My back-and-forth on Twitter yesterday with a stereotypically sanctimonious Christian has me thinking about a recent conversation with my friend Paul.
Paul and I are both former denizens of Usenet, and hsv.general in particular.
Many of us hsv.generalites would habitually joke about the state of our discourse. We were legendarily argumentative. We’d go for weeks.
Thing is, no one does that anymore. I went from disagreeing with this guy yesterday to blocked in less than an hour.
Ten or fifteen years ago, we may have vehemently differed. But we assumed honor on the part of our discursive opponent. We assumed a reasonable person who had arrived at a different conclusion. The lengths of our arguments were testimonies to that respect.
We don’t do that now. You disagree? You disappear.
It’s a logical progression of the self-selection of ideas. No one of us need encounter too icky a reality. You don’t fit exactly what I think? You go away. You don’t exist.
This is a truly grave, but largely unacknowledged, threat to civilized society.
You might also like:
- The power of song compels you!
The weekend before Thanksgiving, 1994, Lea and I were invited to a dinner party that was something b… - Sad Valley
There is no sense yet to be made of the hell unfolding at Penn State, and I’m not going to try. I’m … - The two-Joseph nativity scene: unhelpful and intolerant
So how long has the two-Joseph nativity scene been a thing? It’s all over my Twitter, so I’m presumi… - Just peace
It’s a cool evening, a successful deadline submission, a hilarious lunchtime conversation and walk w… - When you’re “phone-free” but you aren’t, and a case for discipline
I was fascinated by this recent story of a fellow who runs a Silicon Valley startup, yet doesn’t own…
Kind of sounds vaguely science-fictionish, doesn’t it? The so-called Utopian society?
Our society is fracturing. First instinct tells me this is very bad, but maybe something radical is inevitable at this point. It’s ugly now, but I suspect things will get a lot worse before it gets better.
There are people tweeting that they hope we die in the tornadoes, that we deserve it for being red-staters, for being climate change deniers (yeah, there were no tornadoes evah until globull warming), for being not one of “them”.
http://twitchy.com/2014/04/28/culling-the-herd-some-hope-red-states-dont-ask-for-federal-aid-in-wake-of-tornadoes/
I might not like any of these people, but I haven’t crossed that line of hoping that they die a painful death, much less cheering on as the death toll rises. There is a basic decency missing in these people, and I want no part of their circle.