There was a time when we were all more modest, yours truly included.
I reflected on this after seeing the comments related to an article on the increasing presence of emotional support animals on college campuses. As a dog-lover, the subject is of natural interest, although the article's subject --the highly negative reactions of those who commented on the previous article about the phenomenon-- was an article about a reaction to an article, and therefore, more about humans than dogs.
In general, the comments adjudged today's students "weaklings" and exhorted proscription of animals on campuses for a variety of reasons: the animals are not trained to respect strangers, the students are too immature to care for animals adequately, the trend permits students to live in a world not at all like that they will confront after college.
I was struck by the number of comments and reflected on how convinced of our right to force our opinions on each other Americans have become. Since newspapers began permitting readers to comment on articles, legions have started spending time composing personal statements in reaction to them. With many people reading The New York Times online it's easy to click and comment.
The newspaper calls these offerings, as a whole, a "conversation". It's easy to see how useful to the goal of keeping readers continuing subscriptions the device is. However, I find the bulk of the comments so personal, so riddled with emotion, they do not rise to the level of the apercu, being neither illuminating nor entertaining.
Which begs the question, "Why do people comment?" I don't know. When someone writes a letter to a Congressman, that letter is taken seriously, pollsters will tell you: one letter is said by them to probably reflect the views of fifty people, not a considerable amount, but in the aggregate, useful to indicate what public sentiment pro or con a piece of legislation is.
A comment attached to a newspaper article, "What's the good?" Essentially, this: the writer feels vindicated, launching his view into the blogosphere. The downside of that is that all of us have come to think we are much more important than is the case.
There was a time when people hesitated to express their opinion because they knew they were unqualified to do so. Polling now makes everyone eligible to give an opinion on virtually any subject in the public domain. That the interest of pollsters is not in the opinion itself, but the trend the opinion reflects, never dampens the expressive willingness of the person surveyed; rather the opposite: it's liberating for Joe American to be asked what he thinks, and he willingly offers his views.
I had a professor of constitutional law, Charles Whelan, S.J., who used to keep a little sign on his desk at Fordham Law School: it said (as best I can remember):
Your First Amendment right to speak does not include making me hear what you have to say.
Yet no one would write for public consumption who did not believe their message would fall on deaf ears. There is a distinction, though, between the writer who believes himself able to add something to the debate, viz. as a group, letters to the editor of The Times Of London, or The Financial Times; and those letters The New York Times actually prints in its pages. The Times editors are very selective, printing only letters from people they deem authoritative on a subject and in line with their general views. Across the Pond, the British are, in comparison, still respectful of boffins (British for "expert"); and as a result, their expressions of opinion are finely worded, gently stated suggestions of confirmation or, an alternative point of view, to that in the article that inspired the response. That is to say, there is an element of modesty in the expression of the letter-writer's point of view. Not for the Brits the bombast of the American approach.
Everyone's opinion is worth as much as everyone else's opinion in America, at least superficially. Behind the scenes, the people who pull the strings may laugh up their sleeve at the vibrancy of what is called "public discourse" in the United States. The decision-makers take their counsel from people knowledgeable and qualified to give it. Letting people express themselves freely through the many media available gives the public a chance to "let off steam" harmlessly, they may say.
Is it harmless, though? If everyone thinks their opinion has equal value then no one has any reason to take the opinions of knowledgeable and qualified people as having more value than that of the hoi polo. (N.B. I couldn't get even the typing program to allow me to use the Greek for "the common people".) Thus, the debate starts at the level of the lowest common denominator: whether it works its way up to a level at which decisions can be taken in an informed way is not certain. The overall effect is a decline in respect for the knowledgeable and qualified, "intellectual snobs" as the popular media defines them. So the public debates are increasingly about rhetoric, rather than substance.
Last word: I wrote a comment to the article about the negative reactions of readers to the article about emotional support animals in the Times, which I picked out of the 212 comments offered, so I could print it at the end of this post.
Guilty as charged.
Anxiety is a normal part of life, although the competition students now face is vastly intensified from what it was like when I was a student forty years ago. I went to one of the most competitive schools in the nation and at the time, drug use and drinking were rampant: students needed to "let off steam", or just "get stoned" to forget the pressure.
Today, with students at even the most selective colleges aware that the job opportunities are fewer and fewer and only the top will get good job offers, is it any wonder students are anxious? Why clamp down on a support mechanism that is not a "gateway" to more dangerous ways of handling stress?