In a effort to achieve complete escape from management reading, I recently started "Doomsday" by Connie Willis. After reading a gushing review, I'd bought the book for my wife over ten years ago. She smiled, put it on a shelf, and dove into a Michael Crichton book I'd also given her. Go figure. I thought she'd enjoy a novel about time travel and the plague.
Anyway, I finally got around to the novel and, although I'm not a science fiction fan, discovered it really is quite good; so good, in fact, that I went to Amazon to see if the book is still in print. It is. But that's not the point. What interested me was the huge disparity in the readers' reviews. Some thought it was a minor classic and others blasted away with the old "boring and predictable" charges.
What surprised me was not the difference in opinions, but the viciousness of some of the critics. Determining when an attack goes beyond acceptable and into mean can be difficult and resemble the famous definition of obscenity ["I know it when I see it"] but there is a cruelty to some of the posts. This might be forgiven, I suppose, if some wit were present but the technique seems to be one of "slash, burn, and aren't I bright for doing so?"
Clearly, the weasels were in the weeds long before Amazon reviews existed. Cruelties unleashed during various revolutions indicate most societies possess a pool of thoroughly unpleasant people. Technology has given them a soapbox.
3 comments:
I agree, Michael. I've also noticed it in comments posted to online versions of local newspaper articles as well. An article on local students recently elicited an attack from a reader directed at what the child in the picture was wearing (shorts and a tee shirt). The newspapers often allow comments containing anything short of obscenity. I've not figured out the proper way to put these critics in their place.
Where to draw the line is a tough thing to define but I think we need to attack the behavior when it sets off alarm bells regarding propriety. I know this sounds like something from Victorian England but I favor reviving the concept that ladies and gentlemen are expected to behave like ladies and gentlemen. Gratuitous cruelty falls far below that standard.
Why do people have to be so mean and angry? Is it the corruption of personal power? Since we have more freedom than ever, and this freedom is simply personal power. Evident in sayings such as 'I know my rights', 'you will pay', 'I am entitled to seek revenge or compensation'.
These concepts all enable personal power, which seems to be wielded with more virulent intensity than every.
Social expectations have seemed to keep this personal power in check, but in our modern world we have few or limited expectations of our own or others behaviors, because we 'know our rights' this is clearly displayed in TV and cinema where the rebel is the character held in the highest esteem, it's pretty boring to be nice and do the right thing.
"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"
or I prefer
"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it"
Post a Comment