[Winona Online Democracy]
Mr. Dittmann makes an important point here: those of us who have chosen to
be outspoken in our views are the most frequent targets of personal attacks,
and by this I don't mean sarcastic responses to our arguments or "snide"
assertions by others of their points of view, but actual, direct,
unwarranted personal insults. I can't speak for Mr. Dittmann or others, but
I have been the recipient or target of countless disparaging remarks about
my age, family, academic affiliation, and now, apparently, my choice of
verbiage. I have never done anything of the sort to anyone else on this
forum. I don't write emails to others calling them arrogant, I don't
respond to others' comments by referring to anything I may know or assume
about how old they are, ("adolescent smartmouth") and I certainly do not
disparage their vocabulary. All of these are inappropriate and
counter-productive to an intellectual exchange. However one thing that is
not, in my humblest of opinions, inappropriate to such an exchange is a
direct and honest expression of each participant's opinion or perspective on
a given subject, which may be in stark contrast to one another and may be
very strongly held by their respective proponents. When I engage in these
types of discussions on a person-to-person basis, it is usually just assumed
that each person participating will espouse or her own views using all the
language and rhetorical tools that can be summoned in such a context, an
unspoken consenus being in place that demanding everyone couch their
sentiments in polite qualifiers and expressions of respect for one another's
views that ought to be easily inferrable from the fact that the discussion
is occurring in the first place. (A recent conversation I had with some
classmates about freedom, the state, revolution, and Plato's 'Republic'
included exclamations like "If this ends in socialism, I'm going to smack
you" and the application of various scatological profanities to famous
philsophers and political theorists--"Marx was a @#$$!" "Yeah, well Hegel
was a @$%%%$^!") I guess I just assumed from the outset when I began
reading and contributing to this forum that participants would be able to
act like adults and not complain every time someone inadvertently hurt our
feelings.
It seems to me there is nothing so likely to discourage contribution to
discussions in a forum such as this as frequent criticism of others'
comments based not upon disagreement with their sentiments but on
disapproval of their style of writing. I know I have repeatedly considered
unsubscribing following others' denigration of how I phrase my comments.
Such denigration is one of the most disrespectful things that can be done on
a list like this one.
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