Is there any hope left for true civility in our national conversation?

[Michie]

As we prepare for the critical November elections, I find myself increasingly frustrated whenever I enter my social networking venues online. A trip to Facebook or Twitter these days often feels like a running of the gauntlet as I dodge nasty comments, unkind graphics, and attack oriented posts on both ends of the political spectrum.

Is there any hope left for true civility in our national conversation?

 

[Lady Bug]

I don't think we can rely on FB to have any abatement in its feistiness anytime soon. Some of those pages are so contentious that the admins of those pages will ban you simply for believing that their attitudes can be harsh and over the top. I have not been banned from such pages but I don't approach their admins and say that kind of thing. I do wonder how some of the respondents on FB are in real life. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they have little to no problem having some of these politicians assassinated or something.

 

[Fantine]

The one good thing about Facebook and social media is that they allow candidates to wage campaigns while spending very little money.

Gary Johnson, for example. One of my children likes Johnson, and I signed up for his FB messages just to learn a little more about him. It's interesting. Yesterday he posted a quiz site on issues so that people could decide on the issues who they supported. The interesting result is that so far, looking at ALL test results, the top two finishers were Obama and Johnson--and Romney was third.

I guess that Johnson's message is, "If you want someone who advocates small government but doesn't have all the Romney baggage--not to mention the procession of bellboys carrying it around for him--I'm your man."

I also feel that with Citizens United we need a network of "everymen" to combat the attempts of corporations to buy elections. Whether the "everymen" are civil or not, at least they aren't trying to buy votes.

I would rather see a lot of uncivil discourse than misleading mind manipulation by big business.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

None whatsoever.

I just finished teaching an Ethics class. One of the things we discussed is the anonymity of internet communications and their effect on people and their behavior.

This is an open conversational class where I made it clear that open and honest conversation, there would be no judgments and I, personally, was going to admit to stuff that could get me arrested, so it was ok for them to tell everyone exactly how they feel.

During this conversation I thought about and freely discussed my behavior on the internet.

Here's the bottom line:

The guy whose fingers are on the keys he's one of the most popular instructors at this school. He is considered an advocate for his students and goes way beyond the his duties to ensure that the students succeed, have access to industry professionals, and is accessible, approachable and will give you help and advice for the asking.

In his private life he is described as about the nicest guy in the neighborhood.

On the other hand

Cosmic Charlie is jerk. He will run hot and cold on you. Will turn and attack with little provocation, dismisses other people's problem without compassion, ignores friendship requests and is just generally a pain in butt.

He's the problem (which I made a point of explaining to my ethics class)

The guy on the keyboard is cool with it.

So Cosmic Charlie has little hope

(Which is not an usually thing for him)

 

[MikeK]

Cosmic Charlie may be rough around the edges once in a while, and 2Cosmic2Charlie was an animal (in the best way), but I'd call to your recollection, the great white hope - St Charlie of Cosmic. Him many thesis were legend, and were truly insightful (and most certainly civil)on the human condition in our cyber culture.

 

[MikeK]

Thesis I – On Flaming

The Internet, being primarily a written medium and a virtual universe, uses the written word as its primary source of interchange.

Being virtual, the primary means of violence on the Internet is therefore word play.

This being the case it is easy to understand why using words as a weapon has become a concern to polite peoples during normal communications. But during intellectual debate and impassioned discussion there is a real question as to what constitutes a “flame” in the lexicon of the Internet.

With neither non-verbal nor verbal cues, using only dry words on paper (or more to the point, screen) it is easy both to inadvertently offend and misinterpret communications as offensive than during face to face debate.

The real crux of the matter therefore is, in the opinion of the author, is not whether the words themselves have caused offense (or even if the were meant to – a subjective judgment at best) but rather whether the target of the words has arguable recourses and legitimate ability to counter the position of the accuser. If the accused party has both recourses and ability to counter the position then the accuser can be assumed to have not “flamed” someone but rather to have taken an arguable and supportable position that can be assailed by the accused party.

By way of example:

Cosmic Charlie is a Nazi


This position, assuming no objective evidence exists (given the normal bounds of objectivity) cannot be legitimately countered nor can I be said to have recourse. This would constitute a flame.

Supporter of Traditional Catholic Mass tend to be uppity, looking down there noses at the rest of Catholicism.

This is an arguable position, which can be fleshed out and countered during normal discourse. This is not a flame.

Part of the problem with identifying a flame, even by the person it is directed at, can have to do with tone and word selection. Again, without non-verbal and verbal cues discerning exact tone and meaning can be difficult to impossible.

If flaming behavior is to be determined objectively tone, mode and wording of messages must be separated from content. By this I mean that the definition of flaming should not include aspects of wording and manner of delivery. These characteristics should be judged separately as unique parts of the message and judged on there own merits.

By example again:

Pro-lifers tend to be sheep following any politician that promises to end abortion without attempting to question their actual intent.

Whether or not you agree with the statement it is an arguable position and recourse and counter logic exist. This is not a flame.

Pro-lifers are stupid, lazy and shiftless, lacking both the intellect and the ambition to attempt to stop abortion by working in the culture, they would rather vote their pocket issue and claim to support anti-abortion candidates.

While this is still a arguable position with recourse and counter logic and therefore not a flame, it does lack both charity and understanding and is unnecessarily blunt. The poster may be approached on those aspects of the message but, in the opinion of the author, should not be accused of flaming.

As to how much charity, understanding and bluntness should be expected and tolerated, this will vary from board to board. On OBOB I believe that a rather significant amount should probable be tolerated. This is because of both the nature of the forum itself and the personalities of the posters. Which brings the subject of Thesis II : The Emotional Maturity of OBOB which will be written later.

 

[MikeK]

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Thesis II – The Emotional Maturity of OBOB Members

OBOB is an adult forum.

This is not a statement of intent or of principle; it is a statement of fact. In my time (now almost five years) on OBOB minors and young adults have never been in abundance and even fewer have survived longer than several weeks. The reason for this is rather obvious. OBOB is a forum whose top 30% of posters have both a high degree of emotional maturity and a high degree of intellectual maturity. Anyone under that age of about 25 years simple can’t hold there own is a serious debate on OBOB and I have to believe that almost no one under the age of 25 wants to deal with the day to day personalities and entanglement on OBOB.

The top posters on OBOB are an interesting bunch. From histories of mental illness to physical abuse as children through sexual abuse as children to spousal abuse for all kinds to severely sexually dysfunctional marriages and adultery OBOB posters are very open about their lives (or very creative lairs). OBOB has evolved over the years and to some extent has always been an extended, leaderless group therapy project with a distinctively Catholic focus. This is, to a large extent, what makes the little forum a home to so many people.

The mature adult themes addressed, as the are, earnestly and seriously , are no doubt what drives away young people. The impressive intellectual capacity of the posters is likely keeps many from joining in the first place.

The presence of mature, worldly and in many case world-weary adults and only adults on OBOB has, to no small extent caused a coursing of the language, attitudes and outlooks of many (I daresay most) on OBOB. This is also not statement of intent or principle it is merely a statement of fact. Without anyone but your therapy group with which to interact people tend to begin to look at each other as comrades with whom they can be playfully abusive and direct.

All of this justifiably(to be fair) annoys a great many people who I suspect want OBOB to be something other than a support group for people with severe problems and bad attitudes. Outreach, apologetics, bible study ,faith support and just plain good example have always been the goals of many on OBOB. It just never seemed to work out that way. It is understandable, I think, that these people might feel harassed into a constant state of irritation. After all this tight little group of internet misfits is their home too. When irritated hits playfully abusive (or just plan petulant) is when the bullet hits the bone, so to speak. This is when we have real problems on OBOB.

From all this I would like to glean two points in summary. First, since OBOB is what it is and since the vast majority of the regular and semi-regular posters have both the intellectual and emotional capacity to either defend themselves or ignore posts and threads they might find inappropriate I believe that the a high degree tolerance should be afforded the posters on OBOB in regard to tone, mode and manner of expression. High degree is a relative term I understand, and some standards need to be kept but the nature of the forum, the emotional intimacy of the posters and the adult themes addressed should be taken into consideration when addressing issues of charity, bluntness and wording.

Second, OBOB has become inbred and I am sorry to say, cliquey. . This is also an underlying cause of why new younger people (and new people in general) do not thrive on OBOB. The fact that several conservative, more orthodox members have left in the last year does not help the situation. A community is what its members are. If a community is to change its membership must also. To those who wish OBOB to change, a change in the kinds of members regularly on OBOB will need to change.

This brings me to Thesis III – The Exodus of the Orthodox

(Which will likely be the last one of these, no I don’t like the sound of my own voice so much I’m going to go on forever)

Is that smarmy ?

(Geez, Michie that really stung)

 

[MikeK]

Thesis III – The Exodus of the Orthodox

Before I begin a definition of terms. For purposes of this document a “traditionalist” will be defined as a person who generally accepts Catholic doctrine and commentary generally without philosophical dissent and believes generally that the Catholic faithful should follow doctrine without voicing differences or doubts that they may have freely or publicly.

A “non-traditionalist” is a Catholic that doesn’t fit into the above definition.

These are my definitions for purposes of clarity and therefore cannot be disputed as wrong. They merely describe someone succulently.


When I became a member of CF in the fall 2003 traditionalists had undisputed control of OBOB. The keep control in three ways:
1)There were simply more of them that there were non-traditionalists.
2)They controlled Catholic thought and message on the threads, mainly through superior knowledge of doctrine.
3)They controlled moderation.

But by late fall 2003 something began to change. An OBOB member went into a thread discussing an encyclical and disputed the encyclical not on theological, personal experimental or even authoritative grounds but rather on the underpinning of the thinking supporting the encyclical.

This took the best doctrinarians (many of whom at the time were very good, some still remain here) by surprise. I am not familiar with OBOB history prior to 2003 but evidentially no one had ever before brought seriously into question the underlying philosophical reasoning a Catholic doctrine, practice or document before this time on OBOB.

While I am sure things of this nature evolve and grow slowly, almost unperceivable, it is this one incident which in my mind began the change in OBOB and leads us directly to where we are today.

Within a year non-traditionalists, had begun seriously looking a doctrine and practice of Catholicism and began discussing (a traditionalist might say began dissenting) the theology of Catholicism from a philosophical standpoint. To be clear what was happening was that non-traditionalists stopped trying to argue theology from a theological standpoint (an practical impossibility from a Catholic perspective where control of theology is under central authority) and began stepping back a questioning the theology of Catholicism for the standpoint of whether or not the philosophic rhetoric underlying the theology made sense.

The effect this had on OBOB in 2004-2005 timeframe is hard to overstate, as anyone who lived through it can attest. The quality, quantity and diversity of the threads in OBOB went increased greatly. As hard as this may be for the reader to believe posters on OBOB at one time before this change actually spend the better part of every fall discussing the morality and immorality of tricks or treating on Halloween. Participation on the thread grew and general knowledge of Catholic doctrine increased as members (and some non-member) began doing research into doctrine and practice to both back their arguments and just keep up with the conversations.

Many OBOB members during this time actually tried (or at least expressed interest in) learning Latin to translate documents directly.

As one might expect, the level of apologetics of OBOB members when through the ceiling. During this time more OBOB members participated in more general theology and non-Catholic CF forums to a greater success than at any other time in my experience on CF.

This was the result, I think, of the traditionalist and non-traditionalist competing with each other on higher and deeper theological levels just generally making everyone smarter.

During this same time (2004 – 2005) these change in the level of thought and the successes non-traditionalist had in discussion doctrine led to a change in the make up of OBOB membership and in the ability of the traditionalists to control the Catholic message on OBOB. Simply put more non-traditionalists members on OBOB were putting forth non-traditional arguments with greater success than they had had prior to 2003. This put the traditionalists on par with non-traditionalists where they had been a majority before.

Of course all this had the effect of changing the outward message of OBOB which was not longer traditionally Catholic in its appearance but was now a steaming cauldron of competing philosophical thinking. Catholic thinking, but still philosophical rather then doctrinarian based.

The 2006 elections were brutal on OBOB. The war, the economy and the Republican majority’s inability to take action on abortion took its toll on people, many of whom changed stands, political parties and philosophical outlook. Moderators resigned were replaced and resigned again. Then in the summer of 2007 new ownership and rules changes remade CF into FORU.MS, then back into CF again.

To the traditionalist on CF I think the Republicans losing the midterm elections after the fighting on OBOB, followed by their lose of control over moderation and message on OBOB just looked like losing generally.

They no longer had unchallenged control over the message of OBOB and they could no longer control the members.

And they left.


With the aid of Christian charity and hindsight I suppose its hard to blame them. After all its hard to see someplace you’ve dedicated time and energy to shift and change and become something other then you intended and, as I said above, the 2006 elections were pretty hard on everyone.

But I honestly thought they’d come back and that they haven’t has me more than a little annoyed with them.

While I do not miss the all, I didn’t not get along with some of them, I do miss them as a whole. Without a sufficiently large contingent of traditional thinking to challenge the non-traditionalist OBOB threads have become dull and unchallenging. It also has lead to the kind of behavior bored people participate in. Which is to say unproductive.

I am not trying to disrespect the thinking or abilities of the traditionalist still on this forum but, there just aren’t enough of you anymore. But if you know where some of your people are, pull them in, we need them.

They can’t make me change my thinking on flaming and the will probably never make OBOB a completely family friendly board, but we were smarter, better, even probably more devout when they were here.

It is the nature of competition to improve all who participate in it. We discover God’s nature in the crucible of intellectual dispute

 

[MikeK]

Took me quite a while to find those!

Also - it seems all threads and posts from 7/7/07 and previous have been purged. Weird.

 

[FearlessFreep]

But by late fall 2003 something began to change. An OBOB member went into a thread discussing an encyclical and disputed the encyclical not on theological, personal experimental or even authoritative grounds but rather on the underpinning of the thinking supporting the encyclical.

This took the best doctrinarians (many of whom at the time were very good, some still remain here) by surprise. I am not familiar with OBOB history prior to 2003 but evidentially no one had ever before brought seriously into question the underlying philosophical reasoning a Catholic doctrine, practice or document before this time on OBOB.

While I am sure things of this nature evolve and grow slowly, almost unperceivable, it is this one incident which in my mind began the change in OBOB and leads us directly to where we are today.

Rather than doing drive by criticism of a papal encyclical, tell us the name of it. I think I can handle it, it's probably one I already know about. And you don't really expect the best Catholic apologists to be found on a Protestant website, do you?

 

[MikeK]

Rather than doing drive by criticism of a papal encyclical, tell us the name of it. I think I can handle it, and it's probably one I already know about. And you don't really expect the best Catholic apologists to be found on a Protestant website, do you?

I should have added context - the quoted posts (or theses) belong to Cos from 2008 and were offered as proof that civility can exist on the Internet. I don't think Cos was criticizing an encyclical in that particular post. The Encyclical, for what it is worth, was likely Humane Vitae. Not for it's conclusions but rather for what, under scrutiny, seems to many to be inconsistent logic to get there. At any rate, this thread is about civility online, not about theological debates.

 

[FearlessFreep]

I should have added context - the quoted posts (or theses) belong to Cos from 2008 and were offered as proof that civility can exist on the Internet. I don't think Cos was criticizing an encyclical in that particular post. The Encyclical, for what it is worth, was likely Humane Vitae. Not for it's conclusions but rather for what, under scrutiny, seems to many to be inconsistent logic to get there. At any rate, this thread is about civility online, not about theological debates.

Saying that it doesn't make logical sense is criticism. And he was criticizing it in a drive by manner, giving his opinion as if fact without any logic to back up his claim.

 

[MikeK]

Saying that it doesn't make logical sense is criticism. And he was criticizing it in a drive by manner, giving his opinion as if fact without any logic to back up his claim.

He was making reference to a previous discussion, an in-depth description of it wasn't really needed there. I'd look for the discussion and link to it, but it seems everything from that era has been purged from CF history for some reason.

 

[FearlessFreep]

He was making reference to a previous discussion, an in-depth description of it wasn't really needed there. I'd look for the discussion and link to it, but it seems everything from that era has been purged from CF history for some reason.

Humanae Vitae is an easy encyclical to defend because the predictions made in it came true.

 

[Fantine]

Humanae Vitae is an easy encyclical to defend because the predictions made in it came true.

In a rapidly changing society where technology develops daily, to infer that of all those inventions and changes--computers, cell phones, irradiated food, cars that run on vegetable oil, drones, bacteriological warfare, etc., etc., etc.--that one invention, "the pill," was the cause of Pope Paul VI's predictions coming true, or coming partially true, is specious.

I'm no Pope, but I, too, was alive at that time....I even saw him drive by on a motorcade on the Van Wyck Expressway in 1964, standing in my Catholic school uniform--and then we got the afternoon off and went to the World's Fair!

You cannot imagine how different the world is today from what it was then--the difference is unbelievable! And to attribute these changes to one small invention is extremely simplistic and naive.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

Saying that it doesn't make logical sense is criticism. And he was criticizing it in a drive by manner, giving his opinion as if fact without any logic to back up his claim.

The encyclical was Humane Vitae

The poster was me

The original defender against my analysis was Rising Suns, a future seminarian and a REALLY smart guy.

The explosion lasted almost 6 years

And my point in the long winded post was not about the cyclical itself, we have thousand and thousand of post on that, it was about what occurred when I made the humble suggestion (and I stress: humble) on a thread about the attitudes of Catholics on Humane Vitae, that there appeared to be a logical flaw at it's core that needed to be clarified by the Church.

Rising Sun, God love him, spend years, literally years, counseling me publicly and privately that I had to stop supporting this position because I was leading people astray.

But he never could completely assail my position.

Actually the person who got closest to defending against my positon of the logical flaw was geocajun.

His argument still makes me wonder...

...but that's not the point.

The point is that that one post set off a firestorm of intellectually conversation, personal recrimination, flaming and rules changes that, frankly, I missed in 2008

And I still do.

And one more thing:

FF, I'm sorry, but a bomb thrower like you (and ftr I mean that in a good way - bomb throwers are fun), you're not even in the same sport as those guys, let alone the same league.

If you don't believe me start a thread on Humane Vitae, this crew will have you unable to make a coherent response in 5 posts.

You're going to need some research time into Natural Law and and the origins of the basis of the claim that NFP as an acceptable birth control method. Also you're probably going to do some research on the history and findings of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control set up by Pope John.

And it wouldn't hurt to do some reading as to why our protestant brothers decided that each and every act of intercourse need not be contraceptive.

We've been at this a long time and have taken that encyclical apart word by word and have the scholarship to back it up.


And we've even gotten to the point where we can be civil about it.

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

Took me quite a while to find those!

Also - it seems all threads and posts from 7/7/07 and previous have been purged. Weird.

May I just say that i'd forgotten completely about those posts.

Man there was a time when I was really good at this.