I believe in addressing issues head on, so I will here. We currently have a ballot going on one thread and gamesmanship on another surrounding SPDking, which do not address the issue of forum civility, which is how the whole issue got started in the first place. Everything after that was cause and effect.
It doesn’t matter which way the above vote goes, it splits the readership down the middle, creating a divided house.
In this thread may we set aside all issues but the minimum standard for civility on this forum, and discuss those? The noise over attendant baggage in the other threads drown out my message.
Any of ya’ll familiar with Maslow’s third movement humanistic psychology, Hertzberg, Drucker, Bergy, et al, on what builds teams and what destroys them, or have spent a professional lifetime as members of teams and managing teams on critical path management by objective projects, will better appreciate what I have to say.
It is the nature of individuals to have security needs that come first, as well as a need to belong to the herd/pack/clan/et al. Those needs overlap due to the safety of the pack.
We have a drive for esteem of self, as well as esteem of others. They over lap where esteem of self is influenced by esteem of others.
People contribute more of themselves to the group when they feel esteem of others, adding to esteem of self, than when they feel alienated or attacked.
People of low self esteem may try to lower the bar by attempting to reduce the credibility and standing of those around them, versus directly addressing why they have low self-esteem.
As humans we also have a myriad of underlying motives surrounding security needs, which is exactly where our attention shifts to when attacked by others, because security comes first.
That is because our security is controlled not by the forebrain, but by the medulla amygdala, the original lizard portion of our brains.
It is also the nature of individuals to have individual affinities, ideas, goals, and drives, which is a good thing because otherwise us man children, driven by our littlest head would have killed each other off over the same woman eons ago.
It is inevitable that some of those different goals and agendas will collide and the purpose of this thread is to agree on minimum standards on threads outside the Echo Chamber.
May we infer that there aren’t individuals on forum that can’t express themselves in a civil manner when they so choose and will consider the formal rules of debate, developed to resolve issues rather than engage in food fights?
Is the fact presented true or not true?
If true, does it apply to the issue at hand or not?
If it applies, what is the effect?
There is no, “You are a lying sack” personal attacks on the messenger, as the issue is whether what the messenger provided meets the above questions.
The messenger may just be wrong because as Will Rodgers observed, “the world is full of folks damn sure of things that ain’t so.”
Lying sacks may also be the only one telling the truth at a given moment.
Besides contributing more when individual self-esteem is high, it’s easier to lift the veil of ignorance from someone’s eyes if they aren’t obturating in survival mode defending their position.
It is easier to get newbies to open up with dumb questions if the penalty for doing so isn’t humiliating. The answer to the question that then didn’t ask could potentially have dire consequences.
Consider our image as a group to anyone looking at us from the outside. We will all be painted with the same broad brush.
There is a difference between bon mot ragging between friends and exactly the same words with adversarial relationships. Bonds are strengthened by ragging and damaged when the person perceives it as a denigration.
That suggests that a dictionary of inappropriate words or phrases won’t work as a community standard, because of ragging vernacular (pussy, old bastard, mother, cunt, fucker, et al) , but as adults we should be socially sensitive enough to limit heavy ragging to those most likely to accept it gracefully and riposte in kind.
I am not suggesting that we avoid conflict, because conflict is how things get resolved when the intent is to resolve them vis a vis win lose.
Simply that we agree to say something more on the lines of , “That is invalid for this reason…………, or bullshit, that’s not true because, instead of liar, liar, pants on fire asshole?
I infer that the half of the readership that voted for status quo with regard to Elliot did so in support of forum civility, not Elliot personally, and believe that many of those voting to free him believe in minimum civility as well, but were caught up in side issues.
I offer these thoughts as a contribution to forum unity, not to control anything, because I am simply one member and like most people vote with my feet when things are no longer rewarding enough to justify the time spent.
