ὦ ξεῖν̉ ἀγγέλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμαθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

Blogs

I've decided that the effect of blogs on the soul is very similar to that of being in a car. When you're driving, it's easy to get mad at other drivers for being careless or stupid or just really inconvenient. However, this emotion is not checked by the natural respect people have for one another when face to face. We wouldn't say to Mrs. Reynolds, age 85, to her face anything like what we say to her from the comfort and anonymity of our car. This depersonalization of human interaction prompts a decay in normative social behavior. People are ruder to each other when they don't have to deal with an actual person. When you don't see the other person, you don't have to deal with the fact that you're hurting someone by what you say. But by becoming habituated to this dehumanization of social interaction, people crush even that natural human response to personhood of the other. Cars -- and blogs -- enable the disabling of the power to see each other as true others, as persons endowed with personality and hence with dignity. As a remedy, I propose that cars and computers be abolished and that we return to the stone age.