New York Times ethicist Randy Cohen wrote a blog post about the “hideous subculture” of anonymous blog comments, in which he explores whether or not there is something we can do to improve the situation.

The argument for allowing readers to continue commenting without restriction is to preserve a free and healthy flow of ideas. But Cohen mentions that even the Times, a website with an ostensibly literate and thoughtful readership, censors its comments to exclude ‘personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence and SHOUTING.’ This seems to do nothing to compromise the healthy flow of ideas, as evidenced by the hundreds of comments which often accompany most Times articles and the spirited debates therein.

The first question for me is not What can we do about this?¹ but What is causing this?

In an attempt to promote interactivity in a way that is not too demanding of their readers, many websites have included quick and dirty polls, which say things like:

What do you think of Jessica Simpson’s new hair?
LOVE IT
HATE IT

Do you like Jennifer Aniston?
SHE’S MY FAVORITE
I HOPE SHE DROPS DEAD

This is the type of decision making and self-expression that most people on the internet are faced with every day. We have traded subtlety for directness, nuance for speed, and courtesy for unrestricted expression. As such, the majority of our population is losing the ability and the desire to contemplate the finer points of an issue, to seek out the grey.

We have grown accustomed to commenting about entities—a film, a book, a celebrity—not to the creators of those entities or to the entities themselves, but to a third party, which acts a buffer for our vitriol. When I tell People magazine that I hope a certain celebrity drops dead or that I think so-and-so’s new book is total crap, I am not expecting the celebrity or the author to ever see my remarks. In an environment where readers are often cut off from the objects of their preoccupation, readers are not encouraged to consider the full impact of their words. Anyone who writes online has experienced the pain of receiving hateful comments from readers who exist in this chronically disconnected state.

These explanations do not encapsulate the entire problem, but certainly if you put together a penchant for black and white thinking—something is either good or bad, someone should either be given an award or be killed—with a lack of consideration for the person about whom you are expressing your opinion, it creates a potentially destructive situation.

Further complicating the matter, Cohen includes a quote from the writer Katha Pollitt, almost as an aside, which states that ‘…women writers on the Internet receive vastly more hateful comments than male writers.’

This makes me wonder if vulnerability doesn’t play a part in people’s perceptions. Is it possible that we are drawn to online commenting because it is the one way in which we can get through to an otherwise impervious figure, someone whom we would otherwise have no means to contact? Is their online presence like the black joints of a Storm Trooper, the only place in their hard white shell that a bullet can penetrate? If that’s true than perhaps we are even more drawn to those we perceive as being the most vulnerable, which in this society includes women. Are they an easier target?

Does anyone have any insights into this they would like to share?
HELL, NO. I WOULDN’T COMMENT ON YOUR SITE IF IT WAS THE LAST SITE ON EARTH.
YES, READ MY COMMENT BELOW. THEN LET’S MOVE TO THE COUNTRY AND HAVE BABIES.

I read an AP article yesterday about Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland in the late 80s. The so-called Lockerbie Bomber, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer, was released from a Scottish prison on Thursday so that he could return to Libya to die at home with his family. The U.K. government granted al-Megrahi a compassionate release, after he served eight years of his life sentence, as “an expression of the Scottish people’s humanity.”

What interested me most about the article was the way in which it illuminated different cultures’ attitudes about punishment and compassion.

Obama released a statement that Scotland’s decision to release al-Megrahi was a mistake. Secretary Clinton is outraged. The American families of the victims are speaking out, saying things like, “‘I don’t understand how the Scots can show compassion. It’s an utter insult and utterly disgusting,’ said Kara Weipz, of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, whose 20-year-old brother Richard Monetti was on board Flight 103. ‘It’s horrible. I don’t show compassion for someone who showed no remorse.’”

On the other hand, “Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said although al-Megrahi had not shown compassion to his victims – many of whom were American college students flying home to New York for Christmas – MacAskill was motivated by Scottish values to show mercy.” Likewise, a British man whose daughter was killed aboard flight 103, “welcomed the Libyan’s release, saying many questions remained about what led to the bomb that exploded in the cargo hold. ‘I think he should be able to go straight home to his family and spend his last days there…I don’t believe for a moment this man was involved in the way he was found to be involved.’”

Mercy and compassion seem to be part of the cultural landscape in the U.K., values that its citizens continually aspire to possess. In America we have confused mercy with weakness. When I looked up mercy in the dictionary it said, “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” In fact, mercy is a show of great power. It is a grace offered to those who are weaker than we are. The greater the act of mercy, the greater the show of strength.

I am not advocating that we let all the criminals go; I think there should be consequences for people who break the law; but I believe that most people who do bad things are in need of help. I believe that violence and crime are a result of desperation, a lack of resources, and the exposure (and subsequent inurement) to violence over the course of one’s life. People who promote violence deserve our pity not our hatred.

But the American families of al-Megrahi’s victims feel that by granting him a compassionate release, we are not punishing him enough, and are thus forsaking their loved ones. Al-Megrahi has spent the last eight years in prison suffering for his crime and will spend the next three months–the last three months of his life–getting intimately acquainted with death. To those who think he is getting off easy, I would say that over the next three months he will be going through a process far more frightening than anything we could impose on him in prison.

The argument can be made that al-Megrahi’s victims did not have the opportunity to die in a loving environment surrounded by their families, so he should not be given that luxury. I understand that reasoning completely, but I think it reveals a lot about our beliefs in justice, retribution, and punishment. The conventional wisdom is that if someone does something bad to us or to a loved one, it will help set things straight if the perpetrator is made to suffer as much as possible for his crime, that his suffering will act as balm for our suffering and for the suffering of our loved one.

Is there another way to think about it? Might the death of a loved one be less in vain if the person who killed them was given a different view of humanity, a chance to retreat from violence and revenge, to make something of their life, to serve their community instead of rotting in a cell, a victim of continued violence and hatred, further reinforcing the negative belief system that caused them to commit the atrocity in the first place? Might we have more to gain by modeling compassion for our prisoners, by exposing them to a way of being they have not yet experienced?

It is too late for al-Megrahi to turn his life around and to be of service, but his release has given us the chance to look at our views on justice and punishment, and to re-examine the principles upon which our penal system is based.

Comment away, my sweets.