Blocking Our Way to Nowhere

Hamish Campbell wrote something that I found interesting. In a post about why the Fediverse exists, he argues that when blocking becomes our default response to disagreement, it can turn "despair into the appearance of action." I think he has a point. There are perfectly good reasons to block someone. Harassment, abuse, threats, and people who seem to exist mainly to make everybody else miserable come to mind. Nobody is obligated to spend their time dealing with that. But disagreement is something else. I follow several bloggers whose opinions I disagree with fairly regularly. I keep reading them because they make an argument, explain why they believe what they believe, and generally do not treat everyone on the other side as stupid or evil. I may finish an article still disagreeing with nearly every word of it, but I understand the argument better than I did before. I respect that. There is some value in having people in your reading list who occasionally annoy you. They force you to…