I'm currently having an e-mail discussion with a certain individual over the conduct of a member of a mailing list that we both subscribe to. This individual is rather passionate and his arguments tend to be of the derogatory variety, although he makes some cogent points. He lacks the ability to see the situation from the other side, something that I think a lot of people can do but don't bother to do. Many times you want to win an argument so badly, you want to convince the other side of how right and correct and brilliant you are, that you discard anything that might conflict with your position.

In this particular discussion, there have been times when I've had the urge to just flame back at him. But I've resisted the urge. You don't convince people of anything by calling them stupid, and the only thing that getting mad accomplishes is to make yourself look foolish. Another aspect is that once I step back and think about it for a few minutes, I don't feel angry at this person anymore. For me, it's hard to stay angry at someone I don't know. They're not close enough for me to actually personify them as someone that I care about what they think or what they think of me. Mostly I'm just disappointed that he doesn't see what he did wrong, no matter what the justification.

The whole discussion is about another list member who neither know personally. This person, who is a teenager, sometimes posts rather inane and fanciful messages that are definitely off-topic. The straw that finally set off my discussion-mate was when the teenager called someone a moron in a teasing sort of way. Just the kind of thing that I'd do with my friends, but only because I know them well. This teen- ager has a habit of treating the whole list as a bunch of friends so her "insult" was meant more playfully than anything else. And the tease wasn't even aimed at my discussion-mate.

So the guy blows up and flames the kid. Someone else posts a message asking for tolerance and reason and he flames that poster too. I come in, also asking for reason and explain things as I see it and this time at least he replies to me personally. So we start our little discussion as I try to make him see the error of his methods. I think his argument boils down to: how can I dare defend the kid when what she did was clearly wrong. His is the just cause and one that has the support of more people than my side, although we're still talking about 3/4ths of the list not taking any sides yet.

My argument is that what she did is not grievous enough to justify the things he said about her publicly. She did step over the line, and we should talk to her and explain what she did wrong. In fact, I have sent a private message to her without having to attack her. She doesn't deserve to be abused the way he's doing it, and it's not going to teach her anything other than that adults are rather pigheaded.

So well argue some more and probably not get anything done. I will con- tinue to try to reason with him and he will continue to blame me for the fall of the list and a heretic. Maybe he'll focus his anger on me and spend it there instead of lashing out at other people. I don't mind if he's angry at me, he lost my respect months ago by doing the same kind of things he's doing now. But I'll continue trying because if I don't, then I won't be able to say that I tried. You can't just sit back and let bad things happen, and then complain about it. People who complain without trying to help constructively are just a bunch of hypocrites.