Imagine collaborating with someone who you dislike.

Imagine collaborating with someone who you dislike. What do you do?

Imagine if you're living in a small town two hundred years ago.

You will almost certainly see them again repeatedly. You'll have a hard time escaping them.

So it makes sense to learn to live with them.

You'll likely invest in understanding their position, finding a dynamic tension to live with them in.

As a result, you both grow more flexible and learn how to live together.

You both get stronger, and the community does too. You both grow from the challenge.

Now imagine it's a random person on the internet on a pseudonymous message board.

You'll almost certainly never see this person again.

It's easier to just discard the relationship like a tissue and move on to something less challenging.

Both of you do not grow.

You're left the same as before, and possibly worse.

Instead of thinking "I don't like Bob's point but I see where he's coming from", you think "Bob was a jerk" and that's that.

What will happen to society as more and more of our relationships become tissue-like?