Pete's Log: Take Two
Entry #2760, (Life in General, Meta, World Wide Web)(posted when I was 46 years old.)
My submission to Take Two, this month's IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Nick Simson
Nick asks "Ever wish for a do-over?" and Monkey's Paw notwithstanding, some things come to mind. Like there are several recent log entries I'd love to have spent more time on. I've run out of pre-written content, so when an idea like the etymology of my name comes to mind, I find myself artificially constrained to getting it posted before bedtime instead of taking the time to properly research and edit it.
I don't think I properly highlighted my two main points.
- The realization that the name Rijks is much more likely to be a personal description of rich or mighty instead of the more abstract realm or state. I may have had an ancestor whose circumstances led those around him to dub him the rich guy.
- How I think it's cool when Proto-Indo-European words make their way into English multiple times. For example that brother came to us via Proto-Germanic, while its Latin cognate Frater gives us fraternal and fraternity. I never knew rich came from Proto-Indo-European king, but through a winding path that led through Proto-Celtic, here it is, cognate with e.g. royal that took a path through Latin and old French instead.
Nick also offers further prompts, like "What is an old “take” you no longer have, or can no longer endorse?" And as much as I enjoy my On This Day feature, it does regularly offer up a generous helping of cringe. But that's part of maturing, I think. I can no longer endorse some of the views of younger me (hence the cringe) but I can look back and feel grateful about the path life set me on.
Lately I keep finding myself wondering how things might have turned out for me if I'd been born twenty years later. I was socially awkward, dabbling with Libertarian ideologies, interested in conspiracy theories (they seemed so harmless back then). I wonder if in an alternate timeline I would have been vulnerable to the alt-right rabbit hole.
This is difficult to write about because I don't like dwelling on some of my darkest moments and I definitely don't want to give any semblance of defending the alt-right. But I vividly remember the depression and anger and I am forever grateful my parents infused me with enough critical thinking and empathy to weather that storm. Because life got better. Loads better. But it was a winding road and took a lot of self-reflection to get there.
So no, I don't want a Take Two for my own life. But is there a second take we can offer the young people (and especially young men) who are growing up as awkward and even more online than I was? Who are up against algorithms designed to keep them scrolling, no matter how harmful the content becomes? There's definitely a terrifying ecosystem pulling them into the hard right and it's an issue we need to tackle. But I also wonder what we can do to make sure we aren't also pushing them that way—through mockery or indifference or not offering them meaning.
This is where I guess I'd have a call to action or some sort of conclusion, but this has been sitting as a draft for a week now. So instead I'll offer one other take on take two. This morning as I was reading through my On This Day, I commented to Jamie that June 13th made for a lot of reading. And then I got to last year's entry where I wrote "June 13 may be the most verbose day in log history." So there's my take two, repeating myself a year later. First out loud and now in writing. Can't wait to see how it feels to read this post on future June 13ths.