On of my top fears when I am writing a piece is having it misinterpreted. With public shaming so prevalent and capable, I am cautious releasing my weird mind into the world. I tend to sit in the middle of many issues and when I write I am exploring an issue or trying to understand it in a very blunt and focused way (it can come off as closed minded). So, when I look at something like STEM, I know that it is beneficial to under serviced populations when the barriers are lessened. I agree with making it easier for under represented demographics to get an assisting hand from various directions because society is based on the past. If you have 100,000 dollars in 1990, and you invest and grow it and then pass that to your family that is your right, but I also understand that the process creates a barrier to others. Since the past was uneven, it is responsible to smooth the conditions in the present.
Yet, the piece I wrote on STEM is critical of these decisions to benefit the under represented. Not because it has now made it unfair to another population, but rather, I feel it makes someone have to take a path. Water will follow the least resistant path, people will do the exact same thing. We have the ability to make a choice but thinking thirty years in the future is impossible, so, a person will look forward and see the soonest possibility that leads them towards success as the proper choice and go that way. In doing so, the second you actualize a decision, you run begin to close other possibilities because we are mortal and will die. So each choice, eliminates a possibility. Which means, when you incentivize a specific goal, you just made a decision for someone or aided in that decision.
Now… I wrote that blog based on that premise. I only focused on a single aspect of it and if someone reads it, cause it is public, they can pull a text blurb from it and then place it in their own context. That piece can be misconstrue in many ways, and that means, I will mostly be attacked by some group or another. That’s frightening.
So why the discussion or statement or whatever this is, simple. In each of my books, I can see some sort of topic or character that automatically will single me out and can be used by some group as an attack. Yet, I don’t go and fix this issues and the reason is simple. Tropes, experiences, and characters are real things in real life but placed in a fictional world. Also, just like in real life, you will be forced to experience these people and deal with dissenting opinions. So, please, take the fiction as real life in that regard and don’t attack one another. This culture of shaming when people aren’t blaring your trumpet is getting out of hand and leads to damaged lives. Keep everything in context and avoid the pitfall to throw the tomato before understanding the person your throwing the tomato at. Your words hurt, and they can snowball someone down a dark path, keep dialogue and conversation pleasant. Otherwise, you are using the internet for the wrong reasons but then again, some people just want to destroy. The more we shame, and the more we attack, the less likely it will become that controversial work that moves us forward as a people will be released.