This is a follow-up on my previous Why I Often Hate Techies post.
Update: as a side note, I've revised my opinion of the guy who posted his complaints about the open source community. He really approached the situation the wrong way.
One of my first "real" jobs involved me standing in front of a grill, gloriously flipping burgers. It didn't pay well and I dreamed of the day I would net $500 a month (this was back in 1986). One day I was frustrated and said "damn". Heads swivelled. Everyone stared at me. It's not that they were shocked by the language. They were shocked at my use of the language. I didn't use profanity, blasphemy (despite already being an atheist), or any strong language at all. Oh, I still had a temper, but I was actually able to express myself without resorting to language like that. That's the first anecdote to keep in mind. Now for the second.
Fast-forward a decade. A friend's girlfriend was complaining about how she received a citation for not having having paid the fare on the MAX (Portland's tram). She said "I cussed and yelled at the officer and he still gave me the ticket." I asked her if someone cussing and yelling at her would make her change her mind about something and she grudgingly admitted that it wouldn't. The problem was that the crowd she hung out with was a rather bitter and angry crowd and using language like that was quite common.
Now for the mental exercise which ties all of this together: if the people you hang out with on a regular basis are petty thieves, crack addicts, and so forth, are you running your local bank? Probably not. But why?
The "why" is simple. It's the same reason the prisons are sometimes referred to as "crime finishing schools". If you're exposed to something often enough, you get used to it. After a while, you internalize it. You can get to the point where you see wildly abnormal behavior as socially acceptable. Fred Phelp's followers see nothing wrong with the "God Hates Fags" signs, despite Jesus' quite explicit message of "love thy neighbor". They feel it's acceptable to picket the funerals of US soldiers killed overseas. Some Muslims (a minority, thank goodness), feel it's perfectly acceptable to riot over cartoons mocking their faith (I've read several cartoons published in Iranian papers mocking the Jewish faith, despite Ahmadinejad's insistence that a few cartoons in Danish papers are bigotry). Heck, there are a lot of less extreme examples I could write, but I'm sure I'd touch off a few people insisting that they're perfectly correct in their views/behavior; they might even be right.
Which all brings us back to the techie issue. I used to be very polite. I was known for it. Yet a year and some change as a car salesman probably marked my downfall. I eventually quit, citing that I didn't like what sort of person I was becoming. And now I'm a programmer and unlike car sales, I love what I do, but I struggle against much of the culture.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a difficult guy in a crowd. He pushes smaller guys aside. He makes lewd remarks to women. He tells people to "shut up" if they dare to contradict him. If I saw someone behaving like that (and I have), I might lose my temper and yell "you're a f***ing a**hole" (and I have). Naturally, this only makes the situation worse, but there's something curious there. It's easy to be obnoxious. It's even encouraged. Yet how would one rephrase "you're a f***ing a**hole" without being profane or rude? I struggle with that, particularly if my temper's aroused and I'm trying to say something quickly. Several times I've caught myself using profanity and realizing I would have trouble expressing myself otherwise (try this the next few times you cuss).
Of course, we can simply tell ourselves that the guy deserves it, but this just sets us up for the typical tit-for-tat cycles we find ourselves in. Just because someone else is being rude doesn't give me the right to be rude. That's entirely the wrong way of looking at the problem. Here's the right way of looking at the problem: if enough of us decide to set an example and be unilaterally polite, we can change the culture. The culture has changed many times before, we simply have to be decent enough to change it to civility.
It's a pernicious problem. I often see people defending ad hominem attacks because no profanity was used (that still doesn't make it polite) or because "it's true" (that still doesn't make it polite). Well, here's a little tip: truth isn't always a defence. We can easily take exception to all sorts of things but it's awfully hard to get mad about common courtesy. When did we lose this? Schwern mentions "punching range" as a factor. I'll go further and state that our willingness to be polite tends to be inversely proportional to our distance. And that's both physical and social distance.
Some of you have probably noticed that I say rude things from time to time. When I do, I tend to pull back for a while. I don't like the fact that the "truth trumps civility" culture is so rampant, particularly when "truth" is a feral beast, often biting those who think they have it safely on a leash.
I'm still of two minds about a lot of my political writings as they tend to fall into the "uncivil" category, but in today's day and age, if you don't have a good rant, no one cares. People are celebrated for their ability to be vicious and cutting. Yet though I want to tone down my writings, I'm aghast at the lies which have pitched my country headlong into war. I'm horrified that many of the root causes of terrorism are often blatantly obvious, but everyone wants to "beat" the "enemy", not understand humans we disagree with. And hey, what's a few dead Arabs among friends? When people are dying, I'm going to lose my temper and I don't think that's part of me that's going to change, but this, I think, is justifiable anger and uncivility. I'm not going to hover over a cup of tea and say "sorry old chap, but I suspect cold war tactics may not be the best approach against non-state actors." If it ain't a sound bite, no one cares (the above "cold war" statement is quite correct, but requires a lot of background explanation that most don't care about. They just want us to win.)
So that's all I really had to say. I'm not who I once was and I want to get back there, but I find it difficult to do so in a culture which encourages and even embraces rudeness. I confess I doubt my ability to find that person again, but at least I can keep this in mind.
I wasn't defending either side in that exchange you originally referenced. I thought they both acted badly.
The blog author did many "piss off people on IRC" things, mostly by not getting to the point in a simple manner. The other folks on IRC were just straight up jerks, no doubt.
I try to be polite on IRC. If someone is irritating me, I try to simply stop dealing with them, as opposed to abusing them. I'm not sure I always succeed.
On the note of not liking the person you were become, one reason I stopped hanging out in #perl many years ago was because I realized I was acting like a dick (just like everyone else in the channel). I didn't really like how I was acting, and I realized I simply needed to leave the channel.
Nowadays I only hang out in #moose(-dev) and #tpf, all of which are pretty polite, constructive channels.
Re:For the record
Ovid on 2008-08-07T18:48:02
While I don't want to single anyone out in the reply to that thread, I'll just say that your reply is what made me go back and reassess my opinion of that post. Thank you.
Also, the guy has other interesting posts on that site. Well worth reading, if experience with foreign cultures piques your interests.
I think the important issue here is that what is perceived as 'rude' depends a lot on the society you are in. What 'firefly' failed to realise is that, by the standards of technical forums, he started out by being fairly rude: he wasn't personally insulting anyone, of course, but he was asking for help and completely failing to provide any useful information about what was going wrong; instead he was whining about how hard his life was. Thus, he was wasting the time of a whole lot of volunteers, which is considered to be rude, and had he spent a small amount of time lurking in the channel I'm sure he could have found that out for himself. He then proceeded to try to suck up to the person trying to help him ('I will
The other person, in #apache, seems to have been much less reasonable, even unnecessarily nasty; but given that he hasn't quoted the whole conversation we can only imagine what provoked those responses. His general attitude of 'I am an idiot and fully expect you to treat me as such' is not likely to elicit a positive response from anyone who knows anything useful.
You are, of course, correct that incivility is rarely helpful, and, even when it is, it's still not a Good Thing; however, incivility and profanity are completely orthogonal. Calling someone a 'f**cking a***hole' (asterisks left there in deference to the fact that this is your blog, not mine) can be anything from unacceptably rude to completely unremarkable, depending on the circumstances and the expectations of the person you are talking to: what's important is that you consider ('one considers', I'm not talking about you specifically, of course) how that person will take what you are about to say. This is especially important in today's society where we so often have dealings with people from completely different social and cultural backgrounds; what's also important is to be careful not to take offence at something unless it was intended to be offensive. It's terribly easy to hear only the form of what someone is saying, and be offended by it, without considering that perhaps this is a perfectly normal mode of expression for them and perhaps the content of what they said should be considered instead.
If there are large numbers of people in the world whose primary reason for being civil is to avoid getting punched, it's hardly surprising so many of them are arseholes online. Perhaps those of us who do know what courtesy is and why it's important shouldn't be encouraging that attitude?
Re:Oh, and one more thing...
Ovid on 2008-08-07T21:04:58
Neither Schwern nor myself were encouraging punching. The idea was really that many people only seem to keep themselves in check when faced with the possibility of direct confrontation. I think "punching" was just used to spice up the discussion. Sorry if that came across wrong.
Re:Oh, and one more thing...
jplindstrom on 2008-08-08T12:41:10
Well, punching distance also happens to be a distance short enough for you to look each other in the face to determine each other's state of mind way before any physical violence is involved.
I still think it's a sign of lack of empathy when people behave really badly on IRC or mailing lists. Add to that a gang mentality where people think this is the normal way of interacting, and you have a pretty nasty environment.
You wreck your own point when you stated you can't discuss politics politely. If you want to convince somebody (me, for example) that you aren't just a raving Bush-hater, you have to act in a civil manner.
Now, I can't say that I'm any better in fact, since my own political rants tend to be just as angry, they're just a different set of positions. But I still say that the most convincing argument is the one delivered with passion, but still delivered politely and without coming across as anger or hatred (i.e., without making oneself look like a senseless prick). It may not convince anyone, but at least you won't have disqualified yourself from the argument from the very start.
The place where anger has its use is when it is applied in force. If something is really worth displaying your anger over, then it's time to convince someone you are serious by applying that anger and taking action. If lies got us into the war, then the only useful application of your anger is to take action to make sure that the liars are taken to justice.
Anger is truly useful to rile up those that agree with you to get them to engage in action or to rile yourself up to commit you to action. Otherwise, it's probably just wasted energy.
Re:You had me until the next to last paragraph...
Aristotle on 2008-08-08T18:28:17
I posit that anger is not useful even for that. You want your judgement to be particularly level and unclouded when something matters enough to you to spur you into action.
Re:You had me until the next to last paragraph...
chromatic on 2008-08-08T23:52:10
Anger and rage are different. (For an interesting diversion, find a theological treatise on holy anger. Just don't stop at Augustine's City of God.)
Re:You had me until the next to last paragraph...
Aristotle on 2008-08-09T09:20:12
Point taken.
Re:You had me until the next to last paragraph...
jdavidb on 2008-08-26T12:59:06
You wreck your own point when you stated you can't discuss politics politely.
I no longer judge people for not being polite about politics. Politics is all about who is going to take the next turn depriving other people of liberty, property, and sometimes life. It is completely understandable why people would be uncivil about that. In fact, it's ridiculous to expect them to be civil, and it's part of the religious faith in government as being the right idea. It's part of the way this mental virus propagates itself: by presenting the idea as being something that people should not get upset about.
Unfortunately, most people do get irrational about this threat, and most people do not respond in proportion: rather than seeking to defend their own liberty, property, and lives, they seek to gain the power themselves so that they can exact revenge on their neighbors for previously using that power or desiring to use it. They don't realize that eliminating the power is actually an option.
So when I hear a Barack Obama supporter over here talking angrily about his desire to control the lives of Bush supporters, I have to remember that he is responding with hurt and irrationality to an equal threat from the other side, and that he believes this is the appropriate reaction, and that he was public school educated for as many as twelve or more years to believe that this was the way things should be.
For a really complicated issue (that's sadly been boiled down in the public schools to a simple matter of "good" versus "evil"), take the American Civil War. I do not grant the right of people to own slaves, but I also do not grant the right of states to go in and "liberate" each other, especially in the face of agreements to the contrary (such as the United States Constitution). So you have a South that claimed it just wanted sovereignty, and of course they were entitled to it. But look at how they responded: they took away the sovereignty of the North and of other regions by passing laws that affected them, too. That's not "independence." At best it's tyranny, at worst it's responding to force with more than mere defensive force. No wonder war erupted.
For a more modern example, take origins education in schools. I believe in people's rights to believe whatever they want, and therefore I don't believe it's criminal to educate their children to believe in it, too. So if you want to educate your children to believe in creation, fine. But there's a threat to that liberty, and like good little democracy believers, rather than just saying, "Look, I want the right to take care of my family MY way, and if you can educate yourself out of my dumb religion as an adult, so can my kids with your help ONCE THEY ARE ADULTS and out of my care," people respond by trying to pass laws to educate everybody's kids with creation science or what have you.
It's no wonder to me people are uncivil about the subject. If everybody would start the discussions by affirming that their guiding principle is to leave other people alone and then to just request that privilege for themselves, the discussions would be a lot more civil. Unfortunately, most people do NOT want to leave everybody else alone. The temptations of power, and the brainwashing we've received about how "right" it is, are just too great.
