Paksworld

No one here has made this mistake.  However, in the greater blogosphere, I see this kind of thing coming and going, and as far as this blog is concerned, I want it to go and stay away.

“What?  What’s wrong?” I hear you say.  

What’s wrong is commenters  on a blog disrespecting one another and claiming the high moral ground–using their own presumed superiority to dump on others.   Again I say–I am not seeing this here.   But I’m seeing a surge of it outside this blog.   Sometimes I see something caught in moderation, or on a listserv I’m on (I’m on a bunch of listservs–great way to lose track of time!), or in other blogs, or Twitter, etc.

And the only way to keep a blog free of same–to make it a safe place for visitors/regulars to chat peaceably about Paksworld– is rigorous moderation.   Some may consider it too rigorous, but (exercising the moderator’s right to make such decisions)  it’s my blog, so I get to be as picky as I want.    (And I know you don’t want to read rambling spam about how wonderful the blog is, that is from someone selling knockoff shoes, cheap watches, body part enlargement pills, so I moderate that right into the dumpster too.  Akismet catches most of it, but not quite all, so there’s always some new trick they try.)

Hence, the gentle reminder.  Everybody has a past that colors their attitudes.  Everybody has an ego.  Everybody–even the gentlest–has hot buttons.   We can enjoy the space and the conversations as long as we all remember that we are all equal (OK, I’m more equal, but that’s for the totally old-fashioned reason that I pay the bills to keep the lights on…I do consider myself one of the group.)   If someone really is morally superior, then let whatever Deity is considering that person morally superior keep score for later, and let everyone else have the benefit of the doubt.   (Since the people in Texas who most claim moral superiority are politicians and preachers whose main theme is hatred and whose income puts them well up the wealth ladder…I kinda doubt the self-proclaimed saints. )

When you sense you’ve stepped on someone’s hot button…back off.  We can disagree peaceably up to a point, and when that point shows up like the head light of a train coming down the track…get off the track.   As one old lady was heard to say “Y’all can fit an’ feud somewheres else–that’s my flower bed.  Git on now!”

And finally:  I say this not because you’re fittin’ and feudin’ in the flower bed, but because I want to head off any accidental lapses.  This is a polite little sign IN the flowerbed “Please do not stomp the flowers.”

(And why did that analogy show up?  Because the SXSW visitors have been tromping through a garden strip in the middle of my downtown church’s parking lot, right on top of baby bluebonnets, which has the head of the gardening guild in a royal snit.   “We did all that work…” he said in the first angry email to everyone remotely associated with it.   And of course bluebonnets are the state flower.  And that this stage in a bluebonnet’s life, it looks like a little gray-green weed: there is no flower.    And the crowds walk across the parking lot at night, because the bands play nearly all night long in one venue or another.  But he’s furious at the disrespect.  SIGH.)