tim@unc.UUCP (07/24/83)
Really folks, let's try to foster an atmosphere of
tolerance and make allowances for people holding
differing viewpoints. How can we expect to hold
amicable discussions if we persist in casting
aspersions on the motives of other contributors and
attacking them without even properly reading and
attempting to understand their articles --- indeed,
often misquoting them in the process?
I am referring to exchanges such as the following
one which took place recently in this newsgroup:
The poster of this article then provides a distorted view of an
interchange that he objected to. The final part of the interchange
had been an angry article from a person who had been totally
misrepresented by an extremist on the opposite side of the abortion
debate. To be specific, the guy had been misrepresented as saying
that only a person who has had an abortion should be allowed to hold
an opinion on it. That's obviously not true, and the guy had never
said it or implied it.
The person I've quoted above objected, not to the
misrepresentation, but to the anger expressed by the misrepresented
person. Anger seems a perfectly responsible and appropriate reaction
when someone lies about you in a way designed to be harmful.
Moderation is impossible when dealing with the sort of person who will
not even listen to your statements, preferring to pick out keywords
and form an emotional response, and then repeat emotional buzzword
arguments in the hope of drowning the other person out.
I am very familiar with the feeling that the misrepresented person
expressed, the feeling that no one is even listening. The answer is
not for us to shut up, but for people to start responding to our words
instead of responding solely to their own emotional reactions.
In case you're curious, here is the distorted version of these
events which was in the article I am replying to.
- An attempt by one contributor to stifle debate on
the abortion issue by arguing that only those who had
themselves had abortions were qualified to speak on
the matter.
Now, the article to which the distorter was replying stated quite
clearly that nothing of the sort had ever been said. Is this person
paying attention?
- A response by an anti-choicer suggesting that those
who argued for a woman's right to choose were
sexually irresponsible, suffered from guilty
consciences, and were akin to murderers.
- A retort by the first debater to the effect that the
anti-choice viewpoint would flourish well in a
totalitarian state, such as the one depicted in the
science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, and suggesting
that a resort to fusion-based thermonuclear devices
would solve that problem.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The article was about misrepresentation, not
about abortion. This was completely clear from the article; I'll have
to assume that you didn't read it carefully before responding. That
leads to exactly the sort of anger that got this started.
Let's all try to be a little more charitable in
our submissions to this newsgroup. A little
moderation never hurt anybody.
Preach but don't practice, right? There have been a lot of
articles lately which say "Let's be nice to each other" in nasty and
inconsiderate ways. I for one am getting very sick of them,
particularly when they also support the sort of air-head response to
controversy that creates the bad feelings in the first place. The
absolute last straw is when the article accuses an innocent person of
a particular offense, then commits the offense itself. Reread the
first paragraph of my first quote and you'll see what I mean.
______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill