RE: Trying to Get Beyond Monetary Rewards
The problem is we are a very reasonable group of people and intelligent for the most part. We do not get to dictate what people do/do not take personal. They will decide for themselves. I'd say we are actually more reasonable than the masses and that is why for the most part the discussions and this community are so awesome.
However, we do want a lot of people to come here. More and more of those people will be from the masses IF they stay. So I believe we are actually seeing a rather tame reaction to these things from our current community. If the masses do come then you cannot simply ASSUME they know they shouldn't take it personal. That is a learned and discussed thing. Will they take the time to learn, and be reasonable before a "shit storm" breaks out? Experience, and observation make me believe it is very unrealistic to expect this will be the case.
If you expect them to LEARN how they should act before they react then you've been hanging out in a lot different places than I have. Actually, I don't hang out in the places, I see them, shake my head and walk the other way.
I'll agree most peoples first reaction is to take it personally, be offended and fly off the handle in some respect. There isn't an easy pill to give people at the start to help this, some are just that way, with a few naturally not.
However, being able to find and digest another persons point of view and/or humanizing them over a period of time through interactions does wonders. To some degree the polarization we see now in the US population and congress is largely possible because of groups becoming so split. We used to be able to discuss opposing sides of things and even while disagreeing on priorities, you could understand where the other party/person was coming from. Now we don't come in contact with the 'other side' often surrounding ourselves with like minded people, news programs, etc only affirming what we want to hear. At this point it's way easier to view others as 'pure evil' or malicious instead of somebody else with hobbies, kids, and other things outside of the topic itself.
Couple this with the average attention span of people being less than a goldfish, hence never willing to think or research longer than 8 seconds. This leads to a split of both sides yelling right past each other, seemingly the only thing in common being the belief that
Maybe if I say it louder it will be more true!
Lol. Even after all this I still try to maintain my hope for humanity. "Better" is never easy.