i am glad strangers want to tell me my choices are like, okay

[seperis]

Okay, I had this resolution not to post about things that piss me off--there are so many!--until I had waited twenty-four hours to see if I was still pissed.

But seriously. How the hell did we get to this?

In this post about breastfeeding and VVC and vidshows this thread kinda maybe got to me. Maybe a little.
There is something wrong with any

Comments

lectures from strangers

[auroramama]

I believe that, like many incredibly obnoxious and hurtful behaviors, this comes from fear. When a baby is small, there aren't that many choices to make, and there are so many bad outcomes to be terrified of. And since everything that goes wrong is treated as the mother's fault, mothers are especially hungry for reassurance. Self-righteousness as opiate of the maternal masses. Some deliberately attack those who made different choices; perhaps more simply don't think about the effect of their words on other people. Fear makes people selfish, defensive, and callous.

Supporting each other, no matter what choices we make, means being aware of uncertainty. If there's no One True Choice, then there's no way to be absolutely certain you've chosen correctly. I was raised to accept that uncertainty in some contexts, though not in all. But the USA, at least, is full of people who were raised to believe that there's always One True Choice among the choices that matter. They don't say, "It would be rude and hurtful, as well as inaccurate, to tell strangers their choice was wrong." They say, "The truth must get out there." They really do think this is some kind of holy obligation. If they sense in themselves the less holy motives, like getting to feel like a righteous warrior, or reassuring themselves that they chose correctly, they don't let that stop them.

Re: lectures from strangers

[cjandre]

But the USA, at least, is full of people who were raised to believe that there's always One True Choice among the choices that matter. They don't say, "It would be rude and hurtful, as well as inaccurate, to tell strangers their choice was wrong." They say, "The truth must get out there." They really do think this is some kind of holy obligation.

I think you have hit on something there. It's sort of the root of fanaticism, both in the US and in other countries and other contexts, this idea of "holy obligation" that allows people to see a given problem in binary. The solution is yes or not, right or wrong, up or down - with nothing in between and no third options. In that belief system how can anyone respect a choice that disagrees with one's own?

People need to step back and realize that the real world is just more complicated than that. As you say, we need to embrace the uncertainty.

:-)