Anonymity and Accountability

I can't help myself.

Since my writing has been anaemic lately, I'm going to give a proof by demonstration that I'm not too proud to steal an idea for a post from someone else.

Especially if that someone else is a cool chick from a cool town in a cool state.

The gist of her post was that even though we've largely replaced actual interpersonal communication and human contact with texts, tweets, posts, comments, likes and +1's, it still would be nice if some semblance of human decency could be retained in this new form of "communication." In particular, the senseless hate and bad will transmitted through anonymous comments serve no purpose and it would be nice if it stopped; we could refrain from "saying" anything on line that you wouldn't be willing to say back in the more quaint days when we actually spoke to one another face-to-face. Anonymity takes the blame for being an enabler in this dysfunctional process.

I read her post and before I knew what I was doing, I'd composed a long-winded comment that was promptly rejected by the Blogger software for exceeding the 4096-character limit to comments. (though I'm grateful since I'd never before known that there was such a limit.)

Anyway, as I said, I haven't been up to posting much of anything original lately and - in any event - I hate to do that much writing only to leave it as an unwanted comment on somebody else's blog.

So here it is:

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Anonymity can be very good.

In my opinion, the principle benefit of anonymity is the ability of disassociation: separate the idea from the person so that the idea can be judged on its own merits. Politicians, philosophers, writers and artists of all types have lifted the shield of a pseudonym to enrich the world of ideas.

Think of Hamilton, Madison and Jay writing the Federalist Papers under a pen name. Think of Voltaire, Ayn Rand, Mark Twain, George Orwell, and Dr. Seuss; all pseudonyms. Would Mary Ann Evans have had her fiction published if she hadn't called herself George Eliot instead? Would Ann Landers have provided such frank and sure advice if instead the author had to use her own name, Esther Friedman, and suffered from the rebuke of lifetime acquaintances who knew that she didn't always follow her own guidance? These people were not failing to stand behind their ideas; they simply wanted people to consider the ideas - not the imperfect human minds that produced them.

There is something to be said, of course, for standing behind your principles with your own name. John Hancock and other signers of the Declaration of Independence didn't seem to have much trouble taking accountability. Not everyone is similarly endowed; we cannot all have the courage of Galileo or Martin Luther or - for that matter - Martin Luther King.

Those are the big ideas - but the small ideas can bring needless suffering to those who express them as well.

Given that we have morphed into a society where people only seem to "communicate" over open, infinitely replicable mediums, the resulting burden of accountability can be suffocating. Consider the teacher who airs a complaint about a few inept and unruly students on a Facebook wall post; or wants her friends and family to know that she's having fun and unwinding with a few fruity drinks while on vacation with her husband, and winds up unemployed as a result. A pseudonym can be liberating. (Hence: Lee Ryan)

Still, nowadays, I don't know if such fronts work so well. Even on the internet, the anonymity afforded is only a thin veil; transparent to anyone who is willing to take the time to look.

Anonymity - such as it is - and the resulting freedom also often comes at the cost of credibility. Many opinions only seem to "matter" if they come from real people with (maybe not-so-real) credentials. Those (sometimes) capable people who are willing to present their ideas to a wider audience regularly take a beating from anonymous tomato-throwers. Here I think of Nobel Prize-winning social and physical scientists, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors or simply brilliant, wise and good-tempered citizens who bother to share a piece of their hard-earned wisdom or well-considered opinions, only to be shouted-down by crowd of mouth-breathing nincompoops.


Which brings us to the bad side of anonymity on which many people can agree on.

It reveals an inherent weakness in human nature.

I am convinced that, not-so-deep down, most people (not all...I hope) are endowed with a limitless reservoir of boiling contempt towards most other people; at least people who live and work around us.(the rest of humanity, we simply do not care about enough to hate) Though polite society asks us to keep this bottled up inside, anonymous comments or profane screeds published under false identities provide a mechanism to release the internal pressure of suppressed hatred. You may not accept such an extreme view, but I can only say that there is a reason why all those smart folks I mentioned before decided that it was better if they used a false name and kept their thoughts and ideas away from those who knew them personally. This has been true even before Jesus observed that a prophet can find honor everywhere except in his home town.

That doesn't mean I think it's "ok" or "healthy" or anything like that; just that it seems to be a natural consequence of the fact that we're human. I'm not sure there is any way to fix it. Ever.

Paper Submitted

I submitted a paper to a scientific journal today.

I've got my stopwatch on.

If it doesn't get swatted back like a squash ball on a kill shot I will begin to seriously doubt the whole scientific publishing process.

Oh well. I'm a student way too close to graduation to argue over the scientific merits of a little paper only peripherally related to my research.

I'm just happy that he'll stop bugging me about it.

Hi

Lee isn't my real name. You probably want to know that.

I've blogged before. Probably 3 people on the planet know this. I've thought about blogging under my actual name, but I decided I'd rather keep my job. My real job. Which isn't blogging. But this, you already know.

I'd tell you what this blog is all about, but the truth is: I don't know. Expect to read dopey random thoughts, un-researched book reviews, blasphemous parody with an option to include gratuitous sexual innuendo. I don't shy away from being nerdy either.

Ok. Enough talk. Let the blogging (re-)commence.