"Transcend and include... this is the self-transcending drive of the Kosmos—to go beyond what went before and yet include what went before... to open into the very heart of Spirit-in-action." Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if a group of people somewhere were for something and against nothing?" Ernest Holmes

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

How to Handle Hate Mail

A nice example this morning from the ex-owner of Nathans at her new blog, CarolJoynt.com. She's a Web design client of mine, and just yesterday I finished her new blog and she issued her first post since her popular Georgetown pub closed last week due to the economy and back taxes. You may have heard all the buzz about the "Citizens Bailout" of people donating money to help Carol save her house.

Well within 24 hours she had a hate mail rant. She's the kind of person who posts several times a day, but her old blog--which I also did, was manually operated with no comments. So this was the first time she had to decide how to handle a comment.

By an odd coincidence, Tom Curran of the DC Meetup for my favorite philosopher Ken Wilber posted this quote for the day from David Hawkins' "Power vs. force,"
"Ignorance does not yield to attack, but it dissipates in the light, and nothing dissolves dishonesty faster than the simple act of revealing the truth. The only way to enhance one's power in the world is by increasing one's integrity, understanding and capacity for compassion."
I immediately sent the quote to Carol, but it turned out she needed no advice. She had already written a very classy reply, a textbook example of how to deal with hate mail. She offers no resistance, and no counter-attack, not the slightest sense of snideness. My hat is off to her for that because I personally need 24 hours of deep breathing before I can pull off a response that pure. The only thing that would possibly have improved the sense of integrity it conveys would be to find some guilt to admit to, like maybe, "Well, yes, in 2002 I did drink one glass of champagne that I didn't pay for."

PS: Blogger vs. TypePad
By the way, I originally planned to set Carol up with one of these Blogger blogs, but she preferred Typepad which she considers classier. Its main advantage that I see is that it permits you to post non-blog pages, and thus acts more like a full website. If anyone wants a consult on that, I'll be happy to oblige.