(Yes, I know the rules here better than anyone. Stick with me.)
The individual, who had a particular set of beliefs, was firmly entrenched in them - until something happened and they were personally impacted by the event. They started to bring up their objections and all of a sudden found themselves the focus of the anger, disgust, and rage that had being previously directed at their opponents. At the same time, the individual also found that the very people they had previously though to be bitter, angry, and reactionary were in fact thoughtful, caring, and humorous. It changed the individual's view of the world.
If there is a term that I think will be applied to the year 2020 looking back, it will be rage. Forceful, unmitigated rage accompanied by its children violence and bitterness. We have (at least here in the United States; your Canadian and European mileage may vary) become defined by how angry and offended we are.
Thinking about this, I wonder that this has become the new interpretation for action: if one is full of rage, one is awake and engaged. If one is not, one is somehow accepting of all the evil and injustice in the world for all time.
Except.
Except that rage is not a very attractive attribute.
Be around the people that are enraged. They truly are enraged about everything. Everything that is not precisely as they see it is an offense. Rage and bitterness build upon each other, disgust and disgruntlement come to fill their entire lives. They interpret this as engagement.
But - and here is the important point - eternal rage will not draw followers.
Oh, it will draw a few. But for millions, they just want to get on with their lives. Address evils or injustices yes, but get on with their lives. Not physically destroy things. Not verbally crucify people who do not agree with them. Not consistently seek out and active confront people. Not be constantly reminded that they do not measure up and indeed will never do so unless they adopt one particular point of view.
Those of rage demand these activities as a sign of ideological purity - a test, by the way, which one never fully passes as one is always having to re-establish one's credentials.
So, be of good cheer.
We have lost, it seems, the ability to be of good cheer, of pleasant demeanor, of those attractive personal attributes that draw people to us. Agreed, it is hard when all one receives is rage and bitter words and gross oversimplifications and assumptions about what one believes. But the reality is that meeting rage with rage almost never accomplishes what we intend.
I would argue that the vast population is hungry right now for good cheer and good nature. People practicing respect to one another. People want to be around people who make them feel good about themselves, not people that constantly remind them of how they fail and do not meet "the standard". People who, frankly, can engage in ordinary activities without politicizing them or making every action and event an ideological one.
This is the great weapon that we - the Agrarians, the God Lovers, the Classically Educated, the Self-Sufficient, perhaps even the Slightly Off Keel - can bring to our every day life and thus, our every day fight.
So be of good cheer. Practice kindness. Practice jolliness (somehow this is an attribute we only roll out once a year incorporated in a gentleman whose stomach "quakes like a bowl full of jelly"). Practice faith in God (or if not a Christian, your deity or belief of choice, although I really hope you meet one of those jolly Christians). When confronted with rage, step aside if you can, let it roll over you if you cannot like water off a duck. When someone asks, tell them.
Most people are not those of rage. They merely need examples that encourage them, too, to be of good cheer, to encourage and remind them that the world is not full of rage. It is full, mostly, of people just trying to get by.
We can do that much.
I try hard to not be entrenched in beliefs and to have an open mind willing to change if a more convincing argument is heard. I do so because I don't want to be the person at the top of the post to someday realize that I was wrong simply because I never had an open mind and listened. As a result, I find myself often in the role of mediator between friends who are entrenched in their beliefs, a role that I don't like being in.
ReplyDeleteEd, that can be a very hard role. I have essentially learned to just listen through most of these discussions. Most people, in my experience, do not inherently want to be convinced out of their beliefs but really feel they need to confront and convince others. The irony of this does not appear to most, I think.
DeleteWhat a wonderfully thought-provoking post, TB.
ReplyDeleteI have long thought that hate is a habit and anger, an addiction. I'm pretty sure it releases a hormone or something that produces a "high" of some sort. I've known a number of people who just don't feel "normal" if they aren't grumpy. They habitually find the worst in everything.
Nowadays, anger and rage seem to have become a group think thing, which appear to be pushing us toward abandoning our human ability for higher, rational thought, and into a devolution of sorts to our most base animal-like nature. (No offense to animals intended!) That doesn't make sense to me.
One of the frustrations of the pandemic, is that one is only seen as taking it "seriously" if one is terrified. Calmness is seen as not taking it seriously. The demand is then to "prove" one is taking it seriously. I'm learning not to take the bait by asking myself, why do I have to prove myself to anybody?
Maybe the better question is, why do we humans feel we have to prove ourselves anyway? Can't I just have confidence in my own opinion and leave it at that? I don't have answers to those questions, other than recognizing that it's a spiritual battle.
I think you are offering here the best of solutions - being and learning how to be of good cheer. It's the only path to sanity these days.
Leigh - Thank you.
DeleteHate can be an addiction (I am sure the physiologists among us can come up with the hormone) as sure as anything else. I have known rage in myself. Rage can make one feel powerful and directed (of course, it leaves one exhausted and empty afterwards, but that is for later).
Rage is also, as you point out, now an acceptable "group think" option. It has always been, I suppose - mobs have been with us as long as we have recorded history. But I think a difference - a subtle one perhaps - is that once upon a time mobs were expected. Now, they are almost glorified as "the will of the people" - as if somehow angry people acting in rage represent people (as you say, animals are far more well managed in this regard).
Calmness is not seen as a value in The Plague because calm people do not react irrationally. They do not leave in constant fear. They ask no questions about things. They merely accept and cower - and in many ways, leave off thinking for themselves. However, by learning not to have an opinion or do research about such things, one simply becomes a receptor of whatever the current opinion in vogue is - or easily influenced by, say, mobs with rage.
As to why we have to prove ourselves? I have no more elegant solution than we simply feel we have to be superior in some way or fashion to others (Yes, I get that is a basic definition of sin. So be it).
If I had a wish, it would be that we would see - with clear vision and views unclouded by the interpretation of media or "experts" - where the road of rage leads. If this was understood, I think things might be different.
I really believe that if we simply, each of us, began to put action with that good cheer, we could change the world. If we smiled, reached out our hand first, said, "Let me give you a hand with that." Butterfly wings I suppose, but it gives me hope to believe it.
ReplyDeleteDebby, the reality of this article convinced me that this may not be such a butterfly wing thought after all. With the play that rage gets in the media, I think we underestimate how much that turns many people off. We just need to be there with, as you say, a smile and and open hand.
DeleteI am a rage head. I wake up grumpy some days with my heart black with sin. It's nowhere near as bad as it once was. Time heals. I had a similar experience as the guy that inspired your screed today. It didn't go well. Suffice it to say the people in my circle hate my guns, my faith, my traditionalism, my politics, my sexuality, etc etc. They hate ME. (I can say with confidence they would hate most of you too)... and a few will act on it. They want your money, your property, your children, and your happiness. Dipping into politics, the revelations and allegations show their leaders to be liars, thieves, cheats and worse. Some are outright sociopaths. If you let these guys inside your perimeter, thinking to mollify them with good humour and jocularity... oh boy. Best of luck with that, folks.
ReplyDeleteFor me the good news is I have a bible and a rudimentary understanding of it. The angrier and the grumpier that I am, the deeper I go into that thing for the wisdom to control it. Best of luck to you Yanks in the next week.
Glen - I am pretty sure that is not what I meant to say, if that is what you heard. I was not suggesting that one has an open door policy to just barge on through. What I am suggesting is that meeting everything with hostility is not likely to change any minds. The people that advocate this dwell in this. They soak in this. Yes, there are a group of hard core folks that will never changed, but there is also a group that is there for no other reason than that is what they were told or thought they were told.
DeleteTo be clear (maybe I was not sufficiently so): There are folks that I simply do not associate with anymore because our views are so divergent that we share little in the way of commonality or agreement - just as I am sure there are people who no longer talk to me for the same reason. There are other folks that I may disagree with, but there is also the possibility that they can be persuaded to see things a different way (my way, naturally). I will not accomplish that with them if all I ever do is act angry - in fact, I reinforce their dominant paradigm that this is the only way that people that believe my way act. Which is hardly going to change anyone's heart.
I'm sorry, old friend.
DeleteIgnore me. I have reading and comprehension problems.
And, apparently, numerous psychological problems as well. ;)
No worries - that is the whole point of this blog, right? We discuss things. I would rather have your honest opinion that what you think I want to read.
DeleteIn forgiving others, we always need to work on forgiving ourselves first and most of all.
We have, through our new church, been meeting people who are joy filled. They are fully aware of what's going on, and are prepared to deal with it, but they are unfailingly positive. It has been a blessing for us!
ReplyDeleteThat is wonderful sbrgirl! Really should be the way the church body should be.
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