Taking Responsibility For Our Words

As Both Writers and Readers Who Comment We Need to Exercise Care in What We Say

When we write something that others will see, we have a responsibility to consider the effects of our words.

I read an article today that discussed how sometimes the nasty comments people make on your work can be a way of healing for them. I thought about this for a while and realized it was related to another area I have been considering. This is the question regarding what kind of responsibility we have when we write things that others will read in terms of the effects of our words.

You can tell a good article because it makes you think about things you might not have considered before. The article I read did this and I found myself considering if it’s okay to write whatever we want, regardless of its effects or if not, where we draw the line.

I know most people have probably had the experience of using writing to get out their feelings or process a difficult event. People have been keeping diaries and journals for this purpose probably since the beginning of time. I imagine even cavemen had some kind of system for recording important experiences in their lives such as, “Ugh, ran from dinosaur today.”

The fact that we are so secretive about our diaries though, says that we don’t necessarily want people reading our most private thoughts. But with the advent of the internet, this changed somewhat. Whereas before, people had a private inner life that they kept to themselves, when blogging took off, the new idea that anything could be shared was born.

I think that this idea has come to reflect our society more and more in recent years. I have heard philosophical discussions about how much responsibility we have for considering other peoples’ well being vs. our own. I don’t think this was a question 50 years ago. The idea of personal responsibility to make sure that what we do and say doesn’t hurt others was just something you were expected to understand. If you did hurt someone inadvertently, you were minimally expected to apologize and try to do something that helped decrease the impact for the person..

Now though, there has been as shift towards thinking we have a far greater responsibility to ourselves compared to others. While obviously we don’t want to always put everyone else first, the growing tendency to always put ourselves first without consideration of others, is leading to a society that is lacking in empathy. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than online.

The internet and the blogging movement have led many to believe that they can write whatever they want and they aren’t responsible if others react negatively or are impacted negatively. This includes articles and posts as well as the comments that readers make after reading them.

I understand the viewpoint that people’s negative or even abusive comments or posts are ways for them to heal from some kind of difficult situation. Yet, I think this also gives people permission to say whatever they want without taking responsibility for their words or worrying about being held accountable. Just because we can write and publish something for the world to see, doesn’t mean we should always allow ourselves to do so. We still have a responsibility to be careful about what we write, even when we are going through difficult times.

We all need a set of boundaries that we use for what we write online and how we treat other publicly. The idea that we always come first and as long as it’s good for us then others will just have to understand isn’t one that is conducive to creating strong communities of people who genuinely care about each other. Unless we don’t know what we are doing, don’t know right from wrong then it’s not okay to put our pain onto someone else just because it makes us feel better.

There are many ways of coping with pain and trauma. There are people who can help and programs designed specifically for different kinds of problems and negative life events. But deciding that being in an enormous amount of pain gives us permission to throw out all the rules regarding basic human decency isn’t one that is likely to lead to long term healing. It is also one that is liable to lead to a loss of social support as it will alienate people, even those who aren’t necessarily attacked by the individual.

The internet doubles in size every year to year and a half. This means in the coming years there are bound to be even more outlets available where we can express ourselves online. Before this happens, I think it’s important to ask ourselves whether we have a responsibility to each other with regards to what we put online or just to ourselves.

Empathy and understanding are wonderful attributes to have. But I think that when they allow us to ignore how we affect others they can be misplaced.

Thanks to Shannon Ashley, Mary Wise, Glenna Gill, Luke Rowley and Gillian Sisley for inspiring this article.

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