As iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens the countenance of his friend. (Proverbs 27:17). Metal workers will tell you that when iron sharpens iron, sparks fly. There is a context behind that, that of friendship, and probably also some Hebrew culture with a history of pretty, ah, lively discussions, so it might not apply as much to this situation as I would like. But it's a favorite verse of mine.

Peace and civility cannot exist unilaterally; it only takes one to start a war. Rather than suggest that others behave themselves, perhaps we should encourage the developing of a thicker skin, or a more discriminating filter in whose communications we let affect us. One of our wisest here has "examine what is said, not who speaks" in his signature, but I've always found that to be poor advice, at least when I know the speaker. I need to guard against prejudice, but there are people here whose history very sharply informs how seriously I take what they say, mostly to the positive.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NASB)

In reply to Re: Yet Another Appeal for Civility by GotToBTru
in thread Yet Another Appeal for Civility by perldigious

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.