There may be a group of people today who are far more tolerant and accepting, their numbers increased by young people who have grown up in a far more connected world, and have been exposed to more creeds and races than their forebears. That’s a good thing. And we should, rightly, be intolerant toward the intolerant, a lesson that humankind has to relearn repeatedly.
We don’t do it terribly well because by creating one club, we run the risk of labelling others and ostracizing them if there’s just one thing that might be triggering.
Those who have read my Autocade yearbooks will know that substantial amounts are devoted to EVs because they reflect what’s going on in the world. Yet even on apparently friendly Mastodon I’ve encountered people from the anti-oil brigade who’ll jump to conclusions that Autocade’s ‘The joy of cars’ tagline and the mere presence of the book cover mean that I’m the “other”.
That, to me, is an unacceptable intolerance, and not one that’s even that easily comprehensible. On Autocade World the tagline appears on top of a photo of an EV. Autocade Year of Cars 2025 features an EV on the cover. But I think we have people now who are so self-righteous, who believe they know it all, that they conclude that a stylish unknown car must be one that burns dead dinosaurs.
In one case, a German netizen, who appears to be more anti-car and pro-public transport, got very upset by the mere sight of Year of Cars 2025‘s cover on the web that he decided to launch a volley.
Here’s the thing: I’m completely sympathetic to public transport. I am a public transport user. But I also know that the world has cars and Autocade makes sense of all the models. Yearbooks by their nature examine the year for their subject.
Had the German netizen been more polite, and sparked a normal, adult conversation, I would have been more than happy to consider publishing a book about public transport with a collection of essays by its proponents. Why not? It’s a valid perspective, it fits with our remit, and there’d be a win–win: a win for someone who wants a public transport message out there, and a win overall for society because of the lower environmental impact of travelling en masse.
It was, then, a missed opportunity.
Me, I tend to assume intelligence and civility till the person proves they lack it, and I’m even prepared to stick at it for longer than I should sometimes. And maybe when someone’s first reaction is to go off their rocker, the best solution is to block and move on. It’s 2025, a time when it’s harder to wake people up, even when it might do them some good.
Civility remains lacking online as well as offline, and that is due in no small part to social media, into which one should venture with caution. Overall the benefits outweigh the detriments. But as a society we are far, far from the civilized one that Confucius and others promoted centuries before the Common Era. In some places, such as the US, that has worsened, it seems, and it is something we need to guard against actively. Why do you think the Zuckerbergs of this world won’t let their own children on to their platforms? They know what their sites are like, and how their algorithms have pitted people against each other.
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