When it comes to reputation, what has been said and what has been done are all that's taken into consideration. In any given moment, you're either doing something positive or something negative towards your reputation; there is no neutral. A neutral reputation is a non-existent reputation.
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Would you say the same for an individual’s actions? That the choices we make, no matter in which direction they take us, are all taking us either closer to or further from our chosen (or unspecified) goals?
Yes, absolutely Shane. But I believe what’s different about goals is that there is an “idle state”, where we’re neither moving forward nor backward.
With reputation, non-movement means reputation doesn’t exist (a neutral reputation is a non-existent reputation).
Non-existent goals make it impossible for us to move towards them, but if we have goals, then yes, the choices we make are either moving us towards them or away from them.
I think that with reputations there is an idle state as well, though =)
For example, if I’m part of a community of people that I see every few days, and then I go through a patch where I’m working or I can’t see them for a week, I can contact them and I will still be near that same level of relationship.
(The same is true for a single person, and also for a group of people who are acquaintances or ‘fans’.)
I guess I’m seeing relationships and reputations as two different things (though they are undoubtedly linked):
With relationships, there is no doubt an idle-state, as over time the relationship will have a tendency to slowly drift apart. However, with reputations, if I know you as a person with a good reputation and then I don’t hear from you for 10 years, you’re still a person with a “good reputation” as far as I’m concerned. Unless there was something done (good or bad) to influence that reputation over the course of those 10 years, hearing absolutely nothing from you wouldn’t change your reputation at all from the state it was left at. It wasn’t “idle”, it simply didn’t change.
That’s where this thought came in… we’re either doing something positive or something negative towards our reputation.
Am I making any sense? Perhaps this is getting too close to semantics! 🙂
Yes, Raam… you’re making sense!
[I like writing your name – I want to say your name. I think that your name is good publicity of itself.]
In some instances, absence of or idle reputation is inherently negative – in example, anybody who is trying to maintain a business reputation wants their name to stay in circulation.
I think that that is getting into semantics, though – I don’t think that’s the kind of ‘reputation’ you meant. (?)
Goals are interesting in the some way – some goals, if unpursued, stagnate into remission, and others can be pursued years later with ease.
By the way Raam, you’re awesome! Some personal biases that’ll help explain why I feel aligned with you:
1) I was unschooled for most of my life (I’m 19 now) and tend to preach self-education in relevant conversations. I don’t know what your stance on public education is but I don’t like it.
2) I’ve traveled for most of my life, with my parents and more recently with friends and on my own. I love it. (Where are you in this world?)
3) I’ve been actively interested in philosophy (Eastern/Western) since I was about 11 or 12.
4) You started a business at 16! That’s awesome! I’m really curious about that.