For years now, I’ve been watching people who post on blogs try to maim and kill each other with words. I’ve done the same thing, more often that I care to admit.
Many times, I’ve been flat out astonished at the depth of the viciousness: the no holds barred attempts to truly cause each other serious harm, in every way harm CAN be caused via the written word. And I’ve been more than appalled to feel it within myself, on more than one occasion.
It happens so lighting fast sometimes: depending on my own stress levels, I can log on, read one comment from a total stranger, and feel an explosion of anger so huge it demands immediate release, and finds
it in ten angry fingers pounding on a keyboard, and in that satisfying moment of hitting “Enter” to launch that word bomb at what I HOPE is the most vulnerable part of my target.
Other times, I am much more controlled about it, and instead of exploding, I bide my time, and choose what is usually a more effective weapon: biting sarcasm designed to make my target look, and hopefully feel, like a fool, knowing full well that public humiliation is a deadly weapon. This has the added advantage of course, of having others who read it applaud my brilliance. Two birds, one stone.
Sometimes, this ends up being a totally satisfying experience for me: I come away feeling pretty powerful, even righteous. I did not silently comply with a wrong: I spoke up and I spoke out. Good for me. Yet, under that, was discomfort I like to ignore.
But sometimes, I end up with a strong urge to go take a shower. On the inside, I mean. And a curious sense of sadness: an emptiness of some sort.
It was time once again, for me to go weed my own garden. To see what was growing there that I did not plant, and do not wish to feed.
I know I have never been a vindictive person who ENJOYS causing pain to anyone, not even an attacker. I may have to cause the pain, because I take stands and fight hard when I need to, to defend myself or those more vulnerable than I am, but I have never “enjoyed inflicting pain” before, like I saw myself “enjoying it”, as a blogger.
That was the weed I found that I did not like at all. I do not wish to become a person who derives pleasure from causing pain to anyone, not even those who do it to me. I may have to cause them pain, to convince them I have boundaries that I will not allow them to breach without consequence. But I do NOT want to ENJOY watching them bleed.
So what were the roots of this? Why has this aspect of myself revealed itself, in this written medium, at this point in my life, when it hadn’t in face to face life? (This quick, reactive “strike back now” kind of anger. This desire to hurl sharp edged lethal word swords at people I didn’t know and had never met?)
And why in the HELL had I become so eager for this kind or “battle ground” I’d practically go into withdrawal if I wasn’t engaged in one kind of blog battle or another, or at least have one to WATCH?
So I grabbed my “WHY?” shovel, and began digging for the root beds of this damned ugly weed.
Here’s what I’ve found so far: I don’t know if it’s true for anyone else or not, but I believe it is true for me.
For a long time now, ever since discovering the blogosphere and alternative new sources, I have willingly been subjecting myself to MASSIVE daily doses of the harshest of realities: proof positive of the depth of corruption of every single man made system I had ever been told I could trust. Every single day I saw pictures of bloody children, starving bodies, dismembered bodies, cities full of people just like me blown to bits in their beds. Horrors like Katrina. Neighbors who choose food or groceries, because they can’t afford both. There isn’t an end to it.
Suffering. MASSIVELY PERVASIVE human suffering, in living color and sound, day in day out, blasting into my eyes and ears, my mind and spirit. SO much, so much. Unbearable to anyone with a sentient heart and spirit.
So the terrible feelings of powerlessness grew and grew, in direct proportion to the anger and rage at those who knowingly caused this suffering. And no where to put it where it could change anything I could identify as change.
And this, I have come to see, is a large part of how I had become a person, who, far to often, derived pleasure from causing pain to others I met on blogs. Or watching them inflict pain on each other.
When I am in battle mode, I feel quite powerful. Anger is a “powerFUL” emotion.
When I simply sit with the pain, the rage, and FEEL it, I can end up feeling completely powerLESS.
When I can find blog battles to watch, (mindflash..of the Romans in the stands applauding the lions snacking on christians), I find my distraction and entertainment: a handy insulation.
So I am left wondering, especially after the threads of yesterday, just how much of our apparent inability to stop focusing on each others faults and failures, and on trying to hurt each other, in the lefty blogosphere, might just stem from that overwhelming sense of powerlessness, and a seriously backed up supply of anger and rage than has no real place to go where it could be harnessed and put to USE, since the Dem Party has clearly abandoned us.
We’re sittin here alone with all these horrors unfolding before our eyes, horrors we can’t NOT see, and NO PARTY and no LEADERS, AND NO WAY TO DO MUCH OF ANYTHING ABOUT IT that we can agree on. Full of frustration, pain, anger, sadness, and yes, grief.
Because we are still human, those of us who gather on blogs like this. We have not yet been plasticized or robot-o-sized, and we have refused all offers of mind-deadening kool aid offered. We’re still fully human and that means we feel, we bleed, we suffer, for each other, not only for ourselves. We suffer for all our relations, everywhere.
When humans build up enough of a backlog of pain, anger, loss, and fear that has no outlet, pressure builds, and we often project it on whoever is closest: each other. Psych 101.
Try as I might to come up with a QUICK fix for all of us here on these blogs, I cannot see any. I can only see these truths:
I cannot weed anyone else’s garden but my own.
I will not weed my own garden, until I SEE it needs weeding.
I will never see it needs weeding unless I spend time in it.
I will not have time to spend in my own garden, if I spent all my time in yours, pointing out the ugly weeds you have allowed to sprout.
And until I AM ready to spend the necessary time to weed my own garden, not only to remove the weeds, but to see the power in the stalks and stems and rootbeds of what I have planted there and cared for long, I will be subject to more feelings of anger, frustration, rage, and powerlessness, and I will no doubt continue to project them on whoever is close.
I am not powerless. I have been made to feel that way, but I am NOT powerless. Not over my own life, my own consciousness, my own internal expansion, and my own choices of who I am and how I act in every moment I still breathe.
Since I am naught but a puny piece of work in progress, this is nothing I can or will do perfectly. But I want to try to do it better.
I don’t want to be a person who ENJOYS watching others be eaten up alive, and I don’t want to ENJOY inflicting intentional harm on others. No matter what they’ve done.
There’s my working hypothesis for this moment, anyway, as to one possible reason for some of the chaos and warfare in the lefty blogosphere.
I’d enjoy hearing yours…
(Crossposted from PFF)
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Hopefully your words will be taken to heart, here and at pff.
“to thine onself be true,” but I have added a step in my blog life to include: being my true self and never saying something to a person in writing that I wouldn’t be willing to stand in front of them an say to their face.
One can get lost in venting on the cathartic turmoil of all the things shattering our society and the world right now, but as you have found at some point it takes away more from you than it gives in return and you wind up feeling hollow.
You didn’t like what it was turning you into so you sat down and worked out your own personal philosophy, which is a good one. It shows growth and wisdom that you took the time to figure all that out and begin to change your course in life.
You use of a garden analogy is very apt, for you do have to tend your own patch of earth. But look beyond the weeds to a time when you can plant ideas. Nourish that ground, enrich its soil, be gentle with the roots and protect it from the blistering extremes of seasons. In return, it will give you back an abundant harvest. Something you can live off of on the days when the world seems cold and bleak.
Thank you for sharing your fine, thoughtful reflection. Good luck with the changes.
it is a great piece!
this article from time to time. the top of the page is a little whacky…scroll down a little.
it takes a larger view than simply blogging, but, i think, comes to the same conclusions you do…if a bit more goal-oriented.
i hope you can find a way to continue to express yourself that leaves you feeling positive about the interaction.
and i hope your posting this means youve decided to continue to participate here in some way.
In RL, I really thought I was ‘over’ rage.
Then I found the internet and discovered new reservoirs. Now I am working on those. If nothing else, the internet is a great mirror and self-help guide!
I am saving this essay. I think it is one of the finest expressions about the net I have ever read.
Thanks again.
and so true…
you know though, this tearing apart by words has happened to many. I wrote a throwaway piece on forgiveness over at the big orange and it made the rec list. It seemed to me quite a few others were thinking along the lines of your essay at the time.
Many people who have contributed in the blogosphere have fallen victim to the attacking by words you describe. Just keeping it to 4 blogs, some of these people who have been attacked are still at dKos, some are here, some are at pff and some are at MLW (including but especially not limited to the proprietor of said final blog).
Why are we all so willing to attack these people? These people have taught me so much over these past 4 years, it really bothers me everytime I see one of them (any one of them) attacked like they are.
So why not stop? Let’s just stop attacking. Is it really that hard to do???
Cheers, and great essay.
bullets do
and apparently the US Military under Bush admits Iraqis all look the same to us.
The current tone of discourse is anger, softened with occasional dark humor, for a reason. As Mos Def said recently, “America was founded by people sayin’ No, Fuck Dat.”
It’s not pleasant, it’s not Saturday Morning Coffee discourse, it’s political discourse from real Americans that should not have to change their tone, style, spelling, diction, quotation usage, etc.
Just my opinion.
summed it up perfectly:
This is how I’ve come to see the situation as well.
Of course nothing is ever quite so simple. Certain social and political realities can either block or promote that personal change, which leaves the question remaining, where to start? Everywhere at once? That’s what’s needed. But what’s possible is to start only with one’s self. Yet that atomization of the individual apart from the societal whole is at the root of the problem, the fruit of the Norquistian quest to demolish the public, social sphere as even something Americans can conceive of, much less submerge themselves in to achieve ends that would benefit us all.
So perhaps I would say you cannot weed anyone’s garden but your own is a starting point, but it isn’t sufficient. We exist in relation to one another, but the efficient organizations are all ones that are arrayed against us as individuals. Individualism is the fierce hallmark of Americans, but perhaps it will also be our downfall.
spends itself out in a stupid rant, pretty self-parodying in the end. Real dialogue is ultimately about love, about making more of a relationship (a relationship between writer and reader) than the usual ego-expression. But so little is made of something with such a potential…
the personal angle, and done a fine job of it. I think powerlessness, or the perception of powerlessness, goes far to describing the underpinnings of our malaise.
Since the personal is political, let me take it into that latter realm.
In the ’60s and ’70s (I know, *yawn*), what you are describing played out as well, except it was on paper or, more often, face to face. The arguments were often couched in arcane theoretical jargon, but these I’m-right-you’re-a-fucked-up-bourgeois-lackey-of-the-ruling-class often (not always) concealed a deep personal animus, a seeking of individual clout, a desire for backpats, an attempt to show who was cleverest (or “more revolutionary”). It was the era when the term “PC” was invented, not by the right, but by the left.
Anyone who knows her history will recall that this sort of thing happened on the left all the way back to Paris Commune, but, while I’m superannuated, I’m not that old, and I can only speak to what I personally witnessed (and sometimes participated in).
The outcome of all the screaming among supposedly like-minded people was a gigantic splintering, a demolition of the left as any kind of force in American politics. Being a force – even a modest one – is something that the left in America has only briefly been on just a few occasions anyway. We haven’t recovered.
Today, because of accelerated Internet time, in my opinion, the screaming and splintering and personal attacks seem to have come sooner than before, perhaps because “flamewars” are an on-line tradition long before political blogs were even a gleam in anyone’s eye. Although today’s personally obnoxious political fights are not more intense now than before wwwLand was built, there are more participants. And the fact that that participation is often anonymous, unlike in the past, makes the vituperation greater.
OK. I’m rambling. What I wanted to say is that, even though it’s surely no comfort to you, scribe, nor to me, what you describe, what we’ve all seen, through left wwwLand, is not something new. The question, to me at least, is how to tamp it down without cutting off free-wheeling discussion, before we see the same thing that happened in the past happens again – before a potentially transformative grassroots movement wrecks itself.
Disclaimer: In no way am I saying that there aren’t legitimate reasons for “robust” discussion or that ferocious anger is never appropriate. Racism, misogynism, heterosexism and other socio-political ailments all demand strong opposition. But even in such instances, we should try to keep the cork on the vitriol at least long enough to try persuasion before hauling out the high-caliber word-howitzers.
thank you…
this is a medium and it reflects rather well…
what ever divisiveness exists outside in the world of clay…
is reflected here in the blogosphere….
if we can not come to unity here then we will be unable to truley effect change out there……..
Author
Thank you for the warm reception this diary has received here and the good discussion above. I would also like to offer a bit of general feedback, without engaging directly with any poster here. This is ONLY my opinion and my own perception, and NOT intended as any sort of attack on anyone here.
I do not write political analyses: I am more of storyteller-type writer. I write from what I’ve seen and experienced myself. I share my own conclusions and truths as they appear to me, with full awareness that others have their very own perceptions, their very own truths, that will be different than my own. I celebrate this, because if we all saw things the same way, how in the hell could we ever learn from each other or broaden our own perspectives by seeing through each others eyes?
That is why I love discussion more than I love debating, at this point along my way. I look for places to post where I am likely to find others who also enjoy discussion, the sharing of observations, perceptions, conclusions about things. I learn from this and I love to learn.
I have stopped posting anywhere where what I write is viewed primarily as “debate material” to be “argued” to some win/lose conclusion. I already know my words are only my own truth and others have their own: I am not trying to convince anyone of anything they don’t wish to believe. And I am finished responding to communication styles that leave me feeling I must defend every word I write against anyone else’s intellectual standards OR “prove” the validity of anything I say. I will not take the witness stand in anyones cyber-courtroom and be “grilled” about anything.
This is not a negative judgment against anyone elses preferences for debate style communication: it is a personal preference of my own as to how I spend my time and my energy. Since in my own weeding process, I have discovered I cannot engage those who DO use that style with me, without sliding backwards into wanting to literally draw blood, my only recourse is to avoid that kind of environment.
I think it’s called accepting what one cannot change, and coming up with a workable solution for my own self, so as to be able to walk my own talk more often.
Again, thank you all for your friendly reception of this diary.
cause that you attribute to the general nastiness toward one another sometimes found on the left-blogs might be a little too high-minded.
You wonder how much our attempts to “hurt each other, in the lefty blogosphere, might just stem from that overwhelming sense of powerlessness…since the Dem Party has clearly abandoned us.”
I don’t think it has anything to do with the Democratic party and I don’t think it has anything whatsoever to do with our frustration at policy.
I do think it has to do with power, tho.
People feel empowered when they can kick the crap out of someone else and the more prominent that person is (the more power he or she has in the blogosphere) the more gratifying is the ridicule.
Needless to say, there needs to be a “hook” for these attacks to take place. The attacker needs to feel that their is good reason for the attack.
Generally speaking, tho, I do not think that the alleged reasons for the attacks are the real reasons. I think the alleged reasons are merely the excuses that justify the attack itself.
People often love to couch their viciousness in the high-minded rhetoric of things like “free speech,” but I don’t believe it for a second.
To put it in the plainest possible terms, some people are just fucking assholes and the surest way to get banned from a blog, and the reason that most people do get banned from blogs, is precisely because they are assholes.
Most of the blah blah blah about free-speech and banning is horse shit because it has virtually nothing to do with protecting the free exchange of ideas and everything to do with protecting ones “right” to spout vile crap at other people.
It has nothing to do with the Democratic party and everything to do with getting even with other people for their slights.
Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. But I doubt it, tho.
Good essay, nonetheless, because I do think that this is an important topic. I don’t have any idea what the solution could be, but I do think we should discuss it.
Cheers.
it really reminds me of the underground resistance satirized in The Life of Brian, The Judean Peoples Front vs another splinter group. It also seems to me to represent real fractions on the left in real life, some of which can be overcome and some which are deep fissures and stop coalitions. I can join forces with people who have different ideologies, I supported Dean who is way more moderate then me. I realize where I stand in the political spectrum and feel all sides are needed to stop what is happening to our system.
One of the things I like about Dkos is just that you are talking and fighting with people who’s political views range from Anarchy to Republican. What I don’t like about pf or Dkos is the thought police thuggery. Be it a FP and/or vigilantes who steps in to chill a perceived rebellion or a pf’er who comes here because they don’t like DD rules or have grudges against members of this community it stifles and distracts, and pisses me off. Professing your self free and then running around challenging others for not having your definition of what freedom is is absurd, and obnoxious. Why run around setting people up, goading them and trying to make them conform to your version of PC.
Sometimes I write out of frustration. Sometimes out of sadness.
But if I feel myself to be angry, I take a walk. Anger is not good for me or for who I might target with it.
I get responded to in anger a lot. People assume I must be angry, I suppose, because there intent was to make me so. So I see people responding in anger to the anger they assume they would have if they were me.
Makes little sense.
Peace diary, but I think it could go here to. If we’re in a Buddhist-inspired blog, how about thinking along Buddhist lines.
Here’s a tenet of Buddhism:
Right Speech.
Since speech is the most powerful means of communication, the Buddha emphasises the cultivation of right modes of speech. These have been described as avoiding falsehood and adhering to the truth; abstaining from tale-bearing and instead promoting harmony; refraining from harsh language and cultivating gentle and courteous speech; avoiding vain, irresponsible and foolish talk, and speaking in reasoned terms on subjects of value. Naturally right speech includes in the modern context right ways of communication whatever the medium used.
The source is buddhismtoday dot com.
It would be so nice if we cultivated right speech on a blog called Docudharma.