rigid thinking patterns are a thing for people with ASD) – but I am open to it. I ask: if you engage, you engage honestly. I’m not interested in virtue signaling or a contest of dogmas.
The blurb above may feel like enough for you to paint a picture of who I am, and what my values are; in some ways, it likely is. In others, you’d be surprised. Don’t preemptively judge me, my beliefs, my morals, and my values based on who I am – I talk about who I am because who I am informs my perspective on life, it shapes the lens through which I view, comprehend, and think about the world. But who I am doesn’t define my morality. It shouldn’t define anyone’s. We aren’t born with a natural order that must be followed and preserved. Who you are shouldn’t determine what you believe.
The last bit I want to throw out is that, politically, the school of thought I most closely identify myself with is Liberalism (not to be confused with Libertarianism, as Wikipedia says). Liberalism is a weird school of thought. To be called a “liberal” in the USA means something entirely different than what people assume I believe in when I say I am a “liberal” in my country. Liberals in my country are immediately read as right-wing, for example. So, instead of resorting to terms that mean too many things, let me write principles down (pulled from Wikipedia): private property, (regulated) market economies, individual rights – including civil and human rights, liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech (not the absolutist view the USA has on it), freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and consent of the governed. Rawls has devoted a lot of words to explaining how justice and equity are necessary to truly achieve that, so I won’t now.
Those are my biases. My views. My world. I hope you learn something if you stick around and read what I have to say. I hope penning down these thoughts into (semi) coherent articles helps me better process the zeitgeist we live in. I’ll see you next time.
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