At times I regret the loss of privacy and the vulnerability to slander that anyone who writes publicly has to face. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished by the mob that sees only upto the horizons of its own vulgar perspective.
Being a thief itself, it sees thieves in honest people. Being a liar itself, it calls what is patently truthful a lie. Motivated solely by venality and malice, it can see no other motivation in people who obviously struggle to hew to their conscience, even when it endangers themselves.
How to escape slander without losing privacy to the envious, the malevolent, the pathological? You cannot. But you can consider your real audience, as Sir Thomas More suggests, in Robert Bolt’s fine play “A Man for All Seasons” (1960). More’s counsel addresses Richard Rich, an academic who despairs that the virtues of a great teacher can never be known beyond a small circle, but it’s advice that applies as well to anyone who has ever suffered from slander directed at them, when their actions were not only not dishonorable, they were more than ordinarily brave and honorable.
“MORE: Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher.
Perhaps even a great one.
RICH: And if I was, who would know it?
MORE: You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that . . . Oh, and a quiet life.”
L,
So true, so true. How many great minds are in the shadows? How often does a great work attract vitriol? Just reading comments sections on top papers such at FT or WSJ make my skin crawl. I was temped by vanity and left being a teacher (not great just competent and well regarded) and know others who became visilble and are now miserable. The mob is quite vile and sadly the net, media and social networks makes them more aggressive and effective at squelching dissent and truth. The elites love this.