You could probably eliminate half the arguments on the internet if people stopped regarding everything and everyone as commodities.
The other half of debates – respectful disagreements that cut to our fundamental assumptions about how life works (“eat the rich!” “on yer bike!”) would remain, and rightfully so. It’s my own belief that it is the very tension between those opposing viewpoints that holds the world in place: it forces one side to use their minds and the other to use their hearts.
The arguments that could disappear if people only learnt to respect each other a little more are the ones that start “I asked you not to [make that hurtful joke] [upload my album to a torrent site] [plagiarise my art] and you went ahead and did it anyway,” to which the response is “yes, but I wanted to do it and your feelings don’t matter”.
I’m not going to tag this with any one particular furore because frankly there have been too many incidences of wilful disrespect to focus too much on one display of douchery.
I always liked this video because it was lampooning a culture that went far beyond rap in which you could literally go out window-shopping for people. (The French for window-shopping is faire du lèche-vitrine – lick the window.)
The video contains 127 uses of profanity, but serves as a skilfully-made reminder of just how ugly it is when we treat each other that way.
Richard – KING