Wrapping up a decade of mean-spiritedness

The most important development of the decade that ends this week wasn't the election or impeachment of Donald Trump.

It wasn't the Giants winning three World Series titles.

It wasn't climate change or technological advances or the coming of age of the millennial generation.

The most important development of the concluding decade was that we got meaner.

That's it.

If you compare the world of 2010 to the world of 2020, the Earth – or at least America – is a meaner place.

We are harsher, less gracious and less civil. We have less respect for people who disagree with us or who are different from us.

I blame social media.

But not really, because social media is just the delivery method for our meanness.

I actually love social media. I'm active on Facebook and I visit Twitter many times every day.

But social media made us meaner. Rather than fulfilling its original promise of drawing us together as a community and creating better communication, social media turned us into warring tribes, convinced that the other side is wrong. More than that, it's convinced us that the other side is evil.

It happens in politics. It happens in sports. It happens with music. My tribe is better than your tribe. Your tribe is not only wrong, it's stupid. Or racist. Or snowflakes.

We've gotten meaner not because social media made us mean, but because social media gave us a megaphone to shout our meanness.

Social media is the delivery system for our meanness and like anything, meanness grows when it's fed.

Put it this way: Twenty (or 30 or 60 or 100) years ago, plenty of people were mean. Plenty of people held graceless views of others and made straw man arguments they could destroy to point out the idiocy of anyone who disagreed. I grew up in a world filled with people whose opinions would now be considered extreme. (Heck, most of them were extreme then.)

But those opinions were shared in their living room or in the car on the way to school or in the bar with the guy on the next stool. They were relatively private.

That wasn't perfect, but it didn't normalize meanness.

This decade, social media matured to the point where we can shout our mean views in public. We then cluster with people who agree with us and talk about how dumb or ignorant or hateful or  soft others are. We are mean. We're comfortable being mean.

I'm not sure we're any meaner in person. When we talk to a co-worker or neighbor, we probably don't drip the kind of venom that's easy to share on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.

Here's a goal for the 2020s: Let's have more grace. Let's consider others important. Let's not assume that those who disagree with us are bad. Let's see what we have in common with others, not how others are different (and misdirected).

How? For starters, avoid angry posts on social media (block, unfriend or unfollow people who thrive on rage). Avoid others who amplify the rage. Appreciate people who are different, even while disagreeing. Fight hate with tolerance.

Thirty years ago, Don Henley's "Heart of the Matter," asked a question that seems even more relevant now: How can love survive in such a graceless age?

In the 2020s, let's help love survive. Or at least turn down the anger.

That's a worthy decade-long goal.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.