Delight in Concord

Abandoning malicious speech, he abstains from malicious speech; he does not repeat elsewhere what he has heard here in order to divide (those people) from these, nor does he repeat to these people what he has heard elsewhere in order to divide (these people) from those; thus he is one who reunites those who are divided, a promoter of friendships, who enjoys concord, rejoices in concord, delights in concord, a speaker of words that promote concord.

Majhima-Nakaya i 179

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It seems to be the worst part of the internet: we no longer are able to give polite discord a chance because we think we now know things about other people that we have absolutely no conceivable knowledge of, or about, otherwise. We have access to what other people are thinking in places like Facebook that we never had before. On such formats we are bombarded with each others' contrary observations. Friendships of several years deteriorate because of how easy it is to pound out our thoughts and emotions on the keyboard before we have given careful consideration of each others' deeply felt opinions. These divisions are caused, not so much by the content of a disagreement, as much as it is that the discourse is usually embedded with a nasty tone. Sometimes we don’t even know how insulting a comment can be and we develop a thick skin about how our words affect others. I can admit that I have done this so many times myself and it is, more often than not, too late often for a frivolous apology. The best I can do now in most cases is to refrain from being so pig-headed and give wide berth to divisive topics. I made a commitment to myself a few months ago that I would only argue for harmony and, in doing so; the greatest benefit arising out of this resolution has been that I have come to delight in concord.

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