Plato writes that "a just man tries to get the better of his unlike, but not of his like; an unjust man tries to get the better of both."
In other words, choose your battles well.
With the internet and social media as primary forms of gathering information and interacting, "civil discourse" seems in danger of becoming no more than a meme.
We distill our thoughts into slogans and tweets, every now and then spewing forth tirades and manifestos that no one but ourselves and the NSA will ever read if they are too self-indulgent and run longer than 150 characters. With so much going on out there in the cloud, we really have to work it to catch people's attention. Let's wow them with one-liners; get them to ROTFLMAO; or knock them off their feet in shock and awe.
Modern discourse has indeed become so bloody often, just shocking and awful. We say things online that we would never say to someone's face. We flame, we rant, we act like trolls hiding under the bridge behind the safety of our keyboards. If we don't like what someone else is saying, we can dispose of them with the click of a mouse; we block them, hide them, unfriend them and toss them out of the ring. No wonder so many people would rather stick to lolcats and videos of cute puppy tricks.
Now, I could probably swear the fur off a kitten quicker than the best of you. It's not like I've got the last word on the art and practice of civil discourse. But I've tried to gather some thoughts here, along with a few links and quotes on life, art, and effective communication.
Read on below the fold and let the wild rumpus start.
Two things we learn in kindergarten are to share and to play fair. We spend the rest of our lives unlearning them.
But if we never master these two important life lessons, we may find ourselves acting out like spoiled little tyrants stuck at a pre-moral level of emotional immaturity, trying to get everything we want through tantrums, tears, trickery & deceit.
Play fair. Don't hit people. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. – Robert Fulghum
If adult-level civil discourse is what we want, the least we can do is learn how to recognize these 10 Cognitive Distortions in ourselves and in others. They include things like labeling or name-calling, disqualifying the positive, mind-reading, blaming, and taking things personally. It's not about changing our wording to "feeling statements" or learning passive-aggressive ways to deflect attention from the issue at hand to our own personal drama. We're talking about civil discourse here, not group therapy. "You're argument is invalid because emo" should stay on the couch where it belongs -- or better still, pour it into your art.
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~ Pablo Picasso
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. ~ Plato
If time spent online makes you upset or unhappy, it might be time... to... step... away... from... the...dot... com... 'pooter.
Americans are an exceptionally depressed people. If all American kids were given a copy of Burns' classic Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy upon graduating from high school and leaving the nest, they might have a fighting chance to recover from the years of abuse and mind-numbing boredom that are our primary and secondary educational systems. If that were the case, maybe anti-depressants would no longer vie with painkillers for medications most commonly prescribed to America's young adults.
It's common for us to vent, whine, and take out our aggressions in the relatively anonomous cyberworld. Common Sense Media's 7 Rules to Teach Kids Online Etiquette are, alas, just as relevant for adults:
...when people choose aggressively mean-spirited screen names, make spiteful comments, hide behind anonymity to be cruel, send around photos to humiliate others, or just act in a way that would be considered rude in the real world, it creates an environment that doesn't allow kids to experience the best of what the Web has to offer.
I'm not trying to poke fun at our culture's collective lack of emotional maturity. It's quite serious when generally speaking, we Americans can't control our tempers and are too quick to take offense. Even in the best of moods, we lament the lack of a universal sarcasm font. A good deal of people online seem in a near constant state of flight-or-fight, adrenal glands a'twitching.
Harvard Mental Health Newsletter reports that
25% of Americans are experiencing high levels of stress (rating their stress level as 8 or more on a 10-point scale), while another 50% report moderate levels of stress (a score of 4 to 7).
Even if it's just a few flaming people in an otherwise cool crowd, they can dominate discussion, force the group to address specific points until they'Ve beaten them into the ground ad nauseum, target and pick people off with aggressive personal attacks, and ruin it for everyone, if we let them. How many times have you sighed and signed off, wishing people would play nice in the sandbox?
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency. – Samuel Johnson
Maybe we're all just crazy. Certainly, one of the most commonly-tossed knives in the arsenal of mean-spirited total dismissal of another person's worth is to say "Go take your medication." Nothing wrong with needing some counseling or guidance from time to time, but do we have no other recourse for sorting out our feelings other than popping pills or engaging in "talking therapy" by way of all out freaky online rants and status updates?
Seeking help and talking to someone can be of great benefit and can potentially save lives.
But "talking therapy," even on the shrink's couch, is not always the best idea. With For Your Own Good, Alice Miller's classic though controversial examination of violence and humiliation in German pedagogy and the rise of Hitler, she stunned the psychoanalytic community by telling therapists they manipulate, judge, and often punish their own patients based on hidden agendas, conscious or subconscious, that are informed by the therapist's own values and personal sense of moral certainty. In other words, it is too easy for the analyst to play Svengali. To Miller, this is exactly the type of thing that veers dangerously close to Nazi-like mind control and the cultivation of a manipulated group-think.
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Emotionally violent and humiliating language colors too much of our personal and public communications. "To snipe" means to make a sly or petty verbal attack, and the cyberspace is loaded with sharp-shooting snipers. In our online interactions we may find people playing judge, jury, and executioner in comment threads that are more like battles than discussions or debates. Rather than carefully reading what others have to say, reflecting, and composing thoughtful responses, they're out to win. They drop scathing bombs and blaming critiques and then move on to the next hot topic. So there.
Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind, and the third is to be kind. ~ Henry James
I know all this has had more to do with psychology and parenting than with public discourse. But I think we've all seen, online and in the media at large, a dire need to raise the bar when it comes to maturity, compassion, and common human decency. I very much appreciate the level of civility and intelligent exchange in posts and comments here at Daily Kos. It's a godsend. Still, I have noticed many voices calling for a more civil discourse, have seen repeated rude and unproductive snark, and have dropped a bomb or two of my own along the way. Maybe for most of us, it's a matter of cooling off before we post or click on send.
There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed. ~Lao Tsu