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Respecting Diverse Voices

Things change, constantly. Because of this fact, what you may know as correct today may be wrong tomorrow. Taking that thought in mind, I’ve been pondering a question that relates to my Collective Thinking post where I said that instead of arguing over a point, people should just each pursue the path that they believe is correct. If multiple people choose the same path, then they can swarm together and work collectively to do so if they wish.

Here’s my conundrum. I’d like to take this same approach with anything I’m currently working on, yet I’m not sure how best to approach this. For example, if I’m looking for information that relates to what I’m working on and I notice a site’s author has viewpoints that differ from mine, what should I do? Should I give them my viewpoint and maybe they might realize something from it or should I just shut up so that I don’t distract them from their work. I know where their work is and if I point to them as an interesting site, then they will know where they can find my work as well. In other words, we can learn from each other if we wish to do so but we aren’t interrupting each other and telling the other how to think. Remember, as I said above, I want to avoid “giving orders” to people which means I want avoid telling them that my way is right (and they should think that way). All that I want to do at most is just relay my situational awareness of what stage I am at in my work.

As I said, I’m perplexed on how to take this approach. Right now, I think the best way for me to do this is to not comment on people’s sites but instead just put down my thoughts on my own site with just a link to their site. That way I can record my own observations based upon their work but without interrupting their work. If they want to read my observations then they can always refer back to me and see what my thoughts were on their work. In this way, it is their choice to read my thoughts without me “invading” their space. The most important thing here though is that we both be aware of each other so that if we wish to review each others work, we can.