Free Thought Series: Context

           I've started this free thought series to create bite sized pieces to curve my itch to write while my articles are in the process of being edited and today I'll be free writing on the topic of context. In The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff they discuss the growing cultural movement from intent to impact. How a situation is deemed right or wrong not by the intent or context of the situation, but how the situation is interrupted by the offended. This new wave of emotional reasoning is scary and creates a cultural anxiety causing a hyper focus on actions because the call out movement has no regard for context or atonement. Can a person really be incapable of change? May there be a context to a situation in which people who offend may have no intention of offending? To give a personal example I used to do grocery store tastings for the craft beer business I work for. I remember standing at my sample stand having the job of offering beer samples to any person who walked by. My only process of filtering who I asked was based on my visual judgement of anyone who looked to be of legal drinking age. This one gentlemen walked up and I said to him "Hey, we got free beer here, if you would like a sample?" He looked at me with this expression that could only be described as "How dare you ask me such a question?" I picked up on his facial expression and before I had a chance to verbally respond he said "I'm a recovering alcoholic and haven't had a drop of alcohol in over a year, so absolutely not." As a recovering alcoholic I can sympathize with his reaction of feeling offended especially being offered alcohol, however I had a problem with his complete lack of my situational context. I'm an employee of a company who makes an alcoholic product. I'm simply getting people to recognize the brand and try the product for themselves. I'm not a mind reader and had no idea he was an alcoholic and it was contextually clear I was just doing my job and had no prior knowledge into this man's personal life or struggles. Abraham Maslow said it best with his famous quote from his book titled The Psychology of Science published in 1966 saying "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." As a personal optimist I struggled to see the significance of activity choosing impact over intent. Choosing impact seems to lead to higher amounts of unnecessary personal suffering. Once the power of context and giving the benefit of the doubt are understood (on a personal emotional level) it seems silly to move in the opposite direction. Choosing to be mindful of context only has the ability to change how one reacts or feels about any situation or experience. How many times have people let a five minute bad experience effect the rest of their day? How we choice to view a situation truly only effects our personal outcome of the situation. Is striving for personal outcomes to avoid being pissed off, angry or upset a bad thing? A quote I throw out most often is "If it's snowing outside you can choose to enjoy the snow or not. The only difference is the same amount of snow just less amount of joy." Changing perception, being mindful of context and giving the benefit of the doubt isn't in favor of the person you are being mindful for, it's for your personal outcome to achieve less moments of energy draining negativity. If a person is being an asshole to you, who knows what they could be going through. They could of lost their jobs, just been dumped or a slew of other reasons to rightly justify a bad mood. Remember we all have moments of being an asshole, we've all said things without intent of offending when offending and we've all changed view points and beliefs. Let us get back to intent over impact because we'll all be in better places in doing so, or am I the only one?