A blog from one of our members that explores why online arguments seem so much much more disruptive to organising than what we are used to offline. An extract from the conclusion many online disagreements are actually not trivial but very important and so that rather than being silenced they should be brought off-line, brought into physical space where many of the disadvantages outlined above are counter acted. Humans are meant to have strong, heartfelt and often angry disagreements as part of our decision making processes. Their existence is not in itself a problem, indeed an insistence on cold rationality and emotionless discussion may be a far bigger problem as it will exclude all except those who can perform disagreement in such a manner, skills that are very often tightly connected to privilege. As humans we have also collectively developed many, many skills and procedures for the handling of conflict in a productive fashion. Some of those are pretty terrible and designed to magnify the power of those who already have power. The court system for instance is constructed in a way to greatly favour those with education and money while pretending to provide a neutral space. But a lot of work has also been done by radical groups to create spaces for discussion that are either genuinely neutral (as with many trade union procedures) or which are weighed to reduce the disadvantages of those who are marginalised and the advantage of those who have privilege will bring with them. Developing such skills & structures online needs to be part of the tool set of all of us who organise to change the world.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 16:35:01 +0000
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