Ordinarily, sermons should be reserved for holy days, such as when football and cricket is being played, but this is occasioned by some Scibling conflicts...
When I were a young lad, me ol' mam told me to keep a civil tongue in me 'ead. [Actually, she told me something else, but this is a family post.] Have you ever wondered about the notion of civility?
Etymology is something of a guide here - it comes from the Latin civis, meaning "city". That is, it is the mode of behaviour, the manners, of the city. In Greek, the term is polis, which means "city" also. From these two words we get civil, civics, civilisation, policy, politeness, police, politician, polity, and in fact in French, poli means "civil". "Courtesy" means the mode of behaviour at the ruler's court, and is thus related. Civil rights and civil disobedience both related to the structure of society in urbanised settlements.
Why should there be special ways of behaving in cities? It goes, as so much does, to our evolutionary past. We evolved most likely in bands of around 500 individuals, organised into troops of around 30-50 individuals closely related. So we would meet very few people and our interactions could be based on individual status and personalities. Hence, we evolved the requisite capacities to track such interactions.
Now, take this mild mannered ape and put him or her into a population of hundreds of thousands, or even millions (I don't know what the first city to exceed a million was, but I'll bet it was in the fertile crescent or Egypt). Remember the example of Mick Dundee in Crocodile Dundee trying to individually greet every person he met on the streets of Manhattan? That won't work.
So rules take the place of interpersonal interactions. One of these rules is to treat people on the basis of their cultural identifiers, their "tribal markers" as it were. Each society and class has a set of these markers - they can be dress, face paint, weapons, totems, accents, grammar and vocabulary. Or they can be class, status, wealth, political position. Or they can be religion...
Civility means using these rules to avoid conflict. It means "going along to get along". And sometimes it is not the right course of action (see "civil disobedience" above), and sometimes it is.
In intellectual discourse, there is a tendency to reify abstract positions held, and use them as a tribal marker. So, for instance, we saw Lynn Margulis attack "Darwinians" on Pharyngula recently. We here at Science Blogs often attack what we see as bad science. And religion itself is open to attack.
So when someone makes a claim that they are areligious, or religious, we all jump in and attack them, in the guise of attacking the ideas.
Now I'm as free of religious ideas as anyone can be who was raised in a sort of religious context (I say sort of, because Australians are rarely enthusiastic about non-sports - the very term "enthusiast" means "imbued with god"). But one thing I try hard to do is recognise that people can be smart, educated and even really decent people when they disagree with me. I really hope they have the same view about me in return (although I have sufficient experience to be cynical. One church listed me as a Satanist and witch because I lost my faith).
Do we really need to attack each other personally when they hold views we think are mistaken? I was taught what is probably overly idealistic even in the most idealistic of era, which tis one isn't, that intellectual debate should be dispassionate and impersonal. In these days, when tribal conflict is rife and even touted by some as a virtue, intellectual debate seems to be on the wane. But we shouldn't allow that - it's is uncivil and uncivilised.
So let it be...
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Hear hear.
Amen!!
No, wait ... let me put that another way ...
But when you don't want to avoid conflict, like if you have a new blog to flog and you want to stir up some controversy and get people to look at you, then throwing out civility and singling out someone for an attack is a smart move. Mild-mannered monkeys are neglected monkeys.
Well, they certainly have a smaller readership than attack monkeys, yes.
PZ - So cynical for one so young... Of course that doesn't mean you aren't 100% right.
...get people to look at you, then throwing out civility and singling out someone for an attack is a smart move.... Mild-mannered monkeys are neglected monkeys.
The mild-mannered monkeys are opposite to the prodigal rabbit in the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race. It's true in net politics too.
Recently, I learned about a new site which is trying to mimmick a certain established site, which was suppose to include only verifiable and qualified contributors, and my field of expertees is in art / photography related to science. I understand copyright laws quite fine. However, the administrator felt it necessary to pick nits, start trouble for no good reason, one or two troglodytes wanted to stick their -2 cents in, and one particular self-claimed "lawyer" or whatever the person claimed to be... went off into a long spiel of diatribe comparing "fair use" with commercial copyrights and trademarks, etc. Point blank, a whole lot of pure bologna, and I knew it was... I used an image which was for EDUCATIONAL and NON-PROFIT purposes, from an educational source, and the idiot compared this to making derivitives of Bugs Bunny (TM) or Marlboro (TM) to "sell for profit, for a product"... his key-concept "derivitive of a copyrighted product." The fool admin goes and removes every single image I had contributed that was stated "based on..." ... what a fool. Yet he was boasting pridefully he had been a teacher in Philosophy of Law. I've heard of educated idiots. He didn't like it either when I contacted the publisher itself, and carbon copied him in it. He got bent out of shape because he was looking like a foo. actually, the publisher advised me, "Ignore him." I'm sure that was so the ultimate insult on one who thinks they're sooo very important and educated... ah, ascribed above, opposed to such cumbersome crude-mannered alpha-monkeys?
Sometimes, for sake of debate, some fellows resort to fallacious and simply irrelevant arguments.. stir a turd for sake of controversy, assuming it will gain them notoriety and traffic. Some of us mild-mannered monkeys are learning, "walk away and ignore them". As a result this particular administrator (which IMHO has serious ego issues) but all he gained from it, was my resigning further contributions, he lost out on perfectly legal artworks and photography to build his site -- and I simply refused to stick around and be their "omega" to verbally punch around, to build their traffic via debate, controversy and fallacious arguments.
In short.
1. He lost.
2. He lost.
3. He lost.
and last but not least,
4. He lost.
THEIR LOSS. And as long as he continues being an @ .. people will continue to ignore him. Life goes on. I have too many other things to focus my time and energy on. If people cannot treat me with respect, I sure won't stick around to boost their ego.
We mild-mannered monkeys have our standards, our pride, our dignity and our minor expectations to. It's not a one-way ride for alphas anymore.
It would be helpful if you gave some guidelines for determining when something stops being criticism and starts being an attack. Assuming the subtext here is Rob Knop's posts about his religious views, I detected several places in his post where he was considerably less than civil. Was it his post that inspired you to write yours? Or was it something else.
I bring this up because several people at SB have accused me of attacking Rob in my reply to his essay. Signout left a comment accusing me of hating Rob and thinking he was crazy. Chris Rowan suggested that I insulted him by asking him to explain what he meant by the term Christian, since he was obviously using the term in a nonstandard way. And then you come along and post some rather vague remarks about the virtues of civility.
There are issues of substance here, and I for one would prefer to see you address those than have you write vague peans to civility. Or was that remark too uncivil for you?
Hmmm, I thought I did give some guidelines:
"I was taught what is probably overly idealistic even in the most idealistic of era, which tis one isn't, that intellectual debate should be dispassionate and impersonal. In these days, when tribal conflict is rife and even touted by some as a virtue, intellectual debate seems to be on the wane. But we shouldn't allow that - it's is uncivil and uncivilised."
Dispassionate and impersonal are the guidelines. I was merely responding to everyone's less than civil behaviour at various places. I won't list or deconstruct them, as it would be uncivil.
As to the issues of substance, assuming you mean those of the value of religion, I have already discussed this as much as I want to. I think it now is incumbent upon me to respect the choices of belief systems made by all concerned, except where those go contrary to science. And so far as I can tell, a suitably elaborated religion doesn't, contrary to the repetition of the claim that it does.
I thought what I wrote was dispassionate and impersonal, but judging from the way some have replied they don't agree. Hence my request for guidance.
Here's an example when people become discourteous and uncivil and the troglodytes "argue for the sake of argument" with us mild-mannered monkeys.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_sirenians
Every single image I contributed there, is protected under fair use. Including the approval of Daryl Domning himself! On which some of the material is based. So there is no dispute over rights to use the material. However, said admin went and erased everything.
His loss. Silly fool, ignorant of the law, that he is.
Herr know_it_all who commended his so-called, self-proclaimed lawyer buddy on his "great point" about derivitive works (comparing commercial proprietorship rights over derivitives based on commercial products with "fair use in copyright") which of course anyone with any measure of sense about copyright law... there is no comparison between commercial and education, but the troglodytes needed a mild-mannered monkey to single out and beat up -- hoping to drum up traffic. Not very smart.
I am still chuckling about it.
Well, the alpha-ape went and erased every single artwork I contributed which was "based on" somebody else's work, which needless to say, was also based on somebody else's work -- that's how academia works -- the same old information gets passed around, revised, edited, modified, re-distributed, and that's precisely what the publisher in dispute said. "IGNORE HIM".
What I had done was create my own original image, based on something I saw in a book... no different than paraphrasing a journal, and then crediting them in a biblography -- in the world of academia, you are to give proper credits, citations and references... or risk the accusation of plagiarism, right?
Otherwise, "fair use in copyright law" protects the use of material (within reasonable limitations) to use copyrighted material.
What was insane, this administrator was actually asking the magazine itself to "grant permission to use" an image they did not even own copyrights to. MY IMAGE. I own the copyright over my own original creations, including modified images for educational purposes. So of course they could not grant such permission. He made an @ of himself, wanted to stir conflict to drum up traffic... and it was all in vain.
Jason Rosenhouse: "I thought what I wrote was dispassionate and impersonal, but judging from the way some have replied they don't agree. Hence my request for guidance."
You were your usual even-keeled self, but you did make some missteps.
First, the hypothetical about the dragon in the garage is problematic because it presumes that someone thinks that the dragon exists in the outside world. Yet Knop writes, "Without thinking and caring people, there would be no God," which suggests that he doesn't think of God as in the outside world. Essentially, you made an argument that appeared to assume that he had ideas different from the ones that he explained.
Second, you need to be careful with that word "delusion." Of course, the word has a colloquial meaning, but even when used in a non-clinical way, it connotes that someone is somehow crazy. Despite Dawkins' protestations to the contrary in TGD, it is not interchangeable with "mistaken," not even "profoundly mistaken."
Third, it is not "perfectly obvious to anyone not looking for an excuse to feel superior that Dawkins is here being interviewed as a scientist," nor is it perfectly obvious that Knop was "determined to paint Dawkins as a blinkered, robotic, passionless logic machine." Here, you seem to be (1) saying something questionable in order to defend Dawkins, and (2) arguably misrepresenting Knop.
John,
Do we really need to attack each other personally when they hold views we think are mistaken? I was taught what is probably overly idealistic even in the most idealistic of era, which tis one isn't, that intellectual debate should be dispassionate and impersonal.
It should be personal, but polite. That's the problem with impersonal -- too often forgotten there's actually a person with feelings on the other side of the screen.
Spoke with an instructor today at College and he's got the degree and all that good stuff... I mentioned (as a student) that I sometimes write things in error on my blog doing study, asking questions, yes, I make mistakes. I mentioned this, that somebody may just read, catch an error and post a correction but of course I implied those flamers which have mile-wide ego issues. (There's nothing wrong with polite constructive criticism, and the internet is in short commodity).
He then told me his own familiarity with internet forums and the like. He says if a person says something in error (sort of rolled his eyes, you know) "then the flamers come out." He says he doesn't like it or get involved, but 'tempted to throw in his two cents..' (at the flamers that is), but then stated that would make him 'like them', which in his opinion, I gather, isn't something he wants to be known as. He said he feels they simply have no respect for anyone else.. no respect for anyone's right to have an opinion.
I think, most people are like that. You're right about what you said above in your initial post, John. The majority of people are nice people -- and others I've talked with, simply leave and refuse to comment in those scenerios... in other words, it gives the false impression the majority of cybersurfers are tolerant of lack of manners when all you see is strings upon strings of negative, insensitive, insulting posts. So who or what are they really impressing? In reality, they're far outnumbered by the silent majority, far more disliked than they'd ever be aware of.
Haters darted. For all those "alpha males" who like to pick on the mild-mannered monkeys... this was for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFuXig-QzHM