You're also a human being with agency and the ability to think and decide how to act towards others, and why. Not behaving like a total trolling, raging adolescent has nothing to do with ignoring the harsher edges of the world and society. You can still firmly defend X or Y argument, while making it as if you were speaking in person to the people on the other end.
It's wild how low-empathy humans can get simultaneously offended and unironically self-righteous when you basically tell them something as simple as "Be nice" or "Try not to hurt people".
…I see that the top-level comment has been edited to be less aggressive, though. Previously it said something to the effect of "If you can't handle that, you have no business being on today's Internet".
Yes, I edited the original comment, because I realised that you took offence in it and thought that I was addressing "you" — or the OP — specifically. It was a hyperbolic statement. Does the edit make it clear?
My argument is simple: the internet today is very broad, and humanity — let's face it — on the whole is not very nice. It's admirable to try to create pockets of positivity in it anyway. I simply want to highlight that it is futile, and maybe a more realist perspective is what we actually need to find a way forward.
> It's admirable to try to create pockets of positivity in it anyway. I simply want to highlight that it is futile, and maybe a more realist perspective is what we actually need to find a way forward.
The issue I take with that is that as the problem is entirely social in nature, the perception of futility is also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It’s also something that has been historically true over and over, sadly. All ‘nice’ pacifist societies ended up getting wiped out or subjugated by their uncaring neighbours. Sustainable niceness does not exist. I wonder if we should accept this fact rather than continue to fight it.
You say, after the the last thirty years have probably been the safest, most peaceful, most free, and most human-rights-respecting time period in all of human history for the world at large. And, I assume, you probably say while living in a liberal democracy that has specifically outlived multiple oppressive totalitarian regimes which have kept trying to dominate the world.
I think that's an easy bias to fall for, but also not actually true. If it were true, the world would only ever monotonically get more and more violent over time, until we lived in some kind of exaggerated parody of an apocalypse slasher film, which is not the case.
Sustainable naïve niceness does not exist as the norm. It is still possible to be kind as a default without immediately rolling over for anybody who does not share such values, even if you sometimes have to do so by reciprocating hostility where it is encountered.
Cruelty and conflict are ultimately destructive forces, wasting goodwill, physical resources, and cooperative potential. The social equilibrium may not bend towards kindness as sharply as we would like sometimes, but it certainly isn't a straight drop to apathy and cynicism either. Although perceiving and portraying something as inevitable can go a long way to rationalizing it, or to trying to justify giving up.
Yes, everything about us is ultimately "determined by the world," but that doesn't mean that we have to be as harsh and uncaring as the world at all.
Just as easily as, seeing the harsh and uncaring nature of the world, we could imitate and perpetuate it deterministically, we also could see that harsh and uncaring nature, and choose to be more caring, compassionate, and understanding as an equally inevitable reaction, a rejection or countermeasure to it. It isn't free will, it's just that our individual experiences and personalities as people determine how we process and predicate our actions on what the world is like, and so we can all choose differently.
And in fact, even the exhortations and rationale of strangers are part of the stimuli in the world that may change how you act. Which is why I think it is worth it to say what I'm saying now.
Superficial determinism is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Personally, while I am not always nice on the internet because I struggled to countenance fools, rationalizations, and people who lie to themselves, which happens surprisingly often, I do really try, and more importantly even if I am not nice, even at my least nice, I try to always be as genuine and authentic as possible, and always be open to having my mind changed and genuinely put my beliefs on the line. And I think that in itself can be surprising and refreshing for the people I interact with.
Does it not get exhausting to swim against the current all the time? Don't you ever wish you could let you go and let your inner little mind take control, if not just for a moment? What you describe as being genuine and authentic and open minded sounds like a cross you have decided you must bear. It's okay. You are not Jesus. You don't have to do this.
I just adjust the amount of time I spend online down in order to compensate for the added emotional strain, and also adjust what sorts of social media I interact with to ensure it is sustainable. I've also been slowly learning how to just disengage after a certain point: if a discussion really seems like it's going down the drain or not going to go anywhere useful then I'm learning to sort of just let someone else have the last word and move on, which has been good for my health. I don't want to engage with someone that isn't going to meet me on some fair level of discourse.
Because you are correct, making top level posts on a twitter-like social media constantly with this ethos was actually so emotionally exhausting for me it physically affected my health, but the solution to that is just to not do that anymore.
Also, I do this not because I've arbitrarily decided that I've got to bear this cross, as you say, but because it is my default mode of interaction, in fact the only one I know, and it's something I very much like about myself that I always interact in this manner, and I think trying to learn how to be less genuine and less invested and less open, even if just for my online interactions, would sincerely leak out into my character in general in a way I don't like. So I'm not really doing it out of a sense of duty, but essentially out of a sense of convenience, because I don't want to have to go through the effort of learning how to context switch between a mode of interaction for being online and a mode of interaction for being offline.
Not sure if surrendering your free will to decide how you treat people, and all the moral implications that come from being seen as a person rather than just a creature, is the position you want to be taking.
