SOMETIMES the great mass of anonymous, faceless people out there, who seem to live at their sulphurous keyboards slashing and stabbing words online, remind me of Hieronymus Bosch paintings: monsters and devils lurking in the shadows – all bloody knives and dripping fangs; not a drop of compassion or kindness inside them, just waiting to pounce and destroy another human being no matter what the subject, no matter who their passing victim might be. Sadism is easy these days for the dead of heart and dead of soul.

The monsters were out again this week – as they’re out every minute of every day. This time they were hunting Matt Damon. The actor had the temerity to admit he’d perhaps not been perfect in the past but had learned to be a little better as a person.

That’s enough to have you burned at the stake today. Perfection must be a state of permanence. Your past must be perfect, your present must be perfect – and if you falter in the future, then welcome to the public gallows.

The shaming of Damon began when the actor said he’d stopped using the homophobic insult ‘f****t’. His daughter took him to task after he used the word in a joke “months ago”.

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“She went to her room,” Damon said, “and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’. I understood.”

For his trouble – for seeing the light and changing – Damon was monstered by the monsters online. He was shamed for ‘only just figuring out’ that the slur was wrong – and that it took a child to make him see sense. The abuse and humiliation was intense and prolonged.

Readers will know that although I’m an atheist, I’ve a healthy respect for much of the wisdom found in the world’s great religions. What is it the Bible says about repentant sinners? Oh yes … ‘There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.’

However, Damon’s story was a little more complicated. After he’d been hounded and abused, Damon later amended his comments saying he’d never used the word “in his personal life”. He said the slur “was commonly used when I was a kid”, and that he’d told his daughter it “was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003”. Damon insisted he’d “never called anyone ‘f****t’ in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind.”

Perhaps Damon did use the ‘f-slur’ in his personal life, perhaps he didn’t – what matters now is this: he listened to his child, told a story of personal positive change and was attacked.

My only response to Damon is praise. Would we rather someone didn’t change? That they continue to use degrading homophobic language?

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Have you always been perfect? I haven’t. Have Damon’s critics? Wouldn’t a ‘good for you, Matt’ act as spur to make others change too?

There’s so much wrong with how this story unfolded, and so much that it says about the crude, cruel stupidity of modern life. The sneering at Damon for learning from his daughter is intolerably, arrogantly dumb. Why should a parent not be changed by the views of their children?

In my personal life, my children – now adults – have helped shape my world view for the better. We did the same when we were young. I’m 50, the same age as Damon. My generation helped kill off so many demeaning slurs in common use in our parents’ generation. Why do you think the n-word is now utterly unacceptable? Because kids in the 70s and 80s said ‘stop’ – and our parents’ generation listened to us.

The exchange is two-way – our children bring us new thoughts and new ideas, and we bring them a little wisdom to help chart the world they’re going to build.

That’s why it often seems so futile to stand in the way of the values of the young – because a long time ago, we were young and we made sure our values became today’s status quo. Not long from now, it will be the millennials in charge and they’ll be the ones passing legislation, running the media and shaping the world as they wish.

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Take the issue of trans rights. If, like me, you’re in your 50s or above, it won’t really matter a decade or so from now what you think, because you and I won’t be running the world anymore – our children and grandchildren will, and on issues around sex and gender, millennials are almost united in their view that trans rights are a good thing.

Just as my generation and the generation before reshaped ideas around gay rights and race in a way that made our parents and grandparents uncomfortable, so too the millennials will have their day, and we’ll have to – as all generations must – move somewhat aside with dignity and good grace.

However, in those previous eras – from the 1950s to the late 90s – generational give and take occurred in a pre-social media age. Today, as we can see from the lumpen attacks on Damon, the idea of an ebb and flow between the generations is dying. The generations no longer learn from each other and teach one another, pitifully they’re at war.

However, it’s much worse than that. I’ve come to think that nobody really believes a word they say on social media anymore. Nobody could be so foolish that they’d attack someone for learning from their mistakes. We say that social media is a bubble, that it’s an echo chamber for those of similar values to huddle together away from opinions they don’t like. I don’t believe that’s true.

I think social media is a mirror, not a bubble, and the only reflection social media casts back is of yourself. If it’s an echo chamber, the only echo you hear is your own voice. Social media is a self-radicalisation machine, and we are all guilty of complicity in that, simply by taking part.

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