Read our Comment Policy: “Mean Comments Suck.”

There is so much anger in elephant readers, as I’ve seen in several posts tonight (or rather the resulting comments, most of which have been about the titles or images). I guess that fire and passion is preferable to the “like” culture I see on celebrity fan pages, or media (can’t call them journalism” pages that are all about smoothie recipes or humor.

But…anger is painful and unhelpful in illuminating minds and hearts. We can and must be respectful in our dialogue, and criticism. Folks make mistakes. We do not and should not desire orthodoxy, self-righteousness in our community so much as we should desire to protect all views and diverse experiences, even those we regard as wrong, oppressive and exploitative.

We can bring awareness to all only through love, never through anger. Let’s all re-resolve to communicate our criticism with respect, even appreciation. If we can’t, we’ll have to delete your comment and ban you from this page, which is our loss. ~ Waylon Lewis