Of all the many thousands of things I have written on the blog over the years, the most controversial has been my writing about my own ideas about manners, ethics, personal space and boundaries online. I’ve been writing about this for 30 years, as I watched the Internet grow in importance, complexity, cruelty, bullying, rudeness and a disrespect for privacy and dignity and independence.

The social conventions that have generally marked human interactions have mostly vanished, and so many good minds have gone underground, afraid to share their beliefs and get what they are asking for.  In our world, to share is to invite controversy and condemnation. Thoreau knew better than to bring  a laptop to Walden Pond.

People tend to get upset with me when I write about this, they are upset when I speak up for myself, or when I respond to people I believe have behaved improperly. They accuse me if arrogance, whining, myopia. If I share my life, put my work and ideas out there, then I am asking for it, and need to simply suck it up. What did I expect?

Well, I expect more that that, and I will certainly die expecting even more.

I think I have found that my best friends online are those I keep at a distance, not that live inside of my computer drives, waiting to pop up without warning or invitation, or sent me way too personal and familiar messages via Facebook Messenger, a plague on all of our houses.

Lots of people have suggested I get off of social media altogether, but they misunderstand me. I love writing about this, it inspires and energizes me. It is one of the most important social issues of our time – just look what it has done to our civic system – and I prefer to explore important subjects rather than run away from them. I’ve been writing about this all of my adult life, this is no time to quit.

Manners are important to me. Manners are my outward bearing, my conduct to other people, my way of wishing to behave to others. Nothing in my life has tested my idea of manners than the Internet, and the simple and often thoughtless way in which people can behave with others. People often tell me I have it coming – I write about my life and put my work out there, I deserve whatever I get.

Nuts to them, people who say that have no manners.

My manners generally have come from my grandmother, the only person ever to teach me any. She could not have imagined the Internet and the new challenges of digital technology and the virtual community.  But she had a passion for civility and for treating people decently, she learned firsthand what it meant to be treated poorly.

I have lived the evolution of social media every day, from the beginning. It is one of the great stories of our time.

My grandmother’s rules for being civil and decent were simple, I am astonished at how well they hold up today, and how comfortably they apply to the virtual community.

She told me to mind my own business unless someone asked me to enter their lives.

She told me to never offer or give unwanted advice to people, it was rude, she said. (And Thoreau taught me that in order to be independent, we must be permitted to make our own mistakes and learn from them, not live in a world of preemptive warning and fear.) Foolish people do not take advice, my grandmother said, and smart people don’t need it.

She said it was not my business to save other people, except in dire emergencies. People must save themselves.

She told me not to hide. If I had something to say to somebody, say it to their face, not behind their back (or in a tweet or FB message.) Only cowards talked behind people’s backs, she said. And only small people attack strangers while hiding behind screens and distance.

She cautioned me to not patronize people (to treat them with apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority) or think I am  better than anyone else.

She taught me not to hate my enemies. If you are alive and think, you will have enemies, she said, don’t hate them for being different.

She told me not to argue my beliefs (this was before the Internet), they are, in most cases, no one’s business but mine. She said she had seen enough of war and argument to know that neither had ever solved a problem or made the world better.

She told me to look in the mirror every time I had a decision to make, and if I like what I saw, then it was the right decision for me. My ideas were mine, they were as precious as gold. I didn’t need the approval of other people to find the right thing for me to do. I don’t need for the rest of the world to approve.

She told me to put myself in the shoes of other people, she perhaps did not know the word “empathy.” She told me that everyone one in the world had it harder than me, and fought tougher battles. That was the way to be humble, she said.

She taught me to never be cruel to other people, or take away their dignity or treat them with disrespect. You are not a judge, she said, you are not a holy man.

She cautioned me against listening to the “fear-mongerers, and vampires of worry” as she called them, the people who lived in the dark side, who spread rumors and saw death and danger everywhere and who spread fear like the plague.

In her time, those were the old ladies at the butcher shop.  in my time, they are invisible  they live on the superhighway of fear and alarm that is the Internet,  and feast online on the well-being of people. She urged me to love truth, and fight for it. For me, this idea has evolved, I call it Standing In One’s Truth. My grandmother was authentic, she did not know how to lie or hide.

And the poor. Above all, the said, never forget the poor and the vulnerable. That is the holiest wish of every God in every faith, she said. Give the poor hope, and love the earth, it is our home.

Reading over these ideas, I realize that every one of them is under siege on the Internet, where so many people feast on fear and conflict, even hatred, and where hostile messages and unwanted and intrusive (and often worthless) advice floods the Internet like a raging stream in a tropical storm.

Why do I write about this? Because if even one person reads this and thinks before hitting the “send” button, the world will be a better place. Lots of people have sent me messages like that, bless them. How often do we get to make the world even a little bit better?

So this is what I do or try to do. What you do is up to you.

I am happy in my life and grateful and aware of the gifts the Internet has brought me – just think of the Army Of Good.

Hopeless causes are always special for me, they are the part of the foundation of thought, how bland and boring the world would be without them.