Thinking for yourself fails to trend


Recent paths converge in this Times-Picayune story about the etiquette of social media. The New Orleans report was drawn to my attention by reader Jody Walker, and I was particularly struck by Jody's accompanying email in which he wrote "...I might share a more optimistic view on social media than your own in some aspects (which makes your writing on the subject that more compelling to me)..." Which is a refreshingly different outlook to other social media users who believe personal abuse can change people's views - a belief that led the established church to exterminate thousands of perceived heretics in the Albigensian Crusade and Spanish Inquisition. Social media compulsives would do well to remember that the word 'heretic' comes from the Greek for ‘thinking for yourself’, as was noted in my post about Jordi Savall's newly released Jeanne d’Arc – Batailles & Prisons.

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