Social Media as a community response catalyst

Forgive the dry title-I’m attempting to steer away from comedic but uninformative post titles. Also, this post isn’t necessarily humourous.

I woke up this morning to the news of idiotic celebratory rioting, complete with overturned, burning vehicles. Our yearly celebration of mindless excess (St. Patrick’s day) brings out some terrible, anti-social behaviour in a handful of people (let’s call them “fools”).If there’s a large enough gathering, these fools will congregate and egg each other on until something tremendously stupid happens.

No matter what the excuse (St. Paddy’s Day, hockey game, tuition increase), the fools will see the opportunity to act out and they’ll jump on it. The crowd around them gives them a sense of invulnerability, as if the rules of society are fully suspended when a large enough group of people stand around together.

And, traditionally, they have had the protection of virtual anonymity. Committing crimes in front of a horde of drunken by-standers is fairly low-risk. The witnesses aren’t really in any shape to provide stellar eyewitness accounts, and they’re really in no position to stop the fools without putting themselves in danger.

But here’s a neat twist of the tale: through the instant availability of communication that social media gives us, the community at large can find out about the event as it happens, complete with evidentiary photos. Those by-standers, who have very little control over the chaos around them, have gained the ability to safely alert the community, and record the perpetrators as they commit their thuggish nonsense.That bubble of temporary immunity is shrinking at an incredible rate, as a few of the dumbest fools will find out this morning. While the fires were still burning, people were sending tweets and pictures of the fools to the police, as well as sending photos out to the community in the hopes of identifying the people in the picture.

It’s vitally important to remember that there is a clear line between good citizen involvement and vigilantism. The temptation to use this quickly gathered evidence to chase and harass the supposed perpetrators is strong, but we have to resist it. No matter how damning the ‘proof’ may appear, we still don’t have the authority or responsibility to punish the fools. Their transgressions against societal standards and the rule of law do not in any way give us license to do the same.

 

 

The fury of a 4 year old

If this blog is supposed to be about adventures in parenting (among other topics) I should try to write about dad stuff once in a while. The delightful trouble is that things are pretty even keel right now. Other than flapping my arms and crowing proudly about the little dude’s massive brainpower (starting to honest-to-goodness read!), we’ve been just keepin’ on.

There was one noticeable exception, though. A few weeks ago, during a particularly rough bedtime, my exhausted son threw a tantrum.  That’s the standard term for his behaviour – I’d say it would be more accurate to say that he lost his ever-loving mind. Not just pouty, or weepy or angry, but a full-blown loss of all restraint. Shrieking at the top of his lungs and hammering on my chest with his tiny fists.

This wasn’t the first tantrum that he’s had –  I took the brunt of what I think was his first one months ago, when he woke up a half-hour after bedtime and freaked the f*$k out. And with his history of occasional night terrors as an infant, that first tantrum was somewhat understandable. It still pushed me all the way past calm and controlled,though I managed to somehow resolve the situation. I actually pried his eyelids open during the tantrum, and that calmed him down. I think he was still kind of asleep. Sleep rage, I guess? Even after he was back asleep, I was left with immense guilt and shame for having lost my own composure and for getting angry at him for shrieking at me.

This time, he was fully awake when he launched into his tirade. I am glad to say that I had learned from the first time, and I found a place of serene compassion and calm that I hunkered down in. I was ready to gently talk to him and hug him until his cognitive process regained control of his body. My dear wife actually came in and interceded, because she didn’t want him treating me that way. It was a kind of strange dynamic, and I admit that his angry, spiteful words were pretty hurtful. But under the calm but stern guidance of my dear wife, we came together as a family and calmed down to resolve the situation.

Afterwards, it was a strange sight to see his pride fighting with his remorse as he struggled to apologize to me. He was embarrassed by his actions and he really didn’t have the ego to spare for a hearty apology. A mumbled “sorry” without making eye contact was the best he could manage. But, when I came downstairs the next morning, he made a point of looking over at me and saying “I’m sorry dad”. And that was probably one of the best apologies I’ve ever received, because it was entirely unprompted and heartfelt. He had thought about what had happened, and he felt bad.

Staring into that unthinking and defiant tantrum reminded me of the angry beast inside every one of us. It’s not that we lose the urge to throw all the rules aside and assert or will upon the things around us with violence and spite: we just learn to control it. I know that there are times that I just want to punch walls, kick over tables, and scream at the world for not obeying my commands, and I think that’s common to all of us. We live in a universe that doesn’t really care about fulfilling our desires, and that is immensely frustrating to a species that is so self-important. So, in staring down the lad’s tantrum and finding a peaceful way to deal with it, I’m also re-enforcing my own coping mechanisms, putting new chains on the rage beast.

In defense of Partisans

Our ongoing national dialogue about state of Canadian politics is touching on some very necessary topics, like the ones covered in this article.  I’ve seen this article shared on Facebook and Twitter several times, and I’m glad that it’s being talked about. There’s one clarification I’d like to make to everyone who uses the word ‘partisan’ as a label for the people responsible for our current political morass: ‘partisan’ isn’t a dirty word.

Maybe it’s just the language geek in me, but I can’t accept an automatic negative connotation to ‘partisan’. It simply means “a supporter of a person, party, group, or cause”.  You could easily substitute the word ‘fan’ for ‘partisan’ and it would work just as well.  And just like a room full of Leaf fans, there will be a wide range of personalities within any partisan crowd. Some will be blindly partisan, committed to the cause no matter what the team does or how badly it abuses the rules of the game. But there will be a large number of thoughtful, respectful fans there too. Those fans will cheer when the team plays hard and clean, but they’ll make their disappointment known when the team starts to play dirty.

And that cuts to the heart of the problem we’re facing in the current political climate: not enough respect for the rules of the game.  Good sportsmanship demands that you care about how you win, not just winning itself. A victory made possible by exploiting the rules isn’t much of a victory at all, and it certainly doesn’t reflect the dignity and seriousness that government requires. It’s the job of the partisan to police their own team, and make sure that the leaders they support are acting in a way that they can be proud of. We don’t need leaders who are “shamelessly political”, we need leaders who avoid doing shameful things.