(FP’ed 3:49 AM EDT, Friday October 20, 2007
How do you make rage work for you? – promoted by exmearden)
Isn’t the title a bit of an oxymoron? I think so. But if that’s true, then we’ve just spent the last 6 years trying to find a way to live out an oxymoron. I wonder if others feel that way.
Here’s a couple of things that kicked off my outrage meter today, but you could probably choose any day in the last 6 years and find multiple events on each one that would serve the purpose.
First of all, there is the general degradation of our personhood and dialogue that happens when our tv “pundits” are engaged in calling a presidential candidate a Vaginal-American. And no, I’m not a “Hillary-supporter.” But that’s not the point. This is an outrage to ALL women.
And secondly, there was the “man-who-would-be-king” smirking about World War III as if it was a joke on all of us. I know we’re all used to this by now, but isn’t that part of the problem? We’ve been hearing this kind of idiocy for 6 years now and, for our own emotional survival, we’ve had to ramp down the reaction.
There are days, when I think that this is all some evil plot to get us so wearied of outrage that the next step towards wherever crazy place they want to take us becomes all the much more easy to go. So in reaction, I want to ramp up the outrage.
And then there are days when I just can’t take it anymore and I need an escape. The outrage feels like its poisioning my soul and I want to crawl into some cynical bubble where I don’t expect anything better. But that is the end of hope, and I worry about going there.
I’ve been wondering the last few days how someone like Nelson Mandella kept his hope alive over all those years in prison; being powerless to change things himself while watching his people be degraded and massacred. I don’t know that I understand how he did it, but in reading his biography, I know that he paid attention to those with whom he came in contact daily, including his jailers, and offered his heart to them. Perhaps that is his legacy to us today.
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that the only way to keep sane is to stop looking to the bad guys to make sense
and that includes the dems
i think we have to look to ourselves and then we won’t feel at the mercy of others and we can finally be free to make decisions about what actions to take… and maybe we will be more willing to act in blocs and not just blog, but use this medium to organize our responses
“I know that he paid attention to those with whom he came in contact daily, including his jailers, and offered his heart to them. Perhaps that is his legacy to us today.”
…I think that too much of this crap is extremely bad for anyone :} History really is a boot descending on a human face forever, but maybe it’s about making the most of those moments when it’s not our face :} And trying — to some measured point — to make it different. I don’t know…I’m starting to suspect that a brokered and complex truce between cynicism and hope is an inescapable part of the human condition…
the balance is provided, if the outrage isn’t static and the rage doesn’t become blind. Cynicism is the one that worries me, because it allows apathy and acceptance of the unacceptable. Compassion is the one I have trouble with, yet I know that somehow this is why Mandela prevailed. Maybe compassion lies somewhere in the outrage. The best I can do is morn for what this is doing not only to those we kill but to the damage of our collective and individual psyche.