Glen -
I'm with you on the awareness angle... I appreciate your clarification
about reward/punish, it is key, and helps illuminate what I was niggling
at.
Too often, in our drive to reward/punish, we occlude the rest of our
awareness, we seek someone to "blame" or "credit" to the point of
ignoring the field of play they are in, the other actors right in line
behind/next-to them... rotating through a series of "whipping boys" to
take our wrath rather than seeing the obvious causes and then, often
even when we see through to the first layer of causes, we stop there and
don't recognize how those are often merely symptoms of deeper causes.
You also make the point that many would consider the choices being made
by the "bad actors" as being "good choices" and therefore identifying
them as "good actors". All this leads to polarization and divisions
that are perhaps unproductive... I am surrounded by judgements by my
friends and colleagues which I must hold in suspension to avoid this
polarization. I happen to like a lot about the implications of the
activities of the WikiLeaks but don't necessarily demonize those who
find themselves unable to support them.
- Steve
I think maybe we are roughly on the same page.
Mostly, yes. However, I didn't intend to focus on the reward/punish
aspect. Sorry for the distraction. My primary point is about
identification. What anyone does with the data gained by paying
attention is their business. Indeed, what anyone regards as good and
bad behavior is their business. I'm certain that many of my friends
think SiteGround and SoftLayer made Good decisions. I disagree;
regardless, it's important to draw attention to their decisions so that
those attending can judge for themselves. Those who fail to pay
attention fail in their duty to themselves and their network.
To be clear, I'm positing that the _cause_ of the systemic problem is
lack of attention. So, calling out good and bad behavior and naming
good and bad actors is not just a good start and it's not treating the
symptom rather than the cause. Calling it out is treating the cause.
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