The Ethical Gurus

A rather strange problem is starting to annoy me of late. Particularly when people do not know how to effectively keep off evil. What might be interesting to you may be a piece of s%^& for me and vice versa. The whole essence of democracy is, both co exist. Its wholly up to the individual to subscribe to any specific school of thought without hurting the other. But there are these whole bunch of ethical policeman, more so in the elite Indian crowd, who feels that they have to dictate terms to make others follow discipline. Discipline in itself is highly subjective which man has defined differently at different points in time. So I think I am justified in getting annoyed, when someone dictates what is "discipline" and "etiquette" and prescribing others to follow it. Dictionary.com defines etiquette as The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority Its all the more annoying when the authority is used by someone who doesn't hold it.

My annoyances stem from my usage of the social email distribution lists within my company. Of course, there will be a wide variety of topics - some interesting, some irritating, some funny, some political - the best way is to choose what to read and what not to. However, there are people who often shoot back an email saying Take this discussion offline - well there is always a subject line - if you are not interested dont read it. I would like to have a discussion where I want to air my views to a lot of people and hear responses. So do the other bunch of people who reply to those. If someone finds it annoying its best to ignore it rather than dictating terms. Then there are these policeman who write Follow some etiquette, do not forward it to so many people.Well in my opinion, the whole idea of a distribution list is to address it to a wide audience. More analogical with an advertisement - if not interested, change channels. Perhaps the best ones are from other category of people who haven't come to terms with the technological advancements. For they say Bandwidth and Network Storage are precious, do not waste it. Well, in todays technological age, where webmails offer gigabytes for free, its fairly simple to set a rule and move those emails to a folder on disk. Often we find much space in our system remaining idle and not utilized and there are no costs associated with writing on them. Periodically clean them up of unwanted conversations. Infact, Outlook and I am sure most other email clients help you view contents based on conversations, making it a lot more simpler. Its best to follow simple rules rather than trying to educate others based on forced logic and made up disciplines.

It used to be a lot funnier in my earlier company, where we had newsgroups for the same. The messages were stored in a server which in no way affected any individuals bandwidth or storage. But yet there were people who did the policing. Well if you do not like something ignore it. Thats as simple an etiquette to follow and stay disciplined.

I am not forcing my etiquettes or disciplines on someone, just reiterating the fact that in a democracy, its in the best interest of all that you force etiquettes and disciplines on you so as to respect the interests of all. Its best to opt out of things so that the rest enjoy what they enjoy doing. We aren't in the days of anarchy afterall.