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Emotional Work

Day 1309 and Decorum

Youth always underestimates the importance of decorum. Holding yourself to the social standards of existing cultural expectations may feel like a bore or even hypocrisy. Worse you may feel helpless if you are from outside a culture and don’t know its rules. But have faith that you can learn other people’s ways and remain yourself

Fish out of water stories are universally popular. I’d urge you to read the TV tropes wiki on the topic as you are likely to recognize dozens of the variations. City mouse, country mouse, Freaky Friday, rags to riches, riches to rags, trapped in another world, and trapped in another time are just the start.

So why do we chafe so much at learning the rules of a situation and treating people the way they wish to be treated? Setting personal standards for behaviors is a strong basis for trust. Demonstrating respect and consideration for others may sound like mere social etiquette but civilization rests on top of it.

Now you may shout “come see the violence inherent in the system” and I’ll happily grant you that much blood has been spilled to build this endeavor we call civilization. I am intensely grateful to have ended up in this age where we have so much capacity for abundance. I’d like to keep it that way.

We have tools for you to learn about the social rules and the games we play as humans. You can just ask an artificial intelligence search engine now to help you learn the rules. It’s such a terrific advantage and I’d urge you to use it as my younger self had to learn many social learns through brutal trial and error. And hey if you still aren’t sure just slide into my DMs. I have some cheat codes I can share.