An H Of G - Tumblr Posts
In one of John's (OP's) vlogbrothers' videos, you talked about Paul Farmer's saying of an H of G—a hermeneutic of generosity. That was my introduction to the concept, but it has helped me so much in these situations where we realize how little information we have about each other and how many gaps we are filling in.
I do my best to fill in the gaps in a way that is generous to the other person. Not to say I get it right every time, but I try. And I'm not always conscious of the gaps I'm filling in, I'm aware. But when I am, I try to do so generously. So thanks for that, John. And thanks to Paul Farmer, for that and everything he did to make the world better in his life.
one thing we forget about people on the internet is that we know almost nothing about them. Would i know if somebody's kid has congestive heart failure? Only if they tell me! Would I know if somebody is experiencing severe mental health problems? Only if they tell me! Would I know if someone has cancer? Only if they tell me!
This is a weird thing about being online. We can know a lot about someone--this person is a Christian, and a father of three children, and married to that person, and likes Cheerios--but we only know what they told us, which is--of course--almost nothing.
And yet, human pattern-makers that we are, we inevitably fill in the gaps in information with assumptions that are based on whether we kinda assume the best of someone or kinda assume the worst of them. Like, I do not imagine that Elon Musk came home from his hard work making everyone's life worse yesterday and held a sick friend's hand as that friend died--but of course that's possible! I don't know!
This happened to me a lot when I was on tumblr the first time. People often filled in gaps by assuming the worst in me, and that's fair enough, I guess. These days, people tend to (although not exclusively) fill in the gaps by assuming the best of me. But both are assumptions informed by extremely limited information, which is almost impossible to remember in the daily grind of Internet Life.