If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out from behind you
As you claw the thin ice  
 

Pink Floyd, The Thin Ice, The Wall, 1979 

I find it difficult to read the comments that are often invited as part of online news articles. Similarly, I struggle to comprehend the mind that sits behind the sharp, extreme and poisonous opinions offered on social media. Yet, I know the people who hold and express these views live in my community. What is it about our modern life where we feel the need to express such extreme and often puerile views?  

Is it a democratised version of the tall poppy syndrome? A world in which the moody mob rules. The Russian author Alexander Pushkin commenting on the indecent curiosity with which people were trying to obtain information about the private life of the poet Byron captured some of this feeling: 

The mob reads the confessions and notes etc., so avidly because in their baseness they rejoice at the humiliations of the high and the weaknesses of the mighty. Upon discovering any kind of vileness they are delighted. He’s little like us! He’s vile like us! You lie, scoundrels: he is little and vile, but differently, not like you. 

It seems today's mob sentiment does not limit itself to laying low the high and mighty anymore—anyone is considered fair game. Three recent news articles followed in quick succession while I was contemplating this post. In the first, Richard Flanagan reflected on how Australia’s literary circuit had become hostage to the sentiments of social media: 'Is it to be the case that Australian writers’ festivals will abandon any writer once social media turns against them? And what if the mob have it wrong?' In the second, Cricket Australia's manager of public policy and government relations was sacked for tweeting about Tasmanian politics. In the third, a well regarded National Rugby League referee (Matt Cecchin), cited the 'noise' of social media as central to his decision to walk away from his job. Cecchin told of how he had received 'hundreds and hundreds of death threats' after he refereed the Tonga-England World Cup semi-final. The New Zealand Police and Australian Federal Police became involved as security for his family was raised as concern. The sentiment of the indiscriminate and anonymous mob threatens and rules.

But this is a description not an explanation.  

Like others, I wonder whether the anonymity of the internet gives people the opportunity to express views in ways they would not if they found themselves in the presence of that person. (Although, politicians and ex-politicians seem to be a growing cohort that is an obvious exception to this hypothesis. And, their behaviour in all this is profoundly influential.)

We all seem to have become more critical, demanding and entitled in our views. But it is the absence of relationship that seems to create the space for this behaviour. This is the thin ice on which we are all skating. 

Relationship assumes continuity of contact through time. We live in communities bound by relationship. In these communities our behaviour has history and consequences. An observation by Albert Camus best captures this sentiment: 

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they presuppose further developments, a future—and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with people. 

We live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with people. To sustain a relationship, I need to exercise restraint, demonstrate empathy, and show tolerance. Camus was a strong critic of leaping to extremes—of taking extreme positions in order to justify our sense of how the world works or how we would like it to work.  

Our hypercritical behaviour seems to assume there are no ongoing relationships, nor are there consequences for words, nor effects of words on others. It assumes no relationship. Cloaked in anonymity, the individual has absolute primacy. This is at odds with the values of community: respect, restraint and prudence. In a positive community, extremes are moderated by social norms developed through interaction.  

Interactions have ‘criticism’ as a feature of our developing relationships. Criticism is evaluation with the aim to improve. Criticism seeks to improve and develop, and therefore is a natural part of relationships and communities. Ultimately, criticism is a technique for arriving at shared meaning and understanding.   

It seems that in our commodified and flattened world the values of restraint, empathy and tolerance are not central to our behaviour. I would prefer a different future. The present is a little depressing. 

Notes 

I am not as well read as I have led you to believe. The Pushkin quote and the context for it can be found in Simon Leys excellent collection of essays, ‘The Hall of Uselessness’.

Richard Flanagan, I didn't want to write this, but the courage to listen to different ideas is vanishing. 

Samantha Maiden, Cricket Australia sacks worker over series of tweets about abortion.

Andrew Webster, Death threats and ongoing criticism force Cecchin to quit the NRL

Those who know me may well be screaming (in their head), ‘hypocrite!’. They would be right. I have not practised restraint as often as I would have liked. My only defence is that I continue to exercise restraint within the bounds of my obvious and abundant shortcomings.