Why None of My Articles Here in Medium Are Behind the Paywall
It’s not trying to be morally superior.
The thing is, I write here on Medium for one reason only: to share what I have learned. I have learned what I have learned through a vast amount of effort, not because it was bestowed upon me via some intrinsic superiority of mine — moral or intellectual.
I suppose almost all people feel that they are misunderstood. I am convinced that I am one of the most misunderstood people ever.
For some reason, for as long as I have been old enough for such a thing to be part of life, people have tended to think that I have some sense of moral superiority. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is true that I have always had a particular interest in moral issues. I remember as a child thinking a lot about the ‘case’ whenever any other child got in trouble: what was done; why was it done; what the punishment was; and how ‘fairness’ entered into all of it.
I’m not suggesting I was intellectually precocious: straight C’s in First Grade set the tone till I got to college. The level of my ‘analysis’ was that of a child. Still, those were things I did think about — and still do: I have been seriously studying the matter of justice since Autumn, 1982, formally (graduate school) and informally, reading and thinking on my own.
I certainly have never thought of myself as a morally superior person. I do try to live a moral life, but no one is more aware than I am of my shortcomings in that regard. I sure don’t think I live a more moral life than the average person does. I think most people act mostly morally.
I write all of that to emphasize that I do not refrain from putting my articles in Medium behind the paywall because I am ‘better than that’.
The biggest reason for doing that is because I just never thought my articles would earn enough money to make a difference in my life, anyway. Given my socioeconomic status it wouldn’t take a lot (and not being at all falsely modest in that way), but the idea that my articles might bring in enough money to make a real difference never entered my mind.
The other reason I do that is that I want maximum accessibility for my articles. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how much being behind the paywall restricts accessibility. I know people who are not members of Medium can read so many articles without joining, but I am ignorant of the specific parameters. Mostly, having my articles on this side of the paywall allows me (as I see it) to promote my articles by placing links to them in Replies to other people’s articles: since my articles are not behind the paywall, I am not thereby using them to try to make money for myself.
That brings us to ‘egoism’.
It amazes me how much some people worry about the size of other people’s egos. Mine is small.
I still remember an incident from a long time ago when some friends and I were talking about a book that was hugely popular at that time and considered to be culturally ‘important’ (though which book it was has been involuntarily deleted from my memory banks). The point is that someone mentioned reading that the book had been rejected by over a hundred publishers before one did accept it, prompting another friend to comment on how strong that author’s ego must have been. It occurred to me that it could as well have been the opposite: the author’s ego, his (I am sure the author was a male) sense of himself as a person, didn’t depend on having the book accepted for publication.
Of course, when it comes to egos there is a difference between size and strength. Indeed, I am pretty sure the two are usually strongly inversely related: big egos tend to need lots of reinforcement, smaller ones not so much. While do think people should be interested in what I have learned and, given the nature of it, should be interested in sharing it with others, that is because of the knowledge itself, not anything about this author.