Conversations, particularly discussions about whether important claims are true, are often fraught with difficulty.
Especially when it’s with a stranger.
Online.
Frankly, it’s probably not even right to refer to many such interactions as “conversations”, but rather as billboards of one’s personal stance. Perhaps, the term “comment” really is most appropriate. We’re putting our two cents into the mix, when we leave a comment.
But, often (always?) it is unmoored from all of the conditioned, helpful social cues that accompany in-person communication.
It’s so easy to read text in a negative or caustic tone.
I see it all the time on social media. Threads filled with people making a claim in the form of a comment, which elicits other comments either in stark agreement or disagreement, quickly devolving into name-calling and verbal abuse.
What’s happening there? It’s a bizarre thing we’re doing.
It has the appearance of a conversation or discussion, but absent are the hallmarks of intellectual virtue.
Curiosity, Openness, Poise, Thoroughness, Humility, Honesty, Courage.
It’s less a genuine love and hunt for the truth than it is a scoring of social/emotional points - or more nuanced - an attempt to see who’s in your tribe by seeing who has “liked” or better yet “loved” your statement. Who’s in and who’s out based on this one thing.
Tragic.
There’s this biblical proverb that nicely captures the conundrum I think many social media-ites find themselves in:
“Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you yourself will be just like them. Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.”
Have you ever started to write a critical comment only to delete it realizing it’s not worth the trouble? Perhaps you were wrestling with the dilemma in this ancient proverb.
Not to mention, we usually want to avoid being the fool in question in the first place! Another reason to not get involved.
And yet, I’m a firm believer that our transformation happens in the context of community. The fact that you can even read this is an indicator that your formation is the result of being part of a community. Skills and values were cultivated in you by others.
So, who are you in relationship with now? What is your current intellectual/emotional/spiritual community? Who is influencing you most in the transformation of your thinking toward the true, beautiful, and good?
Do you have a safe place where you can say something foolish (hopefully inadvertently) and are met with grace and patience? To test out ideas? With other real people that you personally know and are similarly aimed at having a more accurate, honest view of our world?
A community in which it is clear there is some disagreement that likely won’t go away anytime soon, and yet friendship and fellowship don’t have to dissipate.
I’m not saying this community can’t be found anywhere online or on social media. But, upon getting enough battle wounds or at least being horrified by the brutal wild west of social media, we might be inclined to retreat to our corral of like-minded voices.
This inclination isn’t crazy - it is all well and good to find some folks that share at least some of your values.
And yet, I think we ought to be careful about selecting or constructing our communities in such a way that they become total echo chambers of all and only ideas with which we agree.
A bit of intellectual diversity is a good thing - at least, when it is expressed in its virtuous ways.
I count myself fortunate that over the years I have had close friendships with people where we both mutually thought the other person was dead-wrong about central topics concerning faith, ethics, and worldview.
Sadly, this has become harder and harder to maintain in our polarized, amped-up world.
My dream is for OTT to be a space of the sort I’m talking about. It’s not there yet, and I don’t quite know exactly what it looks like or how to achieve it. But I like the vision of it.
But, I guess for now, I reckon we’d all do better by not picking fights on random social media threads, and instead find some people to get to know and start actually conversing rather than commenting.