Develop personal rules: These are specific to you. A few of mine…. Never respond to an angry message from my phone. Always open a computer, sit down intentionally, and if possible wait 24 hours. ON social media – this might be a shorter time frame, but still, not until I can sit and center and not speak out of anger.

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I’m not sure if I’ve ever written down my personal guidelines. Some of these are generic to being a good online citizen (don’t feed trolls, don’t punch down, don’t respond in anger, disengage when a conversation is obviously running in circles).

Other guidelines of mine arguably come from Quaker values. For example, in general I won’t mention someone else on a forum in which they don’t appear. I’m especially wary on private Facebook groups, as they can easily become forum for detraction and us/them peer pressure.  The Tract Association pamphlet on detraction is really a must-read. It’s actually probably something worth re-reading every six months. Readers: what kind of practices have you developed to be a responsible Quaker online?

Losing yourself to anger is possible even with anger focused against injustice and cruelty. You can become so focused on the target of your rage. That you do not notice when you have lost sight of your goals and are only in it for the fight. Even following the Peace Testimony of Non-Violence we need to recognize when we are no longer being Non-Aggressive.

Like many convinced Friends, I came to the society through activism. I had met plenty of people who let righteous anger serve as cover for more visceral hatred. One eye-opening protest in the 90s was in a rural part of Pennsylvania. When one of the locals screamed the cliche of the era—“Go get a job!”—a protestor shouted back, “I’ve got a job and I make more than you.” It was true even as it was cruel and irrelevant and braggy.

I didn’t see this kind of behavior as much with the Friends I saw at various protests, which is largely why I started gravitating toward them whenever possible. I could see that there was something in the Quaker culture and value system that was able to navigate between righteous and personal anger and draw the line in difficult situations. I love Josh’s description of the “Craig Ferguson” method:

I ask myself. “Does this need to be said?” “Does this need to be said by me?” “Does this need to be said by me right now?” Doing this cuts down on moments of spontaneous anger.

This could also describe the Quaker discernment method for ministry. Maybe there’s something to the care we take (or at least aim for) in that process that gives us a little more self-discipline in the heat of protest or that helps us sort through thorny ethical issues that run through our own community.

https://quakerreturns.blogspot.com/2018/04/not-falling-into-fire-of-my-own-ire.html

+Matt Taibbi’s latest Rolling Stone piece explains the anger behind #ows: Wall Street Isn’t Winning. It’s Cheating. Really excellent. Skewers the idea that this is class warfare against the rich, focuses on the tilted playing field.

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Wall Street Isn’t Winning It’s Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucott

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The way I see it, there’s not really much need for anger on the internet. There’s sure to be something horribly offensive to your spiritual sensibilities right around the next link if only you click. Not only do we have dozens of different definitions of “Quaker,” there’s absolutely no limits over who gets to call themselves a Quaker. If we want to feel embattled or self-righteous we all have blogs we can visit, but is this really the way toward our individual or corporate spiritual growth? Is this the way to build a new movement of Friends?
The web is a land of blurriness. It’s like the open vocal ministry of an unprogrammed meeting taken up a notch or three. We have the new visitors right off the street, seekers who heard about Friends on Wikipedia or Beliefnet and went instantly off to start a blog. There’s those meeting regulars with their particular issues, dare we say hang-ups, over particular topics who get bent out of shape if others minister on them. Out in the corners are the cranky meeting back-benchers, trouble-makers who don’t mind passing on third-hand gossip or spreading half-truths if it will make them the center of someone’s attention. With this kind of mix it’s no surprise there’s conflict.
There will be disagreements. Many times we can share our understandings and grow but sometimes the gap is too large to bridge and we have to shrug our shoulders and agree to disagree. The boundaries of Quakerism have spread out so far that no one is ever going to agree that everyone calling themselves a Friend really has claim for the name. In past centuries this has led to nasty fights that have destroyed our communities. Nowadays we have the “Back” button. One of the disciplines we need to learn is how to use it.
We don’t have to read every post and we certainly don’t need to closely follow every Quaker blog out there. We are what we eat and our Quaker blogosphere is what we let it be. If the Quaker blogs seem too angry then maybe it’s time to trim your blogroll.
Trimming away annoying and time-wasting sites doesn’t mean we keep to like-minded bloggers. I don’t focus on blogs with a particular theology or ones that come out of a particular Quaker tradition. What unites my favorite blogs is the care and discernment that goes into them. These bloggers are open to those who use unfamiliar language, listening to where the words come from, and they’re curious and open to learning and tender with their comments. This is what true ministry looks like, no?
_ps: If you want to confuse people, write a post with an evocative name and then take out the reference. “Wheat” comes from the “parable of the wheat and weeds”:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2013:24–30;&version=31; which LizOpp introduced in the “comments of her post”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2006/08/popcorn-in-q-blogosphere.html and which I elaborated on in an earlier draft of this post._