This has been rolling around in my head for awhile, and this morning I woke up, and had to write about it. The current environment of intolerance, impatience, hostility, and fear-mongering is beyond troubling. Not that these things haven’t always been…they have. But my own opinion, for whatever it is worth, is that the advent of cyberspace has, unfortunately, fostered acceptance of an incredibly dangerous tendency to speak without consequence. We will never meet most of those who attack us, or whom we attack. Notice the use of the word “attack”…it is intentional. (Trolls, pay attention…this is for you….)
Intolerance and impatience, I blame on the “me” reality. I want it, I want it now. Me, me, me. I’m right, you’re wrong. And if you keep ME from getting what I want…then watch out…you’re going down. I’m going to throw a tantrum…until I get what I want. I don’t care what I say, I don’t care what I do…and I don’t care who I hurt….because it’s about ME! Don’t you get it….it’s about me, DAMN IT!!!!! Shut up and listen to me….you’re NOT listening to me. I don’t give a crap about what you are saying…completely unimportant….how does it impact ME!!?? We have turned into an entire country of four-year olds…(doing a terrible disservice to all the real four-year olds out there…) Civility is simply a casualty of the “me” reality. YOU ARE NOT important unless you are helping ME get what I want, so why do I care how I talk to you? Why do I care how I treat you? If you are not a means to an end for me…why do I care? Or the ever popular…if you’re not with me, you’re against me. (Trolls, this is what I refer to as the “troll dance”…where you jump up and down on alternating legs, twirling around with your ugly, knarly, hairy little bodies, raising your blood pressure to a point where we can only hope your head explodes…)
The fact that we, as a society, can no longer speak to each other with civility and respect, on-line OR in-person, is frightening, AND more importantly, dangerous. We allow those things that divide us, to anger us and make us defensive and fearful, and therefore unable to have a “conversation” in which we listen, and participate. We no longer “live” in community, where we know each other and have “personal” contact, and therefore we feel we have a “license to slander/defame”, or indeed, hurt and attack, anyone who happens to have a differing opinon. We longer tolerate that with which WE don’t agree. Since none of us can ever agree on everything with everyone else…that’s an awful lot of potential intolerance. (Otherwise known as “troll food”)
But here’s the kicker. Judging someone based on a single issue on which you disagree, robs you of knowing the “entire” person. We let “issues” keep us from knowing each other, and finding out how much we have in common. I disagree with people all the time, on all sorts of issues…even ones I find profoundly important to me…and you know what? I really enjoy the person I disagree with in the far majority of cases. I love that they enjoy the same things I do…and that they are funny, or keenly intelligent, or quirky, or that we have cool things in common. I routinely lunch with people of drastically differing opinons than I. I have been known to eat with vegetarians, and animal rights supporters, (OMG!!!) and HAVE FUN! Some of my best friends are Conservatives. I enjoy the person, and appreciate their passion. Taking time to “know” the person helps to foster communication as well. It’s hard to attack someone when you have shared meals with them, or met their family, or worked on some project together. Some of my best friends are those with which I have the strongest disagreement on a particular issue. NOTE…particular issue. We are more than our opinion on AN issue. We are all complex, unique, experienced, and important. Not a single one of us, holds exactly the same thoughts, the same dreams, the same hopes, or the same opinions. We share one belief with this group, and another belief with a different group, ad infinitum. We are NOT carbon copies of each other’s beliefs. We have different histories, different backgrounds, and have all traveled different paths to where we are today, and will take different paths to our tomorrows. (Although, oddly enough…trolls do seem to have the ability to replicate identically. Strange….)
Respect is what happens we take the time to “get-to-know” someone. Personal growth is what happens when we take the time to converse with those of differing opinions and backgrounds. Civility is what happens when we discover if we wish to “hear” and “learn” or, more importantly ”teach”, there are basic rules of conduct. And without those, you are just a “blow hard”. And at some point, people will simply see you as such, and not “hear” or care about anything you say. (In my case, I turn people off with long-winded, verbose postings. My own blog has helped rein-in that tendency on other blogs…but here…my blog, my rules, my words. You are HERE of your own free will…) It is one thing to argue with passion and fire, it is another to simply spew vitriolic, hate-filled, intolerant trash. If we disconnect ourselves from having to know anything about the person OTHER than how they feel on a particular issue, it’s easy to demonize. It’s easy to “assume” what they must be. It’s much easier to “attack” because “they” are now the enemy. It’s easy to hate that which we have never bothered to learn about or know. This is the problem currently in our legislatures. Once upon a time, regardless of which side of the aisle a legislator sat, they had “friends” on the other side. Real friends…the kind where your families spent time together, where you shared in each other’s lives…even if you disagreed on some points of politics. There were warm relationships. Now..we have political alliances. We don’t have friends, we have “pawns”…we manipulate people and issues. We are “users”…in every sense of the word. And it’s not just legislators. This is what our society has become. What WE ALL have become. We all “use” each other. (“Feed the Trolls at Your Own Risk”…or…”Political Trolls 101″.
The next time you feel like going off on someone that you know nothing about, except their opinion on a specific topic or issue, take a moment to consider asking them something completely unrelated to the topic at hand. My guess is if you bother to have a conversation of any significance, you’ll find you have something in common…and in most cases, you find you have far more in common than the one issue that divides you. So, is that “one” issue worth trashing the entire person? Remember, you are disagreeing with a concept, an idea, a position…NOT with who the “whole” person is. Or at least, you shouldn’t be…and therein lies the problem. We are all more than the sum of our “parts”. And we become even more when we are in “relationship” with each other. We are stronger BECAUSE OF our differences. You cannot build ANYTHING with one component or tool. (Troll control = our “bridges”, i.e. relationships, must be constructed well. They must be strong and able to withstand the constant attack of the trolls who live “beneath” the bridge, attacking all those whom benefit from the bridge. Lighting under the bridge helps too!)