This is Part Two of a three-part series that will wrap up next week. Look back at Part One for how Parker Palmer said we “kill” people. Stay tuned as we continue this conversation about the people we’ve all killed lately, and how we might stop.
The anonymity that allows us to “kill others off,” as Parker Palmer puts it, is never more evident than in the comments posted on the web. It happens on news reports about strangers, and even on each other’s social media sites, within much smaller degrees of separation.
With my work at the prison, I read a lot of news reports about criminals–some that I know and more that I don’t. I’ve learned that, to maintain my equanimity and (mostly) optimism about the human race, I must always, always, always stop reading at the end of the article, and never, never, never read the comments.
I have failed to heed this principle often enough that I know what happens in that faceless, (virtually) anonymous cesspool of viciousness called the “Comment Section.” A lot of people get “killed off” there, as Parker Palmer described. It’s the perfect killing field, populated with faceless, (virtually) anonymous strangers. The first to be killed is the person the article is about. “Put her away, and throw away the key.” (Or worse.) Then, it’s the person who wrote that cold-blooded comment who is belittled and portrayed as absurd. And back and forth, on and on.
We “kill each other off,” again and again, when political questions get addressed in the media and on social media. Attitudes on both sides are so strong. Rabid. Deep fears with differing roots keep us far from one another, day after day.
So, in this sense, we “kill off” a lot of people who find their way into the news. We do it to active shooters and sexual predators. We do it to young activists who seek to change things like climate change and gun violence. We do it to witnesses who testify in impeachment inquiries, and the questioners, and to the persons whose conduct is being investigated. We do it to bishops and complainants and respondents and other leaders in proceedings we lament even within, say, the United Methodist Church.
In too many spaces, we’ve given up actually communicating. We simply repeat our settled opinion that I’m right, and you’re…beyond reasoning, and therefore nothing you can say is meaningful to me.
I know I can’t stop this kind of killing. It’s going to happen. But I’d like to learn how not to participate in it, and how to create an environment where less of this killing happens. “I aspire to be a non-violent person,” says Parker Palmer, in Undivided Life. That’s as close as he comes—even the venerable, peace-teaching Parker Palmer!— to saying he’s able to actually do it.
But it’s a start. Perhaps for us as well.
*This week’s image is from a 2018 article on this subject from St. George News out of St. George, UT.
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