RE: The elephant in the room you don't see until it steps on you or someone near you...
"By observation over many months I have concluded that for most people the down vote has a much larger psychological impact here on steemit than an up vote. This appears to be tied to the monetary aspect of the site being a force multiplier on the psyche." -Money again is at the root of a problem lol
Great article, @dwinblood, and I loved the photographs - especially the shiney "NEW!" sign! XD
I was once flagged by a rather large account after my post had made a bit of money and in one fell swoop my post had gone invisible by the singular downvote. My post was an original video of me reviewing a product. I messaged the individual who downvoted me and tried to reason with them, and it came out that he literally just did not like the video. I tried to ask why to try and create more quality content that everyone may enjoy in the future and they stopped replying.
Sometimes rational discussion goes nowhere...then what? lol
Human nature. Yes, it won't always work. Yet we must still make the attempt.
Also changing a persons mind is not instantaneous (or rarely so). You have no way of knowing if what you said planted a seed that took time to make sense to them and some time down the road you may have changed them in some way.
I absolutely agree that every time the effort should be put forth to be civil, but at the point of which they continue in such a way that is divisive what do we do?
And you're right, I'd never thought about the fact that I could have "planted a seed." Change often does take time.
What you can. Yet don't drop to their level. Act like the person you'd hope other people would be like. Don't sully yourself due to their intractable nature.
I think in any controversial subject or where you have someone acting in defense of their beliefs it almost always takes time. The cases where it does not are actually pretty rare.