How Change Communities Sabotage Themselves
Summary: Change communities sabotage themselves by falling out over trifles. The felt need of many in change communities to engage in sterile recrimination among themselves over tone and language undermines the will to cohesion on which critical mass depends. Without critical mass, the change we seek cannot happen. Call it the Austria-hungry complex, where the hatred Austria-Hungary’s squabbling nationalities bore each other prior to World War I exceeded their hatred of Vienna, and helped keep the Danubian monarchy alive into the closing days of that conflict. Where hypersensitive, hyperventilating umbrage-takers and fight-pickers hijack a movement, no critical mass is possible, and what could have been a successful community-based movement or bloc fragments and dissolves. The enemies of progress prosper when change communities fall apart. Is it any wonder that a lot of queerfolk prefer to avoid such frivolous controversies, and to tend their own private gardens?
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By: Paul S. Marchand
A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Mark 6:4
No man is a hero to his mishpokhe. -Yiddish proverb
Change communities (i.e. groups or coalitions of like-minded individuals seeking to alter established dispensations) often sabotage themselves by falling out over trifles, descending into purposeless backbiting and infighting. Like-minded people flee from consensus and seek discord. Where no discord exists, it will be fabricated.
In almost any Usenet discussion thread, including threads on Facebook, the progress by which consensus breaks down can be easily detected just by reading the posts in the discussion thread. Commentor A will post or comment. Commentor B will take exception to the tone or content of A’s comment and the flame war will be well and truly underway. No matter how uncontroversial or anodyne A’s comment may have been, ineluctably there will be someone to take offense, and sadly, it is the hypersensitive umbrage-takers or fight-pickers who often wind up hijacking comment or Usenet discussion threads, indeed, entire movements.
Such tendencies particularly show up when there may be matters of public or political interest under discussion. The briefest visit to the discussion threads of the Los Angeles Times or the Desert Sun will disclose the inevitable tendency of comment threads to veer toward angry denunciations of the President, or toward off-topic personal attacks on other commentors on the thread. Moreover, the degree of emotional capital certain commentors will invest in their posts is often in inverse proportion to the relevancy or importance of the original news item. When, to cite a recent example, a comment thread on the use of Wikipedia in schools degenerated into exchanges of threats of violence, it was not difficult to conclude that way too much emotional capital was in play.
Yet, my disappointment is not with the inevitable inability of participants in a Usenet discussion thread to stay focused on the original matter under discussion, any more than it is a function of my deep suspicion of any invocation of Godwin’s law, which postulates that as the length of any Usenet discussion group increases, the probability of comparisons involving Hitler or Nazis approaches one.
Rather, my disappointment is more in the way like-minded people flee from consensus and eagerly set up barriers to joint action by engaging in self-sabotaging infighting that inevitably breaks the consensus, undermines collegiality, and destroys friendships. Moreover, many participants in any kind of consensus or movement group find the courage of conviction somewhat difficult to muster, and their want of such courage often manifests itself in the form of prim little attacks upon the tone and manner in which others express their views.
Indeed, “I agree with you, but I don’t like your tone,” has become the bane of just about any effort to organize joint action. No sooner will a more zealous and intrepid soul venture an opinion than do more timid souls emerge to find fault, and to attempt to police others’ tone. In fine, it is hard to muster any kind of commitment or conviction when fellow members of the change community are busily taking one to task over “tone.”
A sentiment often attributed to Edmund Burke holds that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good persons to do nothing. (Originally, Burke is said to have used the word “men” in its all-inclusive and traditional signification. I changed it to “persons” precisely because I know that if I were to use the word “men” someone, somewhere would take umbrage and spin out of my word choice of whole lengthy attack on my sexist male chauvinist, piggery, flaming me in the process to a well done crisp, and utterly losing sight of the issue under discussion.) The corollary here is that evil triumphs when good people fight among one another over tone, word choice, or irrelevant, overwhelm-the-main-event sideshows.
So, if I sound a little despairing, it is because I am. Former Dean Alan Jones of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral once observed that we live in an age in which everything is permitted, but nothing is forgiven. We certainly live in an age in which paragons of dust jacket erudition or would-be punctuation police either react viscerally to summaries and blurbs or flyspeck written material looking for words or phrases to which they can then take histrionic exception, flaming the author to a well done crisp.
Yet what comes of unproductive flame wars and testy exchanges? In many communities, civic minded citizens attempt to coalesce, as Gandhi once counseled, to be the change they seek. Yet, such efforts often fail because group cohesion often takes second place to gratifying the felt need of specific individuals to be seen to be right (which is apparently more important to them than doing right), score points, and police the tone or thinking of other participants in the effort. When, to cite a recent example, a commentor spins an entire rant out of the use of the phrase “make an honest man out of him” in remarks about marriage, where it is often said that to marry someone is “to make an honest man [or woman] of him [or her],” you can tell that the commentor has either missed the author’s point, or that the commentor is deliberately spoiling for a fight. Given the prevalence of hypersensitive, hyperventilating commentary on the Internet, it’s hard to give such commentors the benefit of even the slightest doubt. Does such a commentor have a legitimate point, or is the commentor merely trying to hijack the discussion, creating a sideshow the commentor apparently hopes will overwhelm the main event?
Too often, change communities founder on the rock of their unwillingness to muster the will to cohesion upon which success and positive change depend. Call it the Austria-Hungary effect, thanks to which the Danubian Habsburg monarchy was able to hold itself together into the closing days of the Great War because the minority nationalities of the Monarchy hated each other more than they hated the Habsburgs.
Scripture tells us in Mark’s Gospel that “a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country.” Jesus having been Jewish, he might with a wry smile have agreed with the later Yiddish proverb “no man is a hero to his Mishpokhe (family).” Any movement, even if ultimately successful, ultimately falls prey to its own internal contradictions. When the internal contradictions arise before a change community can reach a critical mass of self-sustaining, long-term cohesiveness, the change community dissolves.
In the marriage-equality community, our movement --at least our movement in part of the Coachella Valley -- seems to have Balkanized end fragmented. An earlier post on this blog called forth just the sort of tone-based, often primitively personal, criticism that tends to reinforce the negative reputation which some parts of the queer community have for backbiting and recrimination. As Bernard Shaw once said of the Irish, put one queer on a spit and you can always find another queer to turn him.
If we are to ensure meaningful, positive change in our community, we will need to coalesce into a broad-based community movement whose members understand the importance of vigorous, zealous advocacy, organization, and action. Unfortunately, the recent flurry of flame wars and testy exchanges among those who should be at the forefront of being the change we seek engenders skepticism about the ability of the queer nation to stay focused on our long-term goal of full first-class citizenship. Is it any wonder that so many queerfolk prefer to tend their own private gardens rather than be caught up in the recrimination and backbiting that seems to emerge when we try to coalesce for change?
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. He does not live in Palm Springs. The views herein are his own and not anybody else’s, and he expects to be roundly attacked by hypersensitive umbrage-takers. Given what has happened of late, Mr. Marchand finds himself increasingly emotionally constipated, and has difficulty giving a shit. This post is an adaptation of an earlier post originally published under the headline “Austria-hungary All over Again: Why Cathedral City Endures Bad Government.” The views herein are his own, and not necessarily those of anybody else, particularly not angry flame-warriors in Palm Springs. They are not intended as legal advice.
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