ShrewsBuried is a rare venue today, a place where people with radically different opinions have both the opportunity and the comfort level to express their ideas. As our society becomes more polarized and “mixed company” becomes less common, this kind of forum becomes increasingly valuable. There is no better way to become a fanatic than to be constantly surrounded by people who agree with you on everything, and no better way to develop creative solutions to problems than by looking at issues from a new point of view. I think that the wide range of thoughts presented on this blog provides a huge benefit to our community.
That said, I have been discouraged recently in reading many of the reader posts. While many people from both sides of the table continue to offer thoughtful perspectives, many others have been hiding behind “Anonymous” signatures and making comments and generalizations that they would (hopefully) not dream of making to someone’s face. Anonymous venting leads to both less thoughtfulness in our statements and less respectfulness to others, both of which are contributing to larger problems in our country and community. We need to be able to converse civilly with each other in order to address the issues that we care about.
I would encourage everyone who participates in this blog to re-read what they write before they hitting “send,” and to think about whether their statement is something that they would be uncomfortable signing their name to. If you would be ashamed of other people knowing that a post came from you, that says something.
-Anonymous (just kidding)
Robin Snyder
Wednesday, October 22
A Place For Manners
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7 comments:
While I agree with what you are saying, it is also a fact that when individuals in our town disagree with the status quo, they become marginalized by the powers that be. Many town leaders are not willing to listen to the opinions or suggestions of others. Instead of listening with an open mind, some take a stand of "how dare you tell us what to do." This does not work. We all know people who have been blackballed in this community simply because they had the intestinal fortitude to stand up and state their opinion, offer a suggestion or ask a question. That type of behavior also needs to change if anything is going to be accomplished in our community.
Joe Q. Public
I see nothing wrong with signing "Anonymous". Sometimes it keeps peace with friends,neighbors,co-workers etc. With these posts people can state exactly how they feel and not worry about it. I think it's a good idea sometime to be "anonymous". It gives us a more honest view of how people really feel.
One thing I have noticed though is that no matter what the topic, some people turn it into schools. And thats where it gets nasty. I realize that school issues are important, but so a lot of other issues. If people would stay with the topic it wouldn't get so bad.
Quite simply in this town if you have a child in school, then you must publicly support an override, or else face alienation and ridicule.
One would think that with all the "public" support of an override, that it would easily pass. But clearly people who say they are for it actually vote against it.
Thank you, Mark, for giving us all voices here.
Robin,
I'm curious about your statement that our society is becoming more polarized and that "mixed company" is becoming less common. Can you expand on what you mean by that? Certainly as far as political views go, I keep "mixed company" on a daily basis. And I know a far more diverse group of people than I did when I was growing up. So I'm interested to know more about what you're referring to.
Kathy
If anonymous comments are not allowed, the discussions here will wither and die. We all know how some of the people in town leadership don't care what is said as much as who says it. Remember when McCaffrey popped in from time to time. He added nothing to what anyone said except questioning who said it.
Kathy - fair question. What with all the election coverage, I've been reading alot about how people have been sorting themselves into like-minded communities; for example, people are nearly twice as likely now to live in a county where a presidential candidate won by a landslide than they were 30 years ago. People like to live in places where their neighbors share their priorities. I have also been reading about the decision-making processes that occur in people that are isolated from diverse thought (terrorist enclaves / political parties), which as you could guess, tend toward zealotry. Further, there are interesting studies showing that people who strongly identify with a certain position are more likely to cling to it if you provide them with disputing information than if you left them alone. (Think people being more convinced that Iraq had WMDs AFTER being shown reports to the contrary and hearing retractions by the Administration.) These are much more general issues than are usually discussed in Shrewsburied, but they explain alot about all the gnashing of teeth we experience related to school funding and tax burdens and such.
With regards to diversity, my personal experience is within a less diverse crowd than when growing up in just about every way (education levels, jobs, race, religion, political affiliation, income, age, you name it). My town wasn’t exactly a hotbed of independent thought, but people who disagreed with each other on spotted owls and abortion and school levies and such still socialized with each other, which I don’t see now in my own life or in the lives of my friends who still live where we grew up. It's great that your experience is different, but I wonder which of us is more typical.
-robin
I don't know how much the polarization has changed. I don't know anyone who voted for Mike Dukakis for President, yet he carried this state and a few others. Maybe it's just because I don't hang around welfare offices, crack houses or insane asylums.
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