Benign Boundary Violations - by Duncan Sabien

Author’s note: this post was originally published on LessWrong in 2022; I’m rehosting it here on Substack for posterity. It pairs well with In Defense of Punch Bug, originally published on Medium in 2018, which I have also rehosted here. Society sets cautious/conservative boundaries, relative to most people (but NOT all), which means that for most people (but NOT all) there exists space between society’s boundaries and their own personal boundaries, and playing around in that space is deeply nourishing for many people. It’s important to feel alive and seen and touched and interacted-with in the space outside of your personal boundaries, and not feel like there's a ten-foot bubble separating you from all the other monkeys. There is a level of boundary violation (of your real, actual personal boundaries, not merely of the social boundary beyond your personal one) that is healthy, and it is greater than zero. Too much boundary violation, and you take real damage and become traumatized, bu

Author’s note: this post was originally published on LessWrong in 2022; I’m rehosting it here on Substack for posterity. It pairs well with In Defense of Punch Bug, originally published on Medium in 2018, which I have also rehosted here. Society sets cautious/conservative boundaries, relative to most people (but NOT all), which means that for most people (but NOT all) there exists space between society’s boundaries and their own personal boundaries, and playing around in that space is deeply nourishing for many people. It’s important to feel alive and seen and touched and interacted-with in th