BBC Radio 4 2016-04-15

BBC Radio 4 2016-04-15

Good Morning,

With reports of on-line abuse from around the world on the rise, it feels like a new pandemic is at large. The internet’s speed and reach, abetted by its anonymity, have seen abuse disseminated faster and wider than ever before. According to Maria Miller, the former culture secretary, Britain needs better internet laws to stop on-line abuse. In a recent interview she’s as quoted saying ‘people are unleashing their inner venom in a way that is not healthy for society.’

But you don’t have to dive below the line of a chat forum, or surf the news to encounter this poison. It can surface in the composition of our most perfunctory texts and emails. It’s there in a careless word choice or the uncertain tone. It’s in the group chat I should never have entered whilst in such a foul mood. Or the terse response I gave to a polite request. Back in the pre-lapsarian days when the internet seemed innocent, a wise friend told me never compose an online message you wouldn’t want the world to see. Ah! Too late. The message has been sent. And there’s no way to redact it. In this speedy world of words such advice is all too easy to ignore.

But if the platform is new, the problem – the venom – is surely as old as snakes. When Christ, in a moment of choicely worded anger, accuses his abusers, saying ‘you brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?’ he goes on to state a helpful truth, namely that what the mouth says (or fingers type) is determined by what’s going on inside that chamber of conscience – our hearts. And it’s to the heart that the antidote needs to be applied.

Aside from creating new laws, we can do something else about it. We all have what you might call an inner editor. We probably just need to engage it more rigorously when composing messages and reading those of others. Of course, it’s not just about what we say. Sometimes the best antidote to a toxic exchange is to say nothing. Being someone who is hasty to speak myself, I admire those quiet ones who look wise by saying nothing. Saying nothing is often the right thing to say. We have the right to remain silent. We just don’t always exercise it.

Perhaps we need a set of virtual commandments to help us avoid, diffuse and redeem the abuse. Scripture may have been written long before broadband but it offers surprisingly handy tips on how to operate in the virtual world. I paraphrase, but the next time your fingers hover over the send button, take a pause and ask yourself: are these words full of grace, seasoned with enough salt, will they say what is helpful, and build up and benefit the reader? Perhaps then the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts will be acceptable in their sight.