From the privacy of your own living room or the seclusion of your office, you sit with your computer, glowing its eery blue light. There is no end to the things you can find on the internet. Hundreds of sites where people have the same exact strange and quirky opinion as you. Thousands of sites where people express opinions abhorrent to you, absolutely antithetical to everything you think and believe in.
These people must be crazy, those ones who think differently, live differently, behave differently. Surely they are insane. Certifiable. Even lock-up-able. What can you do? Their opinion, which certainly can’t be true, is exactly opposite of your opinion. This. Means. War.
But you have some ammunition. You have the power of words too. You know that whole pen mightier than…blah blah.. And you are burning up mad! Never mind that Chekov said to come to the page cold as ice. To hell with Chekov. You’ve got a beef to grind!
So you let fly with everything you’ve got. Every mean, angry, nasty thought you can think. Every rejoinder, cruel, and of course true, idea comes pouring out. You reread it. Wow. Who knew you had such power in you. You could slay a roomful of dragons with this stuff. You feel a bit afraid yourself. Hmmm. How should you sign it? You look around the room. No one’s there but the cat, and he won’t tell. You make up a fake name, put on a picture of a dragon. And hit send. Your talent at criticism unleashed on the world!
……
We have lost to the anonymity of the internet, our basic decency. No more are we a society which debates ideas with honor, respect and integrity. We are a culture spitting at each other from behind closed doors. We have lost our ability to disagree kindly. And with that, our capacity to expand our understanding beyond the limited scope of our own experiences. It is easy to hate someone who is so different from yourself. And easier still to abuse them from the distance and hiding inherent on the internet. Our public discourse has suffered greatly. And with that, our own private lives. The enriched view we get from adopting another perspective. It is time to become wary of our own dogmatic opinions.
I am reminded of a bumper sticker I saw years ago, in Seattle.
“If you can’t change your mind, are you sure you still have one.”
It starts out small, with a few angry words thrown at some random article posted online. And it escalates to the complete breakdown of society. On the edge of which, we are already teetering.
