We've deprived a whole generation of the rhetorical tools for healthy, impersonal and professional argument. It's no wonder that they've pressed this "stylized language of emotion and abuse" into service to fill the void: it's all they know.
But still, they did create (and sometimes even use) tools that at least make it possible – tools which far too many members of the youngest generations, and their organisations, seem to have abandoned or never even knew they existed in the first place.
The lack of emotional (and explicitly confrontational) experiences in modern society are underdeveloping skills to deal with them.
Consequently, you get childish spats over what should be a technical disagreement, because people aren't comfortable saying "I think you're wrong, but I respect your opinion. Here are the reasons I think you're wrong..."
As the quip goes, anonymity and the lack of physical presence turns everyone into an asshole on the internet -- and then we raised most of the world on the internet.
Critical thinking skills independently from the subjects they may arise from. It’s not a trendy topic of argument, but I will also propose that modern English speakers have no notion of their own language without a prerequisite in Latin, or you get folks like the person trying to tell me my subscription date started at some arbitrary date unrelated to the specific date I signed under.
> I will also propose that modern English speakers have no notion of their own language without a prerequisite in Latin.
1. English is a Germanic language, not a Romance one.
2. Even for speakers of Romance languages, knowledge of the ancestor language doesn't really make a difference. Does it help a modern English speaker to know that silly once meant "blessed by God"?
3. The notion that Latin is somehow more logical than English is a pervasive one, but it has absolutely no evidentiary underpinning. It's pure classist bullshit.
That's not even the context we're talking about here. We're talking about professional argument. Disagreement over decisions. Hurling slurs at people isn't even in the orbit of that.
I'm talking about people being thin-skinned, petty and passive-aggressive about other people disagreeing with their ideas, which is something I see _constantly_ in this field.
It's much worse when the progress we've made is weaponized against people and minor technical/procedural disagreements get turned into "other person hates X" because they disagree with me and I'm X...which unfortunately happens sometimes (and mirrors the false-equivalency that you've presented here).
Previous recent generations also had most nations sending large groups of their men off to kill other nations' men for insufficient reasons.
As a result of the current geopolitics, we don't have the self-awareness to realize that minor conflicts are minor conflicts and that the absolute best place to be and thing to be doing is spending time at home with your loved ones.
We certainly shouldn't be carrying out PR strategy wars against our colleagues like is happening here...
War and nationalism haven’t ceased, nor have the emotional levers you speak of gone away, what has happened is that folks are comfortable behaving differently online than they would face to face
