Most of the time the moderate position gets lost in the debate, which focuses on the extremes. Moderates can come under attack from both ends for not agreeing completely with their end of the issue.
Sometimes the extreme position is the reasonable one. Sometimes the moderate position
seems extreme because it is in opposition to an extreme position, and the opposite extreme is completely off the table.
I do think that it should be possible to argue any point starting from a position of civility. I insist on it in my classroom, regardless of the point of view being expressed, even if I agree completely with it.
Disagreeing with someone else, even strongly, does not mean abandoning common courtesy.
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Originally Posted by pan6467
I find that in the past communities strove to move forward and people cared about one another.
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We've moved far beyond the era of the nation-state (with a few exceptions). Many Western countries, and the US specifically, are not in any sense of the word communities. The US is instead a collection of communities and subcultures, where individuals belong to some by chance and others by choice, and few are members of just one. Sometimes communities may have conflicting interests, while others, while not having conflicting interests, desire growth through the spread of their ideals to others, through persuasion or coercion.
It's a web of communities interacting and affecting each other in sometimes strange and unexpected ways.
There's nothing wrong with this vast community of smaller communities. The diversity brings opportunities that don't exist in otherwise.
Part of the problem of civility is that different subcultures are going to have different standards of behavior, and these will come into conflict with the standards from one are applied to another or within another. For this reason, we need to have an overall guideline for such interactions to minimize conflicts, a standard set of expected behaviors for all members of the overall community.
What that should be is where we're going to run into conflict. I think showing a general respect for others should be the baseline from which we start.
Gilda