All of us, to varying degrees, like to build an echo chamber. We like to surround ourselves with people who agree with us. I’m certainly no different. So when people recommend websites or blogs that represent my point of view I tend to go check them out. I won’t mention names, but I recently visited just such a site. For a few days I decided I liked it. The guy offers good, solid, hard-hitting arguments for things I believe in.
But after a few days I found myself wanting to visit less, or less enthusiastically. I finally went back there after close to a week’s absence and realized why my enthusiasm was waning so quickly. To quote Will Farrell in “Megamind”: Presentation! I was getting tired of the guy’s “voice”. He strikes me as self-righteous and sneering, which I’m pleased to say annoys me nearly as much when it’s someone I would otherwise agree with as when it’s someone I don’t.
I try to catch myself when I start getting that way. I’ve deep-sixed many a post because I realized I was getting a too worked up, too shrill. But I’m sure some have slipped through the cracks, and for that I apologize. It’s a short distance between confident and condescending, passionate and overbearing.
Open dialogue is a good and positive thing. Open lecturing, sneering, or mocking is not. We need to keep our rhetorical fingers out of one another’s eyes. I know, it’s tempting to fight fire with fire. But there are times when I believe victory is not worthwhile if you simply take the enemy’s place. Winning at any cost is not winning.
“… victory is not worthwhile if you simply take the enemy’s place.” A sage comment bordering on the divine. So, I guess I’ll just clamp my yapper closed in the future, too. 😉