Yesterday one of my colleagues approached me, whose work I respect very much. He said that he reads my writings and sometimes comments on them, but he assumed that I do not read those comments. I said that I read, because, no matter whether he agrees with me or not, there is nothing “poisonous” in his writings, and no desire to hurt someone for self-establishment. My experience as an editor for many years allows me to understand what the writer’s motives are from the first sentence, and accordingly, to read or not to read his writings. Since most of the comment writers on Aravot.am and Facebook are the same people, my job gets easier to a great extent, meeting certain names or pseudonyms, I just ignore their comments.
I behave similarly when a comment starts with scolding. My Internet experience has gone through three stages: 1) to read the comments and reply, which is tiresome, 2) to read those and not to reply, it saves 50 percent of your nerves, 3) not to read.
In general, I think, people spend a lot of time trying to persuade each other, to justify themselves, to find “killing” counterarguments (mostly personal) and win in any dispute. This is really senseless, it reminds me of the dispute between us and Azerbaijanis, which is regularly accompanied by curses on the Internet: “we are the most ancient nation-no, we are”, “dolma is our national dish-no, it is ours”. Have you ever met an Azerbaijani who changes his opinion after the dispute and says, “well, you convinced me, dolma is yours”? I, frankly speaking, have not met such, and after reading those disputes (before I was reading), I could not remember anything except the insults. Instead of losing time on these disputes, is not it better to strengthen our own state, economy, army, to counterattack the next attack of the opponent?
The same logic is also applicable to “internal disputes”. Instead of looking for the flaws of your opponent, is not it wise to use the same time to correct your own flaws, to become stronger, more confident, follow your own agenda, to achieve your own goals? And let the others be guided by their own agenda and try to achieve their goals. And who is good and who is bad – it, after all, is relative.
Mexican writer Miguel Ruiz writes that the worst roles that people can take are two: the role of a Judge and a Victim.
