flexibeast.space - gemlog - 2025-01-22
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”
There's a phrase: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”. It's used to suggest that if you don't speak up about certain problematic behaviours, you're implicitly conveying that they're acceptable.
i've been thinking about this phrase a lot in recent times, not least due to a recent exchange i had on an ICT forum.
As part of a discussion around certain software systems, i raised a pet topic of mine: entitled and bullying behaviour from FOSS[a] users towards volunteer devs / maintainers / packagers, which often leads to volunteer burnout and communities losing such people as contributors. In particular, i noted that i myself have been negatively impacted by such behaviours.
One person decided to condescendingly lecture me on the need to be ‘resilient’ and to practice stoicism. (The weaponisation of ‘resilience’ has become yet another bee in the beehive in my bonnet, and i'm hoping to write a post on this topic in the near future, to add to the ‘short thoughts’ i've already posted[b].) The basic argument was: There are always going to be jerks, and the world doesn't care about you and whether jerks are impacting you negatively, so toughen up.
Earlier in the discussion, i'd noted that FOSS users in general should care about jerk users simply out of ‘enlightened self-interest’: when jerks induce burnout in volunteer FOSS contributors, such that those contributors have to step away out of self-protection, there's a direct net decrease in the support for software that meets users' needs. And there's potentially a ‘chilling’ effect as well: some people who might otherwise be willing to contribute themselves might think “Nah, not going to take that on, I don't want to have to deal with that sort of crap.”
One might say, "Okay, sure, that's sad, but again, that's how it is. There are always going to be jerks, and you can't do anything about that.” Well, i both agree and disagree.
i agree that there are always going to be people who are fundamentally jerks, who are willing to do whatever they want regardless of the impact it might have on others. But i believe that, proportionally, they're only a small part of the population - let's say, to pick a number for argument's sake, 5%.
i also think that there's an absolute majority of people - let's say, 75% - who generally prefer to avoid negatively impacting others, and who are willing to do small, low-cost, things in order to help others (e.g. holding a door open for someone rather than letting it slam in their face). The sort of stuff described in Stephen Jay Gould's essay “Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness”[c].
But here's the critical point. i believe that the remaining 20% could be described as ‘opportunists’. They're people whose behaviour is often determined by the social environment, by the social benefits and costs of certain behaviours, because they want to ‘fit in’. They're not willing to incur any significant disapproval from peers; but at the same time, if they observe that certain behaviours aren't remarked upon - that is, if people “walk past” those behaviours - can become more willing to engage in such behaviours themselves. They might even take those behaviours as models of how to behave in that environment.
So, sure, the 5% aren't going to respond positively to requests that they stop behaving badly. But the 20% will be paying attention to whether or not such requests are being made in the first place, and whether the requests don't just come from official moderators etc., but also from general community members.
This is an important point. If it's only moderators speaking up, it might be thought that there's a ‘silent majority’ under the yoke of the oppressive moderating class, and that the behaviours can actually be regarded as some sort of righteous civil disobedience. Whereas if general community members say “Seriously, not cool”, that can leave quite a different impression.
In a recent private conversation with a moderator, i wrote that we don't tell people to wear of seatbelts because they're always 100% effective against all possible injuries in all scenarios; we do so because they are effective at reducing the likelihood of a variety of injuries in a variety of scenarios. We don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Similarly, not “walking past” a standard of behaviour isn't necessarily about assuming that it's possible to make everyone play nice: it can be about reducing the number of people who don't play nice, to try to reduce the negative impacts of such behaviours on others.
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[a] i.e. “Free / Open-Source Software”.
[b] Specifically:
Resilience: The characteristic individuals are expected to develop by multiple systems of oppression in order to deal with the consequences of that oppression, for which those systems abdicate responsibility by declaring “that's just life”.
When promoting ‘resilience’ and ‘mindfulness’, reflect on how you might be enabling ‘sustainable exploitation’ of less-privileged people for the benefit of the more-privileged, and failing to validate the former's experiences of systemic inequalities.
It's disturbing how often ‘resilience’ seems to be measured by whether one is meeting the timetables of society and various individuals, rather than by whether one's own physical and psychological needs are getting met.
[c] The essay was included in Gould's 1993 collection of essays “Eight little piggies: Reflections in natural history”. Sample quote:
History is made by warfare, greed, lust for power, hatred, and xenophobia (with some other, more admirable motives thrown in here and there). We therefore often assume that these obviously human traits define our essential nature. How often have we been told that “man” is, by nature, aggressive and selfishly acquisitive?
Such claims make no sense to me - in a purely empirical way, not as a statement about hope or preferred morality. What do we see on any ordinary day on the streets or in the homes of any American city - even in the subways of New York? Thousands of tiny and insignificant acts of kindness and consideration. We step aside to let someone pass, smile at a child, chat aimlessly with an acquaintance or even a stranger. At most moments, on most days, in most places, what do you ever see of the dark side - perhaps a parent slapping a child or a teenager on a skateboard cutting off an old lady? Look, I'm no ivory-tower Pollyanna, and I did grow up on the streets of New York. I understand the unpleasantness and danger of crowded cities. I'm only trying to make a statistical point.
— “Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness”