Forward to the past

I can’t even remember where I read it any more, but someone raised an interesting point about the direction our society has gone. A few hundred years ago people were regularly fighting duels over honor and slights against it. If you insulted someone you could wind up in a sword or pistol duel that could cost you your life.

But then we progressed as a civilization and dueling has gone out of fashion. People learned to ignore offenses and go on with their lives instead of trying to end someone else’s.

Now, however, as we continue to progress we’re starting to backslide. If someone says something offensive these days there are hoards of people ready to take offense, even if it wasn’t directed at them. And while it’s probably good news that they don’t challenge the offender to a duel to avenge their honor, I’m not sure it’s much of an improvement that they instead gather the screaming hoards and destroy the person across a thousand websites.

I have to wonder if bringing back dueling wouldn’t actually make us a more civil society again. It costs very little assassinate a person’s character online. But if such actions carried the very real risk of bodily harm I suspect many people would think twice. I’m not advocating a return to dueling, mind you. I just can’t help but wonder if, by making character assassination so cheap, easy, and free of consequence we aren’t setting ourselves up for a worse world than what we claim to have advanced beyond.

Instead we are falling headlong into a culture where everyone feels entitled to judge everyone else, to assign the most sinister motives to the slightest action or word, rally the ruffians of rhetoric, and crucify a person over something that is really none of their business. And because there is strength and safety in numbers, no amount of backlash is going to dissuade them, because none of them suffers any personal cost. You can say anything you want, so long as you’ve got your posse backing you up.

If someone had to back up their words in a duel, even if it were with Nerf swords, I suspect they’d be less inclined to spout them in the first place. But no, we don’t do that sort of thing any more. We’re much too civilized.

Funny how today’s civilization looks so much like yesterday’s barbarism, only by different means. Might, it seems, still makes right. Funny how the Modern Age still seems rather Dark.