Intellectual Vandalism

For every intelligently-written blog, for every engaging discussion on politics, religion, gender issues or anything else controversial, there are those who want nothing more than to destroy those platforms for exchanging ideas, whether from contempt, boredom or sheer maliciousness.

These people willfully derail discussions by making comments which are inflammatory and frequently little else. There are those who insist on niggling over grammar and punctuation, as if either of these were more important than the ability to convey an idea. I think it's pretty unreasonable to dismiss or demean someone's ideas simply because they are guilty of transposing characters or substituting one homophone for another.

If someone comes up with a great idea on how to improve the world, it would be short sighted at the very least to dismiss them simply because they weren't a great speller. If we can easily accept doctors who can't write legibly, then perhaps we should be more tolerant of thinkers who cannot spell perfectly, or who suffer from moderate to severe dyslexia.

There are those who latch on to one ill-chosen word and create a firestorm by blowing it out of proportion and turning the discussion of ideas into personal attacks. And there are trolls who hide behind 'anonymous' or behind a multiplicity of pseudonyms in order to stir up ugly sentiments by making (usually crude) accusations about a person's intelligence, heredity, sanity or sexuality. These people frequently wax ineloquent with rhetoric that is deliberately offensive and designed solely to turn the discussion away from anything constructive or meaningful, taking delight in other people's anger or hurt feelings.

What is more troubling is that this appears to be a popular hobby of young, intelligent people who enjoy making a mockery of constructive discussions, perhaps feeling that they are 'lame' or beneath them. In many cases, these people could make significant contributions to the discussion of controversial ideas. But instead, they take the coward's way and expend their mental energy to destroy, malign and offend.

Given the choice of two evils, I would prefer that they did this sort of thing, than to actually go out and create bombs, computer viruses or other physically destructive projects to alleviate their boredom. But there are more than two choices. And one of them is to begin participating in the dialogue as a constructive contributor. Who knows? Out of such collaboration may come the kind of groundbreaking thinking we need to make things better in the coming decades. It certainly can't hurt!