Ideas vs. IDs

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

    Ideas should be judged by their intrinsic merits and not by the identity (ID) of the person with the idea.  This relates to academic articles, bullying, political attacks, and anonymous articles like this one.  Ideas vs. IDs also ties in with Kings vs. Consent.  Other ways of paraphrasing this concept are judge the message, not the messenger; and, principles before personalities.

    Double blind peer reviewed academic articles are an example of ideas over IDs.  These articles on research which are submitted for publication are sent to peer reviewers with the authors’ names removed from the submissions, so the reviewers have to consider the intrinsic merits of the research without knowing who did the research.  The authors likewise do not know who the reviewers are and so cannot tailor their research to satisfy particular reviewers.  The result of this anonymity is that the ideas in the research are judged by their intrinsic merits and not by the identities of the people involved.

    Bullying is the opposite concept.  In bullying, ideas are forced on others by intimidation regardless of the intrinsic value of the ideas.  This is obvious in schoolyard situations but also applies to other situations that fail CAWTBER, such as dictatorial governments, corporate advertisements, and religions that do not tolerate open discussions of other ideas.

    Johannes Guttenberg’s press revolutionized independent thought beginning in 1450 by allowing people to read the Bible themselves, instead of having to rely on church leaders for Biblical information, helping to fuel the Reformation.  Martin Luther assisted this process by translating the Bible from Latin to German.  Biblical ideas could then be judged by their own merits rather than only by interpretations of church leaders.  The Internet has revolutionized freedom of speech more than anything since the Guttenberg Press by allowing widely dispersed individuals to converse with each other en masse without the gatekeeping of mainstream media.

    The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, is an example of an idea being judged by ID rather than by the intrinsic merits of the idea.  The ACA is very similar to Mitt Romney’s An Act Providing Access to Affordable Quality, Accountable Health Care, commonly called Romneycare.  So basically, both major political parties support the same idea, so the idea is good, but the one from Obama is criticized by the Republicans simply because it came from Obama.  This is character assassination with no regard for the ideas of the person being assassinated.

    The same thing from another angle is the issue of pro-choice, where presumably the Democrats are on one side of the issue and the Republicans are on the other side, yet some Democrats will slip in who are anti-choice—they are elected based on the label of Democrat, yet their ideals are something else.  They are political Trojan Horses who run on the party platform but then vote differently from the platform.  This happens on a wider scale when politicians run on their characters and reputations and get votes regardless of their stands on issues.

    Bullying also occurs in the expression of Freedom of Speech when people have the attitude that actions have consequences and that people with opinions should identify themselves.  These attitudes are used to intimidate and harass people with ideas that you do not like:  rather than argue the merit of the ideas, you intimidate the person who has them.  This is often related to a twisted interpretation of the US 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech in which you can say what you want, but other people have the right to intimidate you for your ideas.  This bullying is dampened when ideas are anonymous—you can’t bully someone when you don’t know who they are.

    The bullying of bloggers seems to be fairly common on the Internet according to comments by other bloggers, with such bullying sometimes including threats of violence against bloggers with certain beliefs.  Threatening people with ideas other than your own is rather the opposite of belief in Freedom of Speech.  Apparently many of the same people who think that the 2nd Amendment gives them unrestricted access to firearms also believe that the threat of violence against people practicing the 1st Amendment is A-OK.

    The intimidation of Freedom of Speech is also accomplished by corporate leaders and government entities who prohibit, or discourage, the discussion of topics such as politics and religion at workplaces, including parking lots.  (Of course, the administrators’ views on these topics are often well known, so the result is that only the administrators have de facto Freedom of Speech.)  This carries over to the Internet where policies are often clearly stated that employees must not refer to their employers while giving opinions on the Internet, sometimes to the extent that employees are required to provide disclaimers that their comments do not represent their employers.  Even if an employee does not identify hir employer, this information can often be readily determined by search engines.  I am sure that employers exist who promote Freedom of Speech by their employees as a patriotic act, but I don’t seem to be hearing about them.  The controlling of Freedom of Speech by employers ties in with Kings vs. Consent.

    So this blog is anonymous in order to keep the discussion on ideas, and not identities.  The Internet provides opportunity for the increased freedom of the discussion of ideas by reducing the amount of control of mass communication by the corporate media, much like the printing press increased the discussion of religion by reducing the control of mass communication by the church.

    Another way of saying ideas vs. IDs is principles before personalities, a phrase commonly used in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).  The situation with AA is the extreme diversity of members from the cross section of society represented by this equal opportunity disease, from the homeless to millionaires, people who normally would not mix.  Principles before personalities helps to keep this group working together.  Name-calling would be counterproductive, kind of like killing the messenger because you do not like the message.

Conclusion

    Ideas should be judged by their intrinsic merits and not by the identity (ID) of the person with the idea.  This relates to life in general including academic articles, bullying, political attacks, and anonymous articles like this one.  The opposite of this method is to accept the ideas of kings, corporate administrators, and bullies because of who they are, regardless of the intrinsic merits of their ideas.  Other ways of paraphrasing ideas not IDs are judge the message, not the messenger; and, principles before personalities.

Freedom of speech means
It is safe to speak and write,
With no bullying.

Suggested Comments:

  Does the situation that some newspapers allow unsigned letters to the editor qualify as ideas over IDs?