Agnostic.com
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"People no longer understand how hold a rational conversation. Social media users have become savvy at crafting short and snarky comments, but utter failures when it comes listening any voice that did not originate in their heads.

Instead, flags are raised and separate camps declared; traitors to the cause are unfriended and blocked; verbal incendiaries are lobbed from these guarded positions, while the level of hate continues to climb towards breaking point. The center won't hold under such conditions.

Listening to the other side requires wisdom, patience and in some cases admitting that you are wrong. Sadly and potentially tragically, few Americans are prepared to concede their mistakes, and that will only guarantee more wanton aggression and hate against innocents in the future."

@Robert_Bridge

And it seems that the disease has spread to some Agnostics.com members. Is it also infecting your country?

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Hate in the heartland: America is stumbling towards disaster one virulent tweet at a time [rt.com]

FrayedBear 9 Jan 26
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1

It is an error to blame social media or the internet. I recently listened to a radio program about the beings of gambling for the masses in the UK. It can be traced to the construction of the railways (1840ish) and their use by the newspapers to broaden their circulation. Horse race results could be easily known miles away from the race courses the day after the race. The next step was the use of the telegraph which used the railway lines as a conduit. So something that was good for the majority has caused misery for those challenged by addiction to gambling.
Newspapers themselves took the transmission of news from word of mouth to the written word. Each time a local newspaper is taken over or closes, the pool of sources of news gets smaller.
Fast forward to the present day and 'copy and paste' has removed the need for people to think about what they are saying and the like button is the ultimate copy/paste. Hundreds of copy/pasted websites are copies of each other, to the point that falsehoods appear true.

NoIdea Level 6 Jan 30, 2019

Well researched and reasoned. I like it.

I see that you are a Potteries lad. Blackpool here and if it hadn't been for the railway Blackpool would never have existed in its present form. ... It was to recover from the mistake of putting an unused spur off the Fleetwood line into Blackpool, then an area of substance dwellers, that someone came up with the idea of day trips t'seaside in each mill town's Wakes week. That was t'start of tourist trade.

1

Politics doesn't run on reason - it runs on momentum and brainwashing, dividing people into tribes which believe the other side is immoral so that they hate each other. That hate is there on both sides of any issue and it is used quite deliberately to hold people in their current camp.

It is not just politics however. It is now invasive into all forms of life activity.

@FrayedBear Where you have any controling establishment in politics, religion or commerce, they will always promote hate of outsiders as a way to strengthen their own position. That has always been the way and it always will, all people in power know that fear is a way to control people and a way to get them to give you more power and wealth. That has happened since the begining of human culture when language first gave people the power to communicate ideas, it may well be happening more now, because we live in a time of relative peace and security, which makes it much safer for establishments to promote fear with less danger to themselves.

If there is no immediate danger of triggering a shooting war which could cause them harm , the reigious and political establishments can promote hate as much as they like. Because if there is fighting on the streets, they can just retreat into their gated compounds.

@Fernapple And send in the goons to shoot citizens.

@FrayedBear Yes that too.

@Fernapple The wrong imo is on a site like this where supposedly we are all strangers trying to be friends and should be trying to help each other...cognitive dissonance and a touch of "cut my nose off to spite my face"?

@FrayedBear Do you think so, I often use it to comment on the content not the person posting it. In this case I would use it to mean that it is "sad" that people are sending out goons. I will check and see if it affects points. Have changed it for now.

@Fernapple what did you change?

@FrayedBear I changed "sad" to like on the like icon menu. I thought that was what you were saying, sorry if you meant something else.

@Fernapple As far as I'm aware they all carry the same points until you get to the limit of 5000 after which you seemingly get nothing for giving them. I do find it strange that the majority of people tend not to admit their feeling whether good, bad, horrific or indifferent.
Yes I agree with you that it should be the message not the person being measured with an emoji.
Playing the "devil's advocate" is often a useful tool to aid your own stance and enable other's particularly fence sitters.

0

Texting and tweeting have raised a generation of sound bite addicts, with 15 second attention spans, and a demand for fast simple answers.
I can demonstrate from experience the demand for speed required.
I engaged in dispute with an an active Mormon about the origins and status of the Community of Christ formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), the actual successor to the church founded by Joseph smith and not the church of Brigham Young now as then often called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He asked me to back this up and I referred him to the supreme court Judgement of 1924 when the RLDS claimed back the Kirtland Temple as their property and were recognised legally as the successor to the original church.
The Utah church had to reincorporate, something they did not do for nearly thirty years, during which time their church did not exist as anything other than a charity (hence a period of the prophets simply being called presidents)
Again he demanded a reference and I gave it to him as volume and page of Oxford world encyclopedia of religion.
This was met with stunned silence for a while and then a demand for a "proper reference, like a URL"
I told him I did not have one, as when I discovered this, it was still common to actually get off your arse and go to a library and read a book, I left the church a long time ago.
A day or so later he came back to me calling me a liar because he could not find it on line and even a photocopy scanned in and put up would not convince him it was true. If it is not on the net it does not exist.

When I received my degree in 2002 as a mature student I was told to go back and rewrite my bibliography since the assessor simply would not believe I could do it without incorporating any web references, I basically had to go and look for stuff that agreed with me and put it in, even though I had not used it.

I know of and understand your frustration, Len. 30 years ago I knew a Geordie woman who at age 50 studied sociology at an Australian Univesity. She got into trouble simply for using words no longer in popular use by the morasses (deliberate misuse of the word). A 90+-year-old ex-school teacher of art history, art, pottery was forever decrying not only the slavish belief in the accuracy of information in Wikipedia but also the arrogant ignorance of Australian University curricula and loss of art history leading to curators and gallery directors who usually talk through their anal sphincters on the subject. That such curricula are set by dumb politicians and university committees seeking the big buck rather than educational excellence and the advancement of human knowledge and understanding is IMO ultimately destructive.
Economies and political fortunes are now longer based upon reality but on manipulation of statistics and creation illusory profit - look at domestic and commercial property prices, employment, strong foundations in business being eschewed in preference for instant profit from product or service having a limited shelf or life usefulness - most of today's music and fashion ... it is disposable.
Sadly this results in similar occurring in the courts that are administrating bad law and compounding it with the illogical decision and refusal to properly examine the evidence.
You may have noticed posts that I made regarding an Australian journalist who has recently been jailed for contempt of court because he has had the temerity to challenge several personality's behaviours here in Australia. Today's brief from him regards the Pell paedophilia charges and suppression orders in Australia not working for overseas reports: [kangaroocourtofaustralia.com]

@FrayedBear The world has gone insane, and no one under thirty five seems to have noticed, because it is all they have ever grown up with.
My thirty odd years old daughter constantly berates me as being out of touch with "reality" when I point out items in the news that are blatantly stupid, or downright mad, such as in our area where the police don't have the resources to investigate burglary so just hand out crime numbers for insurance purposes, but have just built a huge media crimes investigation office where two hundred and fifty police officers surf the net all day looking for "hate crimes" on face book.

@LenHazell53 It really is pathetic. I think I have similar but we simply rarely talk. A good friend from school days was a red hot socialist but now eschews it all as nonsense (amazing what working for the same department for 40 years and now having a pension linked to the UK Prime Minister's salary does to you), he's now virally and viciously Trumpaholic and believes that it is the result of a 1920 Communist conference that advocated that only when the world gets to its current degree of madness and absurdity will people actually turn to communism. That's if some bastard doesn't push the button in a fit of spiteful retribution taking their bat and ball home with them not allowing anyone to play.

@FrayedBear Funny that, my late writing partner in his youth ran a local branch of the LPYS, in later times was tipped as the party choice for local MP, but during the militant tendency nonsense was almost expelled for being too left wing and in the face of new labour did leave the labour party never to return.
Before his death in 2009 he decried socialism as a "daft idea", was living and working abroad, married to an American woman so right wing she made Anne Coulter look like Barbara Castle and died furious that he and his wife could not go back to the USA as he was listed as politically undesirable for beliefs he no longer held.
It happened to a lot of us I suppose, though I still consider myself a social democrat.
As for the belief that the current degree of madness and absurdity will have people actually turn to communism, I find that unlikely when society has been so conditioned to the madness and absurdity that they actually find it sane.
William Shakespeare said 'Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;Filths savour but themselves.
Today we might alter that to sanity to the madman seems mad Lunatics favour their delusions.

At one time in my career, I trained telephone customer service workers and wrote packages on vocal technique, clarity, diction, spoken word speed.
I gave up on it when I was asked to train telesales staff and told an applicant with a cleft palette, a lisp and the inability to pronounce the letter H without regurgitating sputum all over the room that he perhaps should look elsewhere for an alternate career, and I was fired for being prejudice.
I felt like I was in that old Cook and Moore sketch about the one legged man who wants to audition for the role of Tarzan, only it was real, was being taken seriously and I was the idiot.

@LenHazell53 Shakespeare was before his time. Psychologists call "Lunatics favour their delusions" "follies" as in follie à deux, trois, quatre up to en masse depending on the number in the coven sharing the follie.

I love your telemarketing story. It resounds with a comment made by the head of the dental hospital recently that "he is no longer under the HR policies allowed to tell an employee that what they are doing is wrong". I'm waiting for someone to blow the place up and then be promoted. This seemingly is what happens elsewhere in government occupations unless it is shown to be violence against women or creating glass ceiling.

@LenHazell53 Barbara Castle - a name that gave me pause being member for Blackburn all those years.

1

Yes there is perhaps some truth in it. But you have to remember that, in the not very distant past, the opportunity to write comment and share opinion was held only by a few professional journalists and politicians, who naturally tended to be people at the top of their game, with the highest skills. Now the inter-net means that many more people are able to join in debates and conversations. It is almost certain that their skills and standards will not be as high, it may not therefore represent a true trend in the direction of lower quality debate, but only a shift of the measured average down the spectrum.

And secondly as more debate and conversation takes place, then there is a strong possibility that the skills of many lower down the spectrum will improve, even if only a little, with experience. Indeed it could hardly be otherwise, since they have never been exposed to the possible good effects of any experience before. And you can not blame those who have never had a voice before, for shouting loud the first time they get to use it. In time they may learn to moderate their tone, or more likely they will just get bored and give up.

For which reason it is quite possible that we are, maybe sadly, on the brink of a new age in which people will return to the idea of objective good taste, as a think which is important in defining a persons worth, after many years when relativism has been dominant. That sort of idea of "class" defined by taste was the main social ideology in the days before the popular press, when most people had an almost equal lack of voice, due to the spoken word and a few expensive books being the only very limited media. People therefore saw themselves as belonging to social groups defined by what was called taste.

Then the press and broadcast media grew and became the voice of the professionals who were read by everyone, forcing a single unifying standard of taste, that of the middle and to a less degree some of the upper classes who wrote and broadcast. (Everyone else being readers listeners only.) Now in many ways we are reverting to the earlier state where everyones voice is equal, and that may lead, in a world where everyone can have, and say, whatever they want and as much as they want, to the return to a world where people define themselves by their choices, or tastes (class) once more.

All these things do not of course, in the short term, stop the raised tone of the debate having bad effects in the wider world. But they may prove to be very important in the long term. And in the interests of improving debate, please read my very first sentence again before replying.

Fernapple Level 9 Jan 26, 2019

I love your optimism. Unfortunately there is a huge number of people who simply do not care. They were similarly represented in school. After 10 years of avoiding and deliberately disrupting others education are these same people likely to change.
Look at the current Brexit mess and the few number who created it.
Look at the response to homelessness,
the fact that one third or more of British people have criminal records,
that as Len states burglary is not investigated but huge resources are employed investigating hate crime on social pages. I frequently find myself saying "how can I be hating you when I take the time to consider and address you with my thoughts about the issues that you raise. If I hated you I would simply ignore you."
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. They require a lot more cogitation.

3

Doesn't it depend very much on who you are talking to? With some people I know I can have a sensible coversation and even an argument because I know they think about things and we listen to each other. With other people I know there is no point disagreeing with them because they will not be interested in listening to, let alone considering my point of view. With the advent of social media there is much more conversation and discussion with complete strangers, so quite a lot of it is going to be superficial. There are a lot more young people engaging in serious issues and discussing them these days, thanks to more widespread publicity and social media which I see as an encouraging sign.

CeliaVL Level 7 Jan 26, 2019

Their have been atm 14 visitors to this thread. Only 2 express opinion through emoji reaction, 6 including yourself have written something in response. There are supposedly 30,000 members worldwide and less than 100 or so in this group. I do not find it encouraging and yet again I find the automatic desire is to reject the piece because of the messengers and not factual disproof of its content.

1

I see this as one of the most important topics that I have seen since I joined the site. However I have to double scrutinize it because of the involvement of RT.

Mcflewster Level 8 Jan 26, 2019

You only have to read posts and comments in the Community Senate, "Trump Pinata " and a number of other groups to instantly say that is proof of behaviour, that isn't. You do not need to double scrutinize RT who in fact dissociate themselves from the author's opinions.

Furthermore I'm pleased that you rate the issue highly within your list of important topics. IMO it should be front and centre in discussions held in the Senate group however the last time I raised such an issue I was cried down for making irrelevant posts to the Senate. It was then put to me that the Senate should only be discussing program procedure of how the site operates and not those matters that effect the wellbeing of members.

0

Coming from RT.com is this a warning or "Mission Accomplished?"

MattHardy Level 7 Jan 26, 2019

Does it matter who it comes from. You seem to have no problem with the fact / thrust of the condition - the behaviour of the correspondents. Don't shoot the messenger.

RT is a perfectly legitimate news source if like all others it contextualised as to it's agenda, owners and political bias.
I get stick for referencing the Daily Mail because it is a right wing rag, which it is, but despite it's bias, it is still usually factually true if you ignore the spin put on those facts.

@FrayedBear my point about who it comes from is that the Russian government, have been actively trying to promote divisiveness abroad and have utilised the Internet Research Agency and Russia Today in their efforts. I'm not disputing the accuracy of what they're reporting, just pointing out that they're not reporting on their own efforts to make this particular piece of news.

4

A couple of months back I posted a story about a work meeting I attended, in which we decided some new policies. I put forward one idea, then another colleague put forward her idea. My idea was perfectly feasible; so was her idea, but hers also struck me as easier and more efficient to implement - so I abandoned my idea and backed hers. This struck some people at the meeting as very funny, and I asked them why. "You just said something completely different, but now you agree with her!" they said. "Well, yes," I replied. "After hearing her suggestion, I decided it was better than mine; so, I'm backing her." This left them speechless - the very concept of changing one's view and opinion when presented with a better alternative was alien to them.

I've noticed similar instances in other real-life conversations: it seems that many people have completely forgotten how to hold conversation and treat every discussion like an online flame war in which they must stick to and defend their position no matter what, in case an admission that they are wrong or another person's idea is superior is seen as a sign of weakness rather than a willingness to evaluate information and adapt to it. I'm not sure social media is entirely to blame: traditional media, which has led to "soundbite politics", the generally combative nature of modern politics and, no doubt, many other factors have likely all played a part.

Jnei Level 8 Jan 26, 2019

Well put I agree totally.The ability to take advice, reason or apologize is lost on most people.

I am not surprised that they were left speechless. One of the difficulties is that we are not really sure where wisdom lies( or even if it exists) Wisdom is not confined to the aged or the wealthy. We must get the young to try to be wise and listen to how everyone achieves it. You must start in schools very soon.

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