During the first Gulf War, I read the news on the Commodore 64 computer network (Q-Link!) before the radio announced it. As Hope and I watched letters appear one by one on the screen speeding to us at 1200 baud, we both talked about the end of old media.
My grandparents heard World War II on the radio and we listened to Reagan era military ventures in the same way. Now we could follow things as fast as the newsreader . . . while sending “telegrams” to my brave cousin Jay in the War by “electronic mail.”
I started teaching a philosophy class in the Q-Link public areas. I made every conceivable mistake defending my religion and politics in the public posting areas. My grandparents never lost a bit of the thrill of turning on a television for the first time and I enjoy every new piece of technology that gets me to the Net.
What have I learned?
Here are a few things I have learned by experience. Maybe somebody else can learn from them without making all the mistakes I made.
First, all the new data and points of view are daunting. Three temptations result that are all debilitating to intellectual growth: indecision, isolation, or impotence.
Some people are so overwhelmed they stop having opinions, at least in public. These sad souls, the Hamlets of the Internet, develop an open mindedness so great that it turns into intellectual cowardice. It is hard to grow when you will not stake out a position and think it through in dialog with other people. They can see all sides, but will commit to none and so they never see their own or others errors.
Another mistaken person uses the vast power of the Internet to isolate themselves. The government need not censor their experiences, they do so ruthlessly themselves. Instead of hearing points of view that challenge their ideas, they restrict themselves to sources that agree or mostly agree with their point of view.
Just because a man can read or see a thing does not mean he should. Some read and write so continuously and expose themselves to so much evil that they develop impotence. The man overwhelmed by evil will often react through moral weakness. He makes no judgments, lest he be judged. His passions are burned out through too many arguments, too many undigested intellectual meals.
I have made these errors, but also learned how to avoid them . . . at least in part.
The best way to dialog on the Net is to express strong opinions and argue for them. At the same time, write as if you are speaking to people created in God’s image. Change your mind. Lose arguments and admit when you lose, but keep trying.
Over years online, I have changed some opinions and strengthened others and had hundreds of excellent discussions. Patience and even-temper, a refusal to call names, has been good for me. Sometimes attacks and sarcasm work, but they are hard for me at least to use without confusion . . . so I am trying to use them more rarely than I once did.
Worst is to end up only reading sites that reinforce what I already think. It is easy to end up running in a circle of ten or so sources. With access to the intellectual wealth of ages, we limit ourselves to what we already know or believe.
This is a crime and stunts our growth. For every site that agree with me, I try to find a worthy opponent to sharpen my thinking. This helps me avoid intellectual isolation.
But there is an opposite danger and that is to read sites unworthy of my time and attention. How do I know such a site? Any writer that depends on vulgarity soon loses my attention. Why soil my mind? His arguments should be heard, but bile and filth need not be read.
Hours of right-wing or left-wing rant and rancor sear the soul and discourage action. I am called to love my enemies and that is harder to do if I wallow in the worst of them. It also deceives me into the false comfort that all who disagree with me are cads or fools.
Reading the best of my enemies makes me better, reading the worst makes me proud or debases me. Pride and baseness both make a man impotent. Instead, my goal is to learn, walk humbly, write boldly, and work out my online salvation with fear and trembling.
I always remember that those who create content on the Internet represent a small class of people. It is a bigger class than the old media, a good thing, but it is not universal or typical. If those who respond on the Internet were typical, Ron Paul would sweep every primary!
I will never forget a comment on a post I wrote, read by thousands, which pointed out that the ten or so people that commented mostly disagreed with me. “Didn’t this discourage me?” he said in less charitable tones. Of course it did not, because he represented a tiny fraction of those who read and negative comments are always more frequent than positive ones in new media.
This includes me, of course. To write on the Internet is to be eccentric. Reading more than five hundred words, as you have now done, rare. As a result, I must not trust my impulses—I write—and you must not view yourself as typical—you read long pieces.
Blessed are those who know they are eccentric for theirs is an easy path to humility.
