New York Times' opinion writer David Brooks and I aren't exactly politically close, to put it mildly.
Which makes the opinion pieces that come out of his perceptive pen with which I wholeheartedly agree all the more precious. His latest is a stoic piece on how to intelligently deal with the comment section to his pieces - a good portion of which is probably filled with hatred, blind harassment or just plainly wrong statements - and it is one of his most brilliant. A few excepts:
It’s not only newspaper columnists who face this kind of
problem. Everybody who is on the Internet is subject to insult, trolling,
hating and cruelty. Most of these online assaults are dominance plays. They are
attempts by the insulter to assert his or her own superior status through
displays of gratuitous cruelty toward a target.
The
natural but worst way to respond is to enter into the logic of this status
contest. If he puffs himself up, you puff yourself up. But if you do this you
put yourself and your own status at center stage. You enter a cycle of keyboard
vengeance. You end up with a painfully distended ego, forever in danger,
needing to assert itself, and sensitive to slights.
Clearly,
the best way to respond is to step out of the game. It’s to get out of the
status competition. Enmity is a nasty frame of mind. Pride is painful. The
person who can quiet the self can see the world clearly, can learn the subject
and master the situation.
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