On one of the news and opinion websites which I frequent, there is a rule called the Hinz rule.  It is named after a very wise and deceased blogger (who died two years ago this Thanksgiving) who was well known for ignoring trolls.  A troll is someone who comes online looking for a fight and does not know the proper respect for others.  The way you determine whether someone is like myself–fierce in debate but interested in genuine intellectual conversation, or whether someone is immune to truth and just interested in pontificating disrespectfully is to chat for a while and see the give and take, if it’s all take and no give, then the Hinz rule is invoked and the person is ignored or their messages deleting.  It’s an effective way at minimizing someone’s enjoyment online.

Why are people trolls?  Let’s face it.  Some people just aren’t good or nice.  Some people enjoy conflict and gain pleasure out of irrational hostility (it’s a perverse enjoyment, but this fallen world is full of such perversions).  While I would venture to say that most of us feel most comfortable around others we can bang ideas off of (which requires some differences) with enough worldview similarities that there is mutual respect and consideration, some people deliberately seek worldview enemies because they thrive on hatred.  Invoking the Hinz rule (or something similar) shuts off that sort of enjoyment and keeps the particular forum free for those who wish to maintain civil discourse.

What I am particularly interested in, though, for my own musings into conflict, is what it means when it is no longer possible to have civil discourse across our differences.  I know that I am not the most civil or diplomatic person, though I also see a growing inability to have any sort of communication across worldview boundaries, and this deeply worries me.  When talking is impossible, and when others cannot hear what one is saying (and when you cannot hear what they are saying) because the mistrust and hostility gets in the way, there are not many options left.  In the internet, one can simply leave (or remove someone) so that you do not have to interact with them.  This is a common enough solution, but it is only possible when there is space between the two people or two parties involved.

What do you do when it is members of the same neighborhood, or family, or congregation?  You fight and quarrel until you divide and find some sort of peace between warring parties.  I used to think that perhaps this was a personal problem mainly for me, the more I see the more I see this fighting and quarreling around me.  And certainly, I must admit that my own upbringing in a deeply quarreling family have not helped me to learn conflict management skills very well.  My particularly strident and harsh personality doesn’t do me any favors either, a matter in which I have considerable responsibility.  Nonetheless, the problem is not merely personal, it is systemic and societal, here in Thailand, in the United States, and everywhere else I go.  I can’t get away from it–wherever I turn my attention I see the coming threat of war with nothing to do but either try to hide in a shell or do some hard calculations on which side I’d rather be on when it erupts into open violent conflict.

And that is a much bigger problem.  When I was a high school student, as a sophomore, I write a scene and acted it in both the county and state competition of History Day (that later became part of a larger play) where a mid-16th century German noble has to ponder which of two sides he wishes to join.  Does he wish to join the Lutheran princes or the mighty and corrupt Roman Catholic Austrian Emperor.  In the end he decides to join neither and becomes the enemy of both.  His lands are dispossessed and he is martyred for his foolish attempt at neutrality.  Perhaps we may all have to make similar choices before very much time.

In reading about generational theory, I have discovered that despite the fact that my birthday is often considered part of the “Millennial” period that my mindset is far more of an individualistic and moderately cynical Generation Xer.  Whenever the crowd-thinking Millennials come of age there is some sort of crisis for them to become cannon fodder in resolving.  There was the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and World War II just within the American experience.  And now we face the next crisis.  For many years I have wondered what it would be, looking at all of the fault lines in the culture wars within our country, as well as the threat of foreign conflict with radical Islam.

And looking at the trolling and fighting going on, I have pondered that it just may be debt and public services that spark the conflict.  In a society as divided as ours, and where so many winners and losers have been unethically chosen by governments and by crony capitalism (bailouts for big banks and auto manufacturers, for example), a situation that is not only the case in the United States but all over the world, there is a lot of worry.  In Thailand, for example, a socialized medicine bill was passed saying that any disease would be cured for 30 baht (about a dollar), so long as one was a Thai citizen.  Some societies are trying to bribe their populations with social benefits (Obamacare was an example of this).  Other cultures are facing the dire news that their debt is unsustainable and someone has to pay.  And no one is willing to pay?

What does this have to do with trolls and with the threat of social violence that we see all around this world with rioting and police crackdowns?  They all spring from the same fundamental problem, and that is an unwillingness to see things from the perspective of others, to respect others, to consider their opinions and perspective worthwhile, or to care anything about them at all except to use them as a foil for one’s hostility.  How does one resolve that problem?  How does one build enough common feeling to bridge the yawning gaps between divided societies headed for self-destruction?  I don’t have a clue, but I do know that one can’t feed the trolls.  Perhaps we just need to starve them to death.