November 4th, 2009
Not tolerating the intolerant
Community meets at the intersection of ideas and ethos. Whether you are involved in open source, free culture, digital rights, social change or green issues, community forms when people with drive and passion for an ethos share their ideas and volunteer to make those ideas a reality.
Most people are simply not wired up this way. Most reject volunteerism in search of making money, satisfying career ambitions, relaxing or spending time with friends and family. As such, when said volunteers in any of these many and varied communities decide to take time away from these other elements in life to work with our communities, we generally come to conclusion that they are rather nice people.
Each of these rather nice people deserve a rather nice environment to do their work in. When volunteering they should be able to indulge in a productive, pleasant and pleasurable environment that rewards great work and celebrates the exchange of both agreeable and challenging opinions, ideas and views. Unfortunately, in the midst of these exchanges, intolerance can sometimes set in, causing a destructive wake in our communities.
Let’s face it, Open Source isn’t exactly short of strong opinions, and it is easy to see why. The kind of personalities that are attracted to Open Source have all the ingredients fit for throwing both feet into a debate. They are rarely the sheep of convention, but instead independent thinkers who are comfortable with change, often technically literate and empowered in an environment that challenges them. Of course, these are wonderful traits, but if not managed effectively, they can generate dismissive attitudes towards opposing opinions.
Of course, everyone disagrees with someone at some point, and disagreements are a healthy and expected part of any community. While trolling is never acceptable, healthy and vibrant debate should always be encouraged and celebrated. These debates are often the cornerstones of change and personal development. What is unhealthy though is when participants of the debate become unwilling to consider alternative viewpoints, often because they have mentally labelled those with opposing views. These labels present an obstacle for us to grow and learn from these people, even if we vehemently disagree with them.
There are countless examples of this in existing communities. In the debate over user interface design, programmers are sometimes labelled by designers as people unable to look past the 0s and 1s and on the flip side designers are sometimes labelled by programmers as as arty-farty air-kissing creatives who don’t understand technology. In a more worrying example, the recent topic of women in Open Source has seen some who are passionate about the debate being labeled as extremist feminists and those who provide alternative viewpoints labelled as sexists.
Labelling prevents solutions-focused problem-solving. In the latter example, few involved in the debate are extreme feminists and few are sexist. The reality is that most people engaged in the discussion are passionate about having women be part of the Open Source revolution, they just differ in the how, the why, and the what. When these differences cause people to label those who disagree with them (e.g. branded as extremist feminists or sexists), it often causes divisive communities. Divisive communities are never healthy: they instead turning into warring factions, hell-bent on proving each other wrong.
We see these kinds of divisions elsewhere in life: people labelled as republicans, democrats, liberals, conservatives, socialists, religious people, atheists, hippies, politicians, activists and more. In many of these cases these labels pre-populate our expectations, often generating a tribe-like commitment to the opposing viewpoint: when we see republications we feel more like democrats, when we see hippies we feel more conservative etc. Tribes are natural, but we often need to look beyond them to really learn from each other.
I urge you all to instead focus on solutions. One of the most rewarding and invigorating elements of debating is the opportunity for personal growth. Speaking personally, and this will not exactly be an epiphany to regular readers of my work, but I have held some rather strong opinions over the years. Throughout this time I have always sought to be frank and honest when my opinion changes as a result of debate, and I am not afraid to admit when I am wrong. Examples of this include debates around software freedom, women in Open Source, marketing, the goals of design, usability, venture capital, the monarchy, universal healthcare, the prison system and more. In many of these topics I had the wrong end of the stick, typically clutching to a view that was either antiquated and less informed than it could have been, and then when I became more informed, I was happy to adjust my perspective. Each time this happened I felt I had grown as a human being, and when I see others do the same, I develop tremendous respect for those people.
People who are open to changing their views based upon new information demonstrate that they are not tribally committed to a position, and it is these people who show remarkable leadership abilities in our communities. You will often find their objective insight aboard governance bodies, boards and leadership positions. These people are a valuable resource in any community and you should cherish them. If you are a member of a community I strongly encourage that you contribute to a culture of finding solutions and not labels in disagreements and developing a norm in which community members are comfortable to adjust their views, whoever challenges them. It is these small seeds that grow strong, liberated and expressive communities.
Image from here.
