Rep us well!

I guess it’s a matter of taste.

The word: it gets used a lot, and I used it to point out the derivation. Words evolve just as ideas do. To use the word in the context of its new meaning doesn’t excuse the user from the reflections of its history. If you say something’s “bad” but mean good, it says more about you than the thing that you’re describing. I used the word as a means to an end, not as a particular bone with your argument. I’ve been raging a war on that word for a while now. It’s not you. It’s me.

It struck me as funny, though, that you used the word oppressive. I can’t see how what you’re describing in the post can be construed as oppressive. Rude: yes. Annoying: yes. Inflammatory: yes. But, oppressive: just doesn’t apply. What oppressive does apply to is your post, if it had authority.

Now, obviously, your post was meant to encourage people to act in accord with better behavior and not upset reasonable social norms. Not many people have a problem with that. For some dumb reason I do. Norms and conventions can easily manifest into a mechanisms for control. Simply look at the birth of modern manners. Louis IX constructed a sophisticated system of rules and etiquette that ensured the centralization of power into him (nobility forced to elaborate dinners and parties at Versailles that they had to go into debt to afford. The crown was overly happy to loan the money).

Civility in a sense is in opposition to man’s more passionate dispositions. A civilized person is a trained person. Sports, traditionally, are a fantastic (meant in the literal sense and not as just good) way to escape the norms and conventions of civility that constantly repress his more animal like instincts. Man is a passionate animal at odds, often enough, with these very same norms. I can’t say escaping into a world of passion is a good thing, but it’s going to happen (this is the basis for the Greek doctrine of Moderation and why exercise and sex were so important). Sports provide an outlet that’s more than socially acceptable; it’s socially encouraged as they do less harm than fighting and looting might do. They provide a very important social distraction in which man (by man, I should point out that I also mean women) outlay passion without harming the fabric of our civilized social structure. The mere act of yelling eases tension and let’s the anger spill out of the person into the air. It’s necessary to release it somewhere. The means of this release are getting narrower and narrower. Fighting, sexual harassment and things like that used to be permitted (I wouldn’t say rightfully so). Encroaching any further into the territory of passionate release risks social degradation on other fronts. Is there a link between the narrowing of socially acceptable methods of passionate release and the increased promiscuity of our younger generations? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t doubt it. To an extent, it’s a zero sum game. Take away one method, and people will find another. Just be sure what you risk.

There’s tremendous, surreptitious wisdom to the way humans behave in a civilized society. Sports, generally, are where the rules breakdown. We’re allowed to yell, taunt and act like our cousin monkeys. It’s an exception because the detriment of it is therapeutic to our society. Investing this very device with the thing the evolution of ideas created it to counter act would be to destroy its significance, and the walls of our society may very well be built on this foundation.

The internet, as well, is a tool used to avoid the restrictions of visibility. The threat of visibility is the most potent form of control. Grades, exams, the panopticon, the architecture of classrooms, prisons, military barracks, the idea of a person as a case in medicine and criminality all use visibility as a primary means to control and invest social norms. The internet relieves that pressure, and we’ve seen a much different culture as a result. Speaking as a person who generally dislikes the idea of cultural investment, I tend to like that the internet has a rough side. You don’t have to, but telling others what to do (or not to do) tends toward opposing my taste. That’s all.

Now, if you’re serious about moving away from trolling and the like, you’re going about it the wrong way. We’re civil here not because we’re a bunch of good people who are always nice. We’re civil here because Dave (or whoever) created mechanisms for control (reasonable ones to be sure) that allow him the threat of visibility. There’s a community here where we value membership. Dave has the ability to ban people who step out of convention. Not only that, but he can get their IP addresses, so that they can’t create a new account and post again from that computer. The threat of credible banning only works because Dave also threatens to watch us and, more importantly, have us watch each other (Flag), which is the nefariously ingenious part of his plan. Thus, there’s a significant and effective policing action. Dollars to donuts that if you convinced Dave to expand his vision and the threat of banning to other sites by asking that other moderators and bloggers let him know of our comments on their sites, you’d have your civility there as you do here.

Let me be clear that I’d rather hang out with you than the troll. Refinement has it’s appeal. That said, I wouldn’t ask anyone to like it. And, I wouldn’t ask you to not like it. Basically, all I’d ask is that you leave the kidz alone.

I don’t like to troll. It is funny to see though. It’s just a little spice. Too much and we burn our mouths, yes. Too little and you have English cooking.