How to Contribute Without Losing Yourself

For the past year, I have learnt a lot about doing public work and the consequences of interfacing with society. Achieving your full potential not only requires you to gain the skills needed but also hold the necessary grace and love within your heart to countinue to serve your demographic. We will explore how we can engineer ourselves in such a way where we can interface and involve ourselves in society, but do it in a way where we are not left crippled, demotivated and resentful. Let's begin.

The Paradox Of Responsibility In Public Interface

To do any sort of public work and stick your neck into the real world, your identity is typically involved. Why there is such a deep reaction within you when a troll or ignorant person misrepresents your organization or work is because to your nervous system, it feels like a direct threat to your existence, even though there is no real immediate threat.

Most people who do public work typically take a great deal of unnecessary responsibility on society's behalf. For example, by sharing what I know, I assume extend my responsibility for your wellbeing in the social domain as a thought leader. This poses a significant paradox for the person looking to make a positive difference.

By including everyone and expanding the scope of who you take responsibility for, by consequence, you will be involved in other peoples lives. If I include and take responsibility for you, that means I will have to absorb and accommodate your survival, which will directly compromise my own.

But without involving yourself and taking responsibility for another person, you will never be able to do anything significant in the world, nor will you be able to take action which leads to fulfilment. To live a complete life and stretch yourself to your maximum capacity and expression, you cannot avoid the fact that one day you will have to absorb responsibility for things and people beyond yourself.

This is where learning how to consciously deploy boundaries becomes a very important topic. Without drawing a line between what is acceptable and unacceptable, you will unconsciously merge yourself into the other person. This because very dangerous because the other do not hold the same regard for you.

When you extend your responsibility to include another person as an extension of yourself, but the other is unwilling to do the same, you are inviting a bull into a china shop. The wreckage will not end until you kick the bull out, which often happens unconsciously. Our objective here is not to allow the bull enter in the first place.

Acceptable Or Unacceptable?

What you will find acceptable will extend to how much responsibility you take for another person. So if you are able and have the capacity to extend responsibility for everything, then in theory you will find everything to be acceptable. In practice, this depends on your capability to be inclusive.

In whatever we do, it is best that we first outline the scope of our responsibility. By outlining the scope of our responsibility, we can define what we find acceptable or not acceptable. This way, our identity does not get entangled with things that we are not ready to take responsibility for.

For example, this is the scope of responsibility I have taken for FriendlyWrenChilling:

1. That I provide you with clean and factual information that I have personally experienced to be true and worked for me in real life. To not mislead you.
2. To make this information free and available for anyone who is seeking for a solution without discrimination, bias or exclusion.
3. To relieve suffering for issues concerning dating and human connection. That I not only ground you with practicality, but seek to generate fulfilment in the results you experience

So the bull is only allowed in the china shop when the bull simultaneously is open to the solution provided, is willing and humble enough to see that he is not the owner of the china shop and actively wants to relieve the genuine suffering that he experiences.

Only then, I would take responsibility for that person. It is unwise to assume responsibility for something that you are not ready to handle. Responsibility given to incompetence will lead to disaster. So we cannot get ahead of ourselves and clearly see the limited scope of our responsibility, and analyze if it creates satisfactory levels of impact and fulfilment.

Enforcing Boundaries In The Right Manner

There is four classes of bulls that actively causes problems in the public domain. Each requires a specific way to deal with them appropriately. Misdiagnosing and using the wrong boundary enforcement method will undermine the integrity of whatever you are doing.

The Troll
Fundamentally, the troll is againts your existence. The key tell that a person is a troll that they usually do not engage in dialogue. Their behaviour is oriented towards provocation, destabilization or eliciting reaction rather than understanding or resolution. Typical speech patterns include:

• Name calling
• Mockery
• Provocative one-liners that illicit reaction
• Shifting blame to maintain conflict
• Attempting to irritate and frustrate you intentionally

The method in which you deal with a troll is a very strong boundary enforcement with no justification. Example:

1. State the boundary: "You cannot invade Greenland."
2. State the consequence: "If you invade, I will retaliate."
3. Immediate enforcement with no justification or reasoning

Ignorance
Fundamentally, an ignorant person is speaking from anxiety and fear. Thier intentions are not malicious. They are just overly attached to rules, norms, customs and authority. Ignorance does engage in dialogue but only in a very limited scope in the way they understand the situation. Typical speech patterns include:

• Appeals to rules, norms, or tradition
• Moral judgments such as “this is wrong”, “this shouldn’t be said”
• Deference to authority “experts say”, “society agrees”
• Literal or context-blind interpretations
• Repetition driven by discomfort, not provocation

The method in which you deal with an ignorant is to clarify first before enforcement. The principle being that ignorance only respond to clarity, systems and perceived legitimacy. Example in response:

1. Acknowledge the underlying fear
2. Anchor yourself in shared relationship and values
3. Clarify roles and responsibility for a mutual desired outcome
4. Suggest the behaviour change and create space for digestion
5. Loop back to 4. if unsuccessful

Critics
Fundamentally, a critic acts from the motivation of self-interest. They only engage in dialouge if there is something to be gained from the interaction. The orientation a critic have is typically putting up a performance so that they can create a desirable outcome. Typical speech patterns include:

• Self image and perception control
• Attempts to discredit competence despite not demonstrating expertise
• Weaponizing relativism to evade frame collapse
• Dishonest use of communication to prove a point
• Circular argumentation to preserve advantage

The method is which you deal with a critic is to ignore then entirely. It is as simple as that! If you make the mistake of engagement, they will just wear you down in dishonest communication which never ends.

Social Justice Warriors
The only problem with social justice warriors is that they have beautiful ideals and how reality should be, but have zero experience in confronting that reality to make it a possibility within their lifetime. The orientation is towards crusading, protesting and moralizing rather than making a real change within society. Typical speech patterns include:

• Moralizing others based on their ideals and morality
• Guilt shaming and outrage
• Overly crusading and taking a moral highground
• Preference for symbolic action rather than practical solutions
• Hostility towards compromise and incremental progress

The method in which you deal with a SJW is to disengage slowly by using reality as a reference. SJWs can be dangerous because if they rally a bunch of ignorant fools around them, they can be responsible for cancel cultures and unproductive "movements" that sideline anyone who is actually making progress towards positive change. Guidelines in response:

1. Highlight the positive impact you've created
2. Shift the frame to implementation and reality
3. Introduce constraints and real world problems
4. Redirect responsibility back to the SJW
5. Disengage outright if it turns into outrage and slogans

An Internal Sense Of Right And Wrong

How do we safeguard ourselves and not become another tyrant that actively destroys other people's china shops? Well, we have to create an internal sense of clarity which we can impose upon ourselves when creating the impact and wellbeing we want to create.

If our actions align with:

1. Truth - The feeling of expansion, love and compassion in your experience
2. Clarity - Insight generated from direct experience into the nature of reality
3. Love - To relieve suffering and include a subsection which is not you.
4. Competence - The ability to create the results you claim
5. Service - To act with an intention of selflessness

Then rest assured, you can lay confidence in your actions and words to prevent yourself from being gaslit. These 5 pillars create a very rigorous standard of integrity which is very hard to pass. Any individual with some ability to self-introspect will be able to see any sense of corruption that has seeped into their way of being.

The Source Of Conflict

The core of our existence lies in impermanence. This is because anything that takes up a form in the physical world, whether that be a human body, tree, atom or whatever. If it is physical in nature is has turned itself into a dualistic existence. For me to exist in this way, discounts that I exist in every other way.

For example, for you to exist as a human, you cannot exist as anything else. Therefore, for you to exist as a human being, you have to assert your physical boundaries to continue existing as a human. Without this assertion you will die, be reabsorbed into the ground and become something else.

Similarly, everyone is asserting their current way of existence. If I want to exist in one way, and you would like to exist in another way we would come into conflict. It then becomes a fight over who have a stronger boundary, and the one with a weaker boundary will be absorbed into the new status quo.

This is the basis of why people are not living a harmonious and happy life. On a fundamental level, you take an entitled attitude and stance over your own existence over the lives of others. If you can see that every single life is equal, that we are all made out of the same material (The Earth), then you would bow down in respect for all that is living around you and hold them as a peer.

Once you can hold this reverence and respect for all life, you can live harmoniously among the planet. Does that mean that other pieces of life will not attempt to violate your existence? Of course not! If we have the sense to not invade the boundaries of another life, we should also have the sense to not allow another life to trample over ours.

Conclusion

To recap, this article explored the role of responsibility in creating a meaningful impact within society. We examined how identity becomes entangled in public work, why conflict arises, and how different forms of pushback require different modes of boundary enforcement. At the root of all conflict lies a mismatch between responsibility, competence, and capacity.

The reason why this article exist is so that I can enable people who are responsible to rise up and protect the integrity of society. At present, we increasingly reward ignorance, moral posturing, and the outsourcing of responsibility to allow disproportionate influence over decisions that affect everyone.

Share your clarity and take responsibility for things in which you can handle. Develop your competence so that you can be a good steward for others. If such a desire does not arise within you, then doing nothing is also a perfectly acceptable action to take.

That's it for me. Best of luck. Please check out my other posts and practice everything holistically. Send me an email if you want a specific topic written. You can see "coaching" to see if I have room to onboard new students.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.