Years ago now, I started writing articles for a website called SearchWarp. Before being stood down, it changed names to WryteStuff and then back to SearchWarp.

In exchange for content, I could advertise my own website. At the time, I was making a lot of jewelry (strung, hot soldered, wire wrapped, cold forged, etc., I also did lapidary work) and I needed another outlet (besides consignment shops) for it and so I built a website I called SyZyGy Jewelry.

My articles on SearchWarp didn’t drive a lot of business to my website and it eventually became too expensive to keep my site. But I continued to write for SearchWarp because I discovered I really liked to write and I was fairly good at it. Very often, my articles would be featured on the site’s homepage. And writing for them helped me to become an even better writer.

Based on my writing for SearchWarp, I actually got a job for a local bimonthly business paper. I was getting paid to write and pretty well paid at that. But I discovered that while I like to write, I was not all that fond of chasing down interviewees and trying to get that one good quote.

This is just history really and not much to the main point of this post. But it does have some relevance.

At the time I wrote for Searchwarp, I wrote about anything and everything. I did a lot of opinion pieces and advice type pieces (how to paint a bathroom, how to lay laminate flooring, etc.).

I’ve been looking over some of the things I wrote then and comparing them to the sorts of things I write now and I noticed something.

For the most part, today I am a lot less frank in what I write. I qualify my opinions endlessly. And I tone down a lot of my opinions to the point where they are bland and not really to the point. There have been a few posts where I did not do that and I wonder what got into me on that day.

While writing for SearchWarp, I didn’t worry that what I wrote might negatively affect my jewelry sales. But now, I seem to worry that what I write might offend potential buyers of my novels to the point where they do not buy my novels when they otherwise might.

So, here I go. How did we, this society, get to the point where we are afraid to say how we really feel about something? How did a few people gain so much power to shame those who are expressing their feelings and influence others to share in the shaming? And why do we put up with this sort of behavior and treatment?

Personally, I would not forgo reading a very good novel because I disagreed with the author’s politics or religious beliefs or whatever else you might think of. Say you find a really nice piece of jewelry and want to buy it. But you find out that the maker has spoken out strongly against the ownership of pets and you are an avid pet owner. What do you do? Will you not buy the jewelry no matter how much you like it as a “punishment” to the maker for having an opinion contrary to yours?

How did people get to be so thin skinned? Why do people think that everyone should feel the same way about things as they do? What happened to tolerance? And agreeing to disagree?

That’s my thought for the day.

Image and quote courtesy of Not the Perfect Pastor and Quote Fancy, respectively