Do you believe that some cultures/societies are more 'civilized' than others? What is your definition of 'civilized' / what does it mean to be 'civilized'?
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If you've studied history and/or anthropology then surely you've heard many uses of the term "savages" to describe groups of people that were considered to be less 'civilized' than whomever was writing that piece.
I was also just reading a book that described in detail some of the really horrible war crimes committed by both sides in the Sri Lankan civil war including but not limited to: raging mobs burning people alive, murder and rape of civilians, use of child soldiers, suicide bombers, etc. Please note that in no way am I considering the people of Sri Lanka as 'uncivilized', just using an example of what seems to be 'uncivilized' behavior.

An initial thought that I had was "huh, I'm glad I don't currently live somewhere where I could be burned alive based on my ethnicity/religion/beliefs by a rage fueled mob of people", but then the history of the western world came to mind - some of those exact same thing happened less than 100 years ago to many non-white groups of people in America, including some things even worse (read: human slavery). From here came a flood of other thoughts poking holes in whatever my initial definition of 'civilized' was. Plenty of things in present-day United States could be considered uncivilized. Yet one could make an argument that a more 'civilized' civilization might be one that allows many personal freedoms.

So, I want to ask all of you what you think of the concept of being 'civilized'. Is it a colonialistic-type term used to promote a higher sense of placement in the world that should be abolished. Does it have any merit in its use? If so, what do you think makes a civilized group of people and does one exist?

Everything I said was heavily downvoted, even though I was making valid points and 90% of the replies were mockery or useless dribble. The few people that attempted to engage in discussion with me were either just has heavily downvoted as me (even though their views were opposing mine) or were unable to do it in a logical or civil manor. It wasn't even a really controversial topic, my opinion is just something that is in contrast of the greater "hivemind".

I know we are not where I think most of us would like to be just yet, but I had not been back on Reddit for a while and I feel like I made a good decision by distancing myself from the Reddit community. I really enjoy the community we are building here.

Anyway, I kinda just felt like I needed to post this. I know it's not really high quality content (and I honestly had no clue where to post it), but I wanted you guys to know I appreciate all of you.

❤

On my way to work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker on a truck in front of me. It said "Ecology is not a religion", my first thought was this guy is an idiot, etc. etc. Then I began dismantling the entire bumper sticker in my head while I drove. "Of course ecology isn't a religion, it is a science! -ology denotes a field of study!" I don't know why, I guess to reassure myself the world wasn't falling to pieces. This brought up a question that often crosses my mind but I've never had an answer for: How do you discuss open minded topics with close minded people?

This doesn't necessarily have to focus on ecology and environmental issues, any "controversial" issue that one side might become completely close minded to could qualify. Homosexuality, gender identity, gun rights, and privacy all come to mind. If you spend any amount of time on Internet forums and boards, you've come across someone like this. No matter how much scientific fact, evidence and truth you show them, they simply deny it. They cherry pick what you presented to make their point, they pull the fake news card, etc. How does one deal with this?

In my mind, I don't think there is any way one can deal with it. How do you reason with someone who is explicitly rejecting reason? I'm not asking "how do you change their mind?", doing such a thing is quite difficult and shouldn't be the primary goal of a debate (though it could be a byproduct of a healthy debate). I don't like to attribute one's opinions on some topic to their entire personality. Just because I disagree with them doesn't make them bad, nor I to them. Sometimes, this is a hard pill to swallow. How do you a) converse or debate with these people with an end product being improved mindsets on both sides, and b) swallow the proverbial pill?

In the end, we all need to talk to each other, or else we end up in 2018 where the sitting president rejects scientific fact, politicians are being elected on planks of homophobia, racism, and denial of science, and intolerance is the new norm it seems.

I'll level with you right now: I hate both of these terms.

"Political Correctness" is a term that gets used by a lot of people to talk about what I would consider to be basic politeness ("don't intentionally offend someone if they've made it clear they don't like a word, or would prefer to be referred in a certain way; just try"). I have suspected for a while that what these people typically really mean when they talk about political correctness is a fatigue with feeling like they're being forced to meet standards of politeness that are decided by others, and which they do not share.

"Civility" is a term that gets used just about every way you can imagine. It can mean politeness, it can mean "nonviolent protest," it can mean voting, it can mean only certain kinds of protest, and it can mean meeting decorum (which is a more formal way of saying politeness, but it has its nuanced differences, so I suppose I'll list it, goddamn, twist my arm why don't you). The range of possible meanings makes it pretty annoying, and borderline useless to talk about directly.

The title of this thread is an intentional play on one of my frustrations with a munk debate which was shared about a month ago. I believed the terms were too dependent on who "you" are in the statement. So rather than have them redo the munk debate, I thought we could have one of our own.

I definitely have my own views on this claim (that I'll be sharing below), but this has been such an awkward issue on this site that I think it's worth exploring directly. So explore with me:

1. Is there a difference between "political correctness" and "civility"?
2. Is either term valuable to society?
3. Why the hell are so many people so hot and bothered about these two terms, and also seemingly unable to interact meaningfully with anyone else?

Tildes is still in the process of being built and there's been much discussion on what kinds of content and posts we'd like to see here. Users have also been outspoken about the content and posts that they think should be discouraged. With this in mind, I thought it might be interesting for us to have a conversation about how to engage in a civil conversation with someone with whom you disagree, and what kinds of behaviors make a discussion worthwhile.

Here are a few links to get us started.

• A Better Way to Argue by Jay Heinrichs
• One Civil Conversation Please from schoolofthought.org
• The Danger of a Single Story a TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation a TED Talk by Celeste Headlee

So what do you think? How should we communicate with each other in order to really make Tildes a great place to engage with one another? Do you have any conversation tricks or rules that have been successful in your own lives? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

For the past few months I felt less and less inclined to engage in conversation on Reddit and other discussions platforms. The risk of any expression being met with a (severely) negative response is just too great. I don't know if it was always like this and that I just don't find it worth it any more or if there is an actual trend of people being more of an asshole more of the time to each other online.

I've only joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and enjoy most of my time here. I've also noticed that I'm now more active again on other platforms. It's made me want to express myself again. I put more effort in my contributions. I'm not necessarily getting more pleasant responses, but there are fewer negative ones, I think.

Does this sound familiar to any of you?

I've seen a few remarks here and there that have implied sort of matter-of-factly that places like /r/The_Donald have no redeeming value, the community members are awful (and undesirable to have here), their ideas are all reprehensible, etc. I assume that this is mostly just due to the demographic coming primarily from popular reddit mod teams where being anti-Trump is sort of an unspoken requirement - but I don't really know for certain.

It reminds me a little of this woman in a class i had once, who spoke to me about atheists, assumed I was christian just as a matter of course. It's kind of an awkward situation to find yourself in. I don't identify as an atheist, but if someone is mildly insulting atheists, it's uncomfortable. You have to be a covert conservative (or covert center-right, or even left-leaning Trump voter) or else you risk being blasted/flamed/mocked/etc. in places like reddit.

Part of what attracted me to Tildes was the sales pitch that it is to be a community for civil conversation, no hate-speech/bigotry. I think that's a perfect environment for political discussion - far more than shit-flinging and nuclear downvoting on /r/politics. So even if I'm the only MAGA person here, maybe there's a chance we can actually have civil conversations on topics we might initially disagree on...?

Edit: wow! Really happy to have these conversations with folks. Sad that i haven't encountered any fellow (public) Trump voters/supporters yet but very pleased that things have been civil as advertised. ;) Apologies for slow responses, trying to give proper thought and consideration to all the comments!

Edit2: gotta head to bed. sorry to anyone i haven't responded to questions from. feeling a bit like a novelty "And here's our token Trump voter. ha ha, he sure is a quirky one, isn't he, that crazy dictator-enabler!" xP. I'll try to answer any questions I've missed tomorrow. Sleep well, all (well, all who are going to sleep before I get back).

Edit3: Thanks for the open engagement, all you people who live in a different reality!

Still a bit bummed there aren't any MAGA friends here yet, but I've been blown away by how cordial most of you have been (i hope we can retain this culture into the future of the site). For those who are just coming in and don't want to read everything, I'd say a tl;dr of the conversations I've had below is:

• most people here want to engage with others on important topics without the shit flinging,
• some people express disbelief that someone can not be a bigot or racist and vote for Donald Trump,
• I've been repeating in various conversations the Laurel and Yanny thing is a great metaphor for the polarized camps experiencing different realities, seeing different movies on the same screen.

I'm continuing to try to reply to questions, and in the spirit of not provoking heated emotions I have been trying not to argue any of my political beliefs except that both sides are seeing different realities.