Unlike the three first pieces, also taken from his collection, this one is not written by one of "the big names" but is a few extracts from an essay by Theodore Dalrymple, a modern English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist.
Among other things, the essay tells us the story of Richard Dawkins, who ran a website for, supposedly, like-minded people, but, annoyed with gossips and insults in the comments, announced that certain restrictions would be applied to the posts.
Here, he tells about the vile abuse he was subjected to, following his announcement.
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(Honestly, partly due to the layout, but mostly because I haven't read the book myself, I sometimes found it quite tricky to draw a fine line between the author's and his protagonist's words. Luckily, it's not critical at all for our purposes - Mary May)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/161 ... ewell-fearXander пишет: ↑05 авг 2018, 23:34 №9
Thank You For Not Expressing Yourself
The insults and abuse did not come from uneducated people. This is not surprising, really, because uneducated people are unlikely to care very much what George Bernard Shaw thought of the germ theory of disease...; most of them have other, more practical things to think about. You have to have read Bernard Shaw to care, and these days at least, I think only university types are likely to do that.
Indeed, much of the abuse, even the vilest, came from university professors. Almost to a man (or woman), they said that what I had written was so outrageous, so ill-considered and ill-motivated, that it was not worth the trouble of refutation. On the other hand, they thought its author was worth insulting, if their practice was anything to go by. I didn’t know whether I – a mere scribbler – should feel flattered that I was deemed worthy of the scatological venom of professors (not all of them from minor institutions, and some of them quite eminent).
What struck me most about these missives is the sheer amount of hatred that they contained. It was not disdain or even contempt, but hatred.
These professors of hate would, I am sure, not have put their pen to paper, in the old-fashioned way, to express their feelings; they would not have written to a newspaper in the terms in which they replied to me over the internet, and certainly they would never have expected it to be published. In the days before the internet existed, or before access to it was virtually universal, I used often to receive letters through the post in response to my articles. It is not quite true that I never received abuse, but such abuse was largely from isolated cranks – the address of the newspaper in red ink or an envelope cut in two and sealed with sellotape was a clue to disagreeably expressed dissent to come.
However, for the most part criticism of what I had written was reasoned and tolerably polite. It is with chagrin that I must admit that sometimes my critics were right: I had made a mistake in fact or logic, or (worst of all) in grammar. I consoled myself with the exculpatory thought that anyone who wrote as much as I was bound sometimes to make mistakes.
With the coming of the internet, the tone of the criticism changed. It became shriller, more personal, more hate-filled. It wasn’t just that I had made a mistake, I must be an evil person, probably in the pay of some disreputable organisation or other.
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I don’t suppose there is an easy solution to this problem; that is, if it is a problem. The auguries are not particularly good if it is also true, as it is in my experience, that professors of literature are among the worst offenders. If those who teach youth are unable to control themselves, and to keep their disagreement within the bounds of common civility, what can we expect of youth itself?[/i]
Dalrymple, Theodore. Farewell Fear