Tag anger

Stop Apologizing For Hurting.

Dusty Leave a comment

Hi me, this is yourself. You want to talk to me about something.

You weren’t going to talk to me about this today, or tomorrow, though you thought about it last week, when I posted yet another self-denigrating comment attached to a pair of links.

Listen, me. I don’t suck. I am sad.

I am sad for a number of reasons: the school year is ending, and my students don’t want to learn anything. There are a number of stressful things happening in my life, mostly around the end of the school year and graduation, but also with my writing, and with the summer, and with my house, and with family. People around me are hurting, and I want to help, and I usually can’t. All those things make me sad, and you know it.

But I also know that being sad when hard things and sad things are going on is not a failing. It is not a weakness, it is not a mistake: it is a reasonable response to a situation that I can’t control.

It is also bothering me that I can’t control the situation. I really, really want to. You do too. But I can’t. Not even the things I want to control.

I can’t control how my students feel about school. They don’t want to learn at the end of the year. This is neither new nor surprising, students kinda never want to learn anything (though they always want to learn interesting and useful things, and that should say something about the curriculum we teach in our schools, which they do not want to learn most of the time), especially not in the last month or so of school. I’ve always fought that, you know, because I hate wasting time, and I want the students to gain as much as possible from their opportunity to learn, particularly a love and appreciation of learning, and also a love and appreciation of literature and language. But I’ve always, always failed. No, that’s not true; I have instilled something of a love of learning and of literature into some of my students, and I have encouraged the love that was already there in a number of others. I have helped students get through difficult times, and made their lives easier and better. But I’ve never been able to do those good things with all of my students. Maybe that shouldn’t matter to me, but when I keep hearing about how children fall through the cracks and get forgotten, how every student is precious and none of them should get left behind — it makes me feel bad that I fail to reach all of my students.

And then I tell my friends and fellow teachers not to take it to heart when they can’t reach all of their students, when some of their students have issues and opinions that no teacher will ever be able to touch, or solve. Especially now: because the pandemic had long lasting effects on students, and they, like us, are sad. They are dealing with a whole lot of shit, and it’s hard, and they’re not good at it. It doesn’t help that the adults in their lives are dealing with our own shit, so have less time and energy to help deal with theirs: but we can’t be sorry for that. There’s only so much of our shit we can push aside in order to deal with someone else’s shit, before we just pile up too much shit of our own, and we can’t handle it any more. I think I’ve been doing that a lot for the last few years, and I don’t think I can do it any more. And I’m not sorry about that.

If I should be sorry for anything, it is not taking my own advice to heart. Because I really, really suck at that. But that doesn’t make me suck: it just makes me like everyone else. Which also makes me a little sad, because if I can’t even solve my own stupid issues, then how can there be any hope for humanity? My issues are stupid: I am smart. I should be able to solve those stupid issues, I tell myself all the time. And yet, here I am, feeling bad for feeling bad. Partly — but not entirely — because if I could simply solve all my issues, then I would have so much more capacity for helping those around me deal with their issues, which I really want to do. It’d be awful nice if I could do that. But I can’t. And I feel bad about that. For still feeling bad.

I was just talking to a student that struggles with depression, and I was telling them that they are not allowed to feel bad for feeling bad. Depression is a real thing, and feelings are not logical and cannot be reasoned with; we have essentially no control over them, and therefore should not feel bad about having them, because you shouldn’t feel bad for things that weren’t your choice, which you can’t control. And there I was, telling them they shouldn’t feel guilty for feeling bad, which they do because they are empathetic and intelligent enough to recognize that their sadness makes people around them sad, as well; but feeling guilty is useless, and trying to remove or reduce feelings because you don’t like them has not ever worked and will not ever work.

And only at the end of that conversation did I realize that I was telling them to stop being illogical with their feelings, that the feeling of guilt wasn’t reasonable and therefore they should be able to eliminate it, by reasoning with their feelings and taking control of them to eliminate them. Like the feeling of guilt is any different in essence from the feeling of depression.

And only this morning did I realize that I am doing exactly the same thing to myself.

I shouldn’t be sad. I have a good life: I am a respected and even beloved teacher, with complete job security and a sufficient if not entirely satisfactory income. I have my health: I have never been seriously injured or seriously ill, and I can pretty much do everything now that I could when I was 25. I am proud of my past accomplishments, and of the person I am. I am married to my soulmate, and I love our family of pets. I do not suffer from clinical depression, nor from past trauma. I should be fine. Sure, my country is currently mired in a political shitshow and an economic train crash, and the globe is filled with political unrest and violence, with hatred and suffering, with climate change that will make all of us and our feelings moot…

Sorry, I was going to say that none of those things should make me sad: but of course they should make me sad. They are sad and terrible things, and I am an intelligent and empathetic person, and I recognize the state of the world around me, and how it could and should be so much better than it is.

Also, my feelings aren’t reasonable, and don’t respond to logical argument. I can’t even say that the desperate state of the world is the reason for my sadness: it’s not clear to me that my sadness has a reason. It might, of course; I started this post off with a list of reasons why I am sad, and any or all of those might be the cause of my emotions. It also might in that there are things around me that create stress in me, and that stress, unresolved as it is, is more likely to bring my mood down, even if the thing itself isn’t necessarily sad; for instance, graduation stresses me out, because I have to be the MC for it (I don’t have to, but it’s expected of me and I agreed to do it, so that’s stressful), but I’ve been the MC for graduation for the last five years, and it’s always gone fine; and also, graduation is a happy day; and also, it’s not about me, so I could screw it up in a dozen different ways and nobody would care at all, because they’re focused on the graduates, not me. But I’m still stressed about that. And about renewing my credential. And about finishing my grades. And about all the other tasks I have to do in the next month or so. All of that might be what’s making me sad.

But it’s also entirely possible that I’m just sad. For no reason.

And the important thing is this: it doesn’t really matter what the reason is, because emotions are not logical. They do not necessarily come to me because of reasons. To be more clear, there may be reasons, in that there may be triggers, situations and thoughts and experiences that create despair or sorrow or grief or anxiety, which then transforms into sadness and depression; but it’s essentially impossible to know the single cause of my sadness and to therefore address the single cause of my sadness — and therefore remove the sadness. I can find the potential trigger, and I can address it; but that’s not necessarily going to remove the sadness. Because sometimes I’m sad for multiple reasons, and solving one might even highlight the others which I can’t solve. And sometimes, I’m just sad for no reason.

I just had to go through that last paragraph and change the pronouns: because I had written it, as I often do in these posts, using “we” and “one,” as in “We can find the potential trigger, and we can address it; but that’s not necessarily going to remove one’s sadness.” I started this post talking to myself so I could face the truth head on: I am sad. It’s affecting me. I can’t simply control it and remove it. That is the truth. I want to face that, and say it to myself, so I hear it, from me. (I’m just dragging you along into my internal dialogue for the hell of it.)

And, as I realized both from talking to my student and in reflecting on it with regards to myself, I can’t control the feelings of guilt and inadequacy that happen in me because (If these feelings are caused by anything?) of that sadness. See, I don’t think I should be sad. I try to talk myself out of being sad by telling myself there isn’t any good reason to be sad, that on the contrary I have many reasons to be happy. And I frequently am happy: though not as frequently of late. Too much sad time. But that sad time is getting in the way of the things I want and need to do: I should be writing blogs — I was supposed to write a book review of the excellent book Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, which I just finished reading and discussing with my book club — and I should be working on my novel and I should be working on my house and I should be grading my students’ work; and all of those things just sitting out there unfinished is stressful, and that’s not helping me.

And yet when I came in here, to my office, to write the book review, instead I spent half an hour scrolling idly through Facebook. I don’t even like Facebook that much any more. But I still look at it. Same thing with Twitter: I almost hate Twitter nowadays. But I still look at it. I tell other people that social media is probably not good for their mood; I tell myself that I should avoid getting into arguments online and reading negative and hateful things; but I still do both.

Because I’m sad. And I don’t have the energy or will to do the things I know I should be doing. Which, of course, makes me (Does it make me?) feel guilty and also pretty useless; and then I feel bad about myself, and that makes me (?) sad.

Or maybe I’m just sad in the first place, and these are reasons I’m applying to that feeling in some attempt to take control of my feelings, and change them through logic and reason and force of will.

Which, of course, doesn’t work.

My student told me that they have had other conversations about being depressed, and people have asked them why they were sad: and they can’t come up with a reason. They’re just sad. And then they felt stupid because they couldn’t explain reasonably why they were sad. I immediately responded that there doesn’t have to be a reason for sadness, sometimes sadness just is, and they should never feel bad about their feelings. (See how good I am at telling other people about their problems? This is why I needed to talk to myself about this.)

But I still asked why they were feeling sad, when they told me they were. Because even though I know that emotions don’t necessarily have reasons or reasonable causes, I still act like they should, and we should be able to deal with our emotions through considering those causes and then addressing them.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes it works. Sometimes talking about why we feel a certain way makes us recognize apparent causes for our emotions; and sometimes — more rarely, but still, sometimes — we can then address those apparent causes, and feel better. (Sometimes — often, even — simply talking about them makes us feel better.) Like, I worry a bit about my health. I am 48, and I am a bit overweight; not too much, but I have a pretty sizeable amount of body fat around my middle. Which is unhealthy for someone my age, as it puts stress on my cardiovascular system. I also eat WAY too much salt, drink WAY too much caffeine, and I have high blood pressure — for those reasons, and also because of stress from my job (and everything else) and also because I don’t sleep well. Because of stress and so on, and my tendency towards insomnia, which I inherited from my father. And also probably (definitely) because of the caffeine that I drink. So, okay, I should address these things before they become too serious — before they become risks to my health, before I have a heart attack or a stroke. (When I think about this, I think of my grandfather, whom I never met because he died of a massive stroke before I was born. But I try not to think about it too much. It might make [?] me sad.) So I started meditating, about two years ago. And I started going to the gym, which I have done off and on for years now, but I’ve been good about it for the last four months or so. I have also cut down my caffeine intake, though it hasn’t yet paid off in good, solid, consistent sleep.

But I have seen results. I have lost a little weight. I have gotten stronger, and I have more stamina. My sleep has improved, and the meditation has maybe had an effect on my temper, which I don’t lose as often or as intensely as I used to (Though that also may be because I am sad, and particularly because I am tired. But it may be the meditation.). My blood pressure hasn’t gone down and stayed down — but also, my measurements for that are from when I donate plasma at the Red Cross, and there are other likely reasons for my blood pressure to be high when I go to get stabbed with a needle and then drained of my precious bodily fluids. So the worry about my health has brought to mind issues that may contribute to my anxiety, and to my sadness, and I have acted to address the problem, and I have seen some results.

But then I look at the images of myself recorded by our video doorbell, and I think, “Jesus, I’m fat. When did I turn into a potato?” And then I’m sad.

And notice that my reason for feeling sad is nothing to do with the other reasons I mentioned for why I worry about my weight.

And realize, also, that my video doorbell is not a fair camera: because it is a fish-eye lens, intended to capture a wide field of view, and not intended to take flattering pictures of me as I water the plants. Reasonably speaking, I shouldn’t feel bad about either my health or the way I look.

Hey, maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m sad because my father is grieving, because he lost his wife of thirty years this past February, and though I can talk to him and support him, and he says often that talking to me makes him feel better, I can’t make him not be sad, which makes me sad. Also thinking about my health makes me think that I need to make sure I am as healthy as possible because I don’t want to die and put my wife through what my father is going through. Also I don’t want to die. Maybe thinking about that is making me sad.

Maybe I’m sad because I can’t go visit my mother this summer, because I have to do too many other things and my school shortened my vacation, and I have too many things I want to do.

Maybe I’m sad because I have too many things I want to do and not enough time, and that stresses me out, particularly when one of those things is write: because I need to define myself as a writer, or else I will only be a teacher, and that would make me sad because I can’t make all of my students learn all the time, and therefore that makes me feel like a bad teacher. Also teachers don’t get paid enough, and I don’t want to think of myself as undervalued. Not that I get paid as a writer, of course, or at least not much. I don’t sell that many books.

And maybe I’m sad because I don’t sell many books, and so it doesn’t matter if I write the next book or not, because even if — WHEN — I finish it, it won’t sell, and that’s because I’m not that good a writer, and I should just go ahead and accept being a teacher. Even if that means everyone who disparages me and my fellow teachers online will have a better case for criticizing me, and I may have more trouble ignoring their criticisms by telling myself I’m really a writer as well as a teacher.

Maybe I should stop arguing online with people who disparage teachers. Though I do feel like I should take action when I can to make our world, and especially our society, a better place, and that means standing up to people who say nasty things, and correcting and teaching people who don’t know the truth or don’t know the whole story — and that means arguing. Even though it frustrates me and makes me despair, sometimes, because people just don’t listen or don’t change their ideas or their feelings, and no matter what I say or how I fight, I can’t control their feelings.

Maybe I’m sad because I can’t change people’s feelings: not my dad’s, not my students’, not my friends’. Not mine. I want to help all of us: but I don’t have control over that, over any of it, because emotions aren’t something you can control with willpower and rational thoughts.

Maybe I’m just fucking sad.

But here’s the thing: and this is the point I’m trying to make, and the reason why I decided to write this instead of the book review (Which I will write — it’s a good book and one worth reading, even though it’s depressing [Hey, maybe that’s why I’m sad…]): because while we can’t control our feelings with our thoughts, and we can’t even really control our thoughts (Also, that’s why I’m bad at meditation, which is a stupid thing to think, and one that the teachers on the meditation app I use keep telling me not to think, but the truth is that I can’t focus my attention solely on my breathing: the thoughts keep coming, and I keep focusing on them, even after two years of practice. I feel pretty dumb about it, and also kind of desperate because of it, because if I can’t keep myself calm through meditating, then what can I do to control my blood pressure or my anger? [Hey, maybe that’s why I’m sad…]), what we can control is our behavior.

I don’t like that I’m sad. I have shit to do, shit that I know will make me happier, but I have trouble making myself do it — because I’m sad. I don’t think I deserve to be sad, which makes me think both that I’m not really sad, and also that I’m just being self-indulgent, having a little pity party, when actually my problems aren’t that bad and I shouldn’t be upset about them. People around me are much sadder than me, for much better reasons; I should be supporting them, not making their situation worse by being sad all over the place. (Also, I shouldn’t be talking about it on this blog. This is going to make people sad, and that’s a terrible thing for me to do. But I’m doing it. [Hey…])

But rather than telling myself that I shouldn’t be sad, or that I’m really not sad, what I should do is: give myself room to be sad. Maybe don’t worry about the weekends where I can’t bring myself to write a blog. But if I do worry about that and feel bad about it — because I can’t actually control my feelings — I can still do something: I can not apologize, or be mean to myself. I don’t deserve to be mean. I don’t deserve to suffer my meanness. Nobody who reads these blogs needs or wants an apology from me on the weeks when I can’t bring myself to post. If I don’t feel like writing a particular post, rather than trying to force myself, or getting mad at myself for it, maybe I can post something else, like good links. Or maybe I can write something else, like an overly personal babble about my feelings, instead of an insightful book review. Will those things make me feel better?

As of this very moment: yes.

Though maybe I feel better because I also just took a break, took my dogs outside, cleaned up the yard a bit and watered the grass so the tortoise will have something to graze. And stood out in the sunshine, which was warm but not too hot.

I don’t know why I feel a little better now. My feelings aren’t rational, and the causes aren’t clear. But the fact is, I do feel better, and so it’s reasonable to think that maybe I can do these same things again and feel better again. Maybe when I am sad, I can write about being sad, instead of trying to ignore it. Maybe when I can’t face doing a large task from my home improvement list, I can do a small one. Maybe when I think about the problems I am having, I can also remind myself of the things I’m doing to make them better — how I’m supporting my dad, even if I can’t “fix” him. How I told my student that they can always be sad, and can talk to me about it if they want to, even if I can’t rationalize their feelings and therefore eliminate the bad ones; and that made them feel better. How even if I haven’t lost all the weight I want to yet, I’ve still gone to the gym twice a week every week for four months now, and I can see and feel the results. How even if I can’t empty my mind like a Buddhist monk, it’s still good for me to sit quietly and breathe deeply for fifteen minutes or so a day.

And maybe I can stop looking at myself in the videos from that goddamn doorbell.

And what I can do, for sure, is to stop apologizing for my feelings. Because I didn’t choose them and I can’t simply control them: so they are not my fault. And while I can try to work around the limitations that my feelings put on me, the first thing I have to do is recognize both the feelings and the limitations, and accept them. Because by doing that, I accept myself — whereas apologizing for myself and my feelings tells me that I am wrong, that I have done something wrong, and that I should fix it.

That act sucks. But I don’t.

Thank you for reading this. Thank me for writing it. Let’s try being better to ourselves, first. We’re worth it.

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I’m thinking about crime and punishment. Sin and redemption, maybe.

Our school got vandalized this past weekend. The new mural, which my wife’s art students have been working on for months, was severely damaged: they spraypainted racist and sexist words, large phalluses, and extremely stupid pro-drug comments all over it. We don’t know who did it, but whoever it was clearly targeted the mural specifically, as nothing else was damaged (A couple of small tags in the parking lot are the only other marks left behind).

I have no idea why someone would do that. You’re pissed off? Sure, that’s fine; do something about it, confront people, post on the internet that you’re mad, write a letter, hell, stand outside with a sign and say “YOU SUCK!” There are a thousand ways to express your anger, most of them very satisfying. What the hell do you get from something like this? Is it funny to be cruel to innocent people? My presumption is that the anger of those who did it was directed either at the school or at humanity and the world in general; so why go after the artwork being created by people you don’t hate? And if you do hate them, why go after that?

If we do catch who did it — and it was reported to the police as a hate crime, as indeed it was — then their punishment probably won’t be enough, because it probably won’t fix the problem: someone who thinks this is the way to go about expressing your anger is only going to continue targeting the wrong victims in the wrong ways. I don’t know how you fix that.

I know how you fix the mural, though. I know because the students and staff at the school did that yesterday, as soon as the vandalism was discovered. The people who had been leading the mural project were seniors, so they weren’t at the school as they graduated this weekend; two of them did come by, intending to work on the mural, which was unfinished; when they saw what had been done to it, it crushed them. It was the rest of the school, out of affection for those young artists — and for my wife, who was helping out with the mural mainly in an advisory role, though she did also put several difficult hours of work into it — who took it upon themselves to try to clean off the spraypaint, and then to re-paint the original design so as to cover up what could not be removed.

It’s not fixed. It’s not finished; there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. The alumni who were leading it are not sure yet if they want to try to finish the piece, because clearly, it is vulnerable and it is a target, and there’s very little stopping the vandals from coming back and doing it all again. If our artists decided to take the risk, and put whatever spirit they have left into finishing this mural, only to have it defaced a second time? It would be devastating.

That would be a hate crime. That would be vandalism, in the sense of meaningless destruction. And there wouldn’t be enough punishment for people who would do that.

Contempt and Hate

Dusty Leave a comment

I don’t think most of us understand hate.

I know I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever actually felt it.

We use the word often; I use it all the time. I hate voluntary ignorance; I hate violence and war; I hate BBQ potato chips. But we also say “love” more than, I think, we mean it: I love my dog and I love my wife, but I also say I love Ren and Stimpy (Ren more than Stimpy – though I still love Stimpy, the big goof!), and I love Cheez-Its. Obviously, the feelings aren’t the same, aren’t even similar, and I have written before about the absurdity of this language, with its incredible vocabulary and the multiple nuances and shades of meaning available in the specific words and the specific uses we can put them to, having only one or two words for a positive feeling – I “like” this, and I “love” that. Now, that actually isn’t true, we have a ton of words to describe good feelings; and it would make me ecstatic if we could start saying adore and cherish and esteem – I am fond of funny T-shirts! I hold napping in high regard! – but that’s probably not going to happen.

Considering, however, all of the talk that has been flying about regarding hate “lately,” with Charlottesville, and with the alt-right administration currently abandoning the White House like lice fleeing the comb, I think this particular word requires some serious attention. I fear we are misusing it, and therefore making a mistake in how we handle the people, the groups, and the actions to whom we apply it.

Now, as I am unsure that I’ve ever genuinely experienced the feeling of hate (which doubt makes me think that I can actually be sure that I have not, because I think if I had, I would know it), it would seem that I could not write about it; but I can speak from observation, and also from the similar emotions I have felt, as hate is on one end of a spectrum, and all of us have been somewhere on that spectrum. I also have expert testimony to draw from: because I talked to my wife about this subject, and I asked her, “Do you think you’ve ever experienced real hate?” She said “Yes” before I could even finish the question. Without hesitation, without equivocation. I don’t intend to air her dirty laundry here, but suffice to say that one of her parents is one of the best people I’ve ever known, and the other one is very much the opposite of that. (For those reading this who may actually know my wife and her family, be aware that you have never met the shitty parent; you know her step-parent, who is a fine person as well.)

Here is how she describes what she feels for that parent. Every time she thinks of this person, it makes her angry. Angry enough to do harm: to punch, to kick, to attack. Every single time. It follows her around, she said, this anger; it is a part of her, and it never goes away. This is partly due to the fact that the object of her hatred, as one of her biological parents, is also a part of her; she knows this, and she hates that it is so. Everything that she hates about this person, reflects in some way on her, either because of their connection, or because of how it makes her feel. Which just makes her angrier.

That is hate. Hate is anger that lasts, and that never goes away. Violent, intense anger, anger that taints everything around it, including one’s own self: to have something or someone in your life that you hate would make you upset with yourself for feeling this way, particularly in this culture that teaches forgiveness and resolution and closure. My wife cannot force this to heal, cannot close this wound; and so it festers and aches and weeps. This, of course, intensifies her negative feelings, because then she feels saddened that she has to continue dealing with this, that she can’t find a way to get over it or get past it; and then she naturally blames the source of that hate for bringing these other terrible feelings on her, as well, for being so hate-worthy that now she has to carry all the rest of it along with the hate.

(A final note: she is right. That parent is worthy of hate. It’s the closest that I feel to hate, as well, because of what my wife has had to suffer, and continues to suffer. The cultural trope that my wife should forgive and forget is nothing but nonsense. That person does not deserve forgiveness. Those of you who may feel the urge to say that she should turn the other cheek, that her feelings are only hurting her and will go away if she forgives: shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.)

I have felt anger that made me want to do violence. I have felt it several times for a single person or event, so I think I have felt some level of hate; but my hate, my anger, has always faded, and I’ve always been able to feel better afterwards. That fact has enabled me to call myself a pacifist, to say that I oppose violence in all forms at all times. Because I have always been able to escape my desire to do violence, so I have the luxury of thinking that people can always do that, can always turn the other cheek and just – calm down. (Also, I have never had to fight for my safety or my life, and so I can think that people never really need to do that.) This has made me incapable of understanding people who are members of what we blithely call hate groups: why, I think, can’t they just calm down?

There’s two answers, there, because I think there is more than one type of member in a hate group. Probably there is a spectrum as broad as the number of people in the group, but there are two categories at least we can put them into, and should. One is the group that is actually, genuinely filled with hate: every time they encounter the object of their hatred – let’s say, every time a Neo-Nazi encounters a Jewish person, or every time a Klansman meets an African-American – they are filled with a rage that brings them to violence. That rage never fades; they carry it with them, everywhere, always. It is a part of them. It is possible that they are upset with themselves, and saddened, as my wife is, that they cannot simply let that rage go; I would wager that if they lose loved ones, family members or friends that turn a cold shoulder because of the Klansman’s/Neo-Nazi’s hate, that they wish that they could just let the hate go. But they can’t: and every negative feeling that gets piled on someone who hates, gets added to the list of reasons to hate. The object of the hate receives the full blame for all of the consequences of hate. The Klansman thinks, “If those [African-Americans] wouldn’t be so awful, then my life wouldn’t be so terrible. I hate them even more for making me hate them, and for screwing up my life with that hate.”

This kind of conflict cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be cajoled away. I don’t know that it always lasts for everyone who feels it; surely some people change. But I don’t think there is a pattern to that, not a process that can be prescribed to end real, violent, hate. I think the only thing that can be done about it is my wife’s solution: separation. She never sees the person she hates, and never intends to. It doesn’t make her feel better, it doesn’t make the hate go away; but it keeps her from becoming violent. It minimizes the occasions when she has to think about it. (And I have to say: as important as I think this topic is, I feel terrible that writing this is going to drag my wife back down into everything she feels about her family. I really am sorry. She will of course read this before it is published and so it is possible, if she wishes it, that no one else will ever read it.) That’s the best we can do with the people who feel genuine hatred.

But for the rest of them – probably, I think, the majority of them – what they feel is not hatred. For them, it’s more like me saying I hate when my students ask me the same question three times in a row (“When is this due?” “Friday. It says it on the board.” “Wait – when is it due?” “Friday.” “What’s due on Friday?” “I hate you.”). That does drive me crazy; but it doesn’t make me feel violent, and it doesn’t make me feel sad. I don’t even know that it makes me angry, as such.

I think the word for what I feel at those times is: contempt. Maybe disgust, but I think disgust has a visceral, nauseous element; disgust turns one’s stomach. Students not paying attention doesn’t turn my stomach. What it does do is make me smirk at them, and think mean things about how dumb they are – after all, why can’t they read the due date on the board, right over there? Why weren’t they listening when I explained this to them not thirty seconds ago? They must be idiots. They’re not, not really: I’ve been a teacher for 17 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a student that I would call an actual idiot; every single one of them was either capable of doing what I asked, or had a reason (such as autism or developmental disabilities) why they couldn’t do it. The majority of them have not done the majority of what I have asked, but not because they were idiots. When I think that, it is a dismissal, a belittling, created from my contempt.

That, I think, is what most members of hate groups actually feel for the object of their “hate.” Contempt. I think their ideas are about as valid as my contempt for my students when they don’t listen, and I’d guess that every instance of contempt is similarly unfounded; it may be that their contempt is, like mine, largely projected: I get mad at my students for not listening at least in part because I know full well that I never really listened to my teachers when I was in high school. My irritation with them is certainly some irritation with my past teenaged self, seen reflected in their slack jaws and dull eyes, so like my own. It’s also true that they are most distracted when my class is most boring, and I know that when it is boring, it is mostly my fault, not theirs (though I will note that often the boring things I teach are unavoidable: somebody has to explain commas and apostrophes and the passive voice); when I taught John Knowles’s terrible novel A Separate Peace, boredom was the appropriate response. Maybe even contempt.

But I’m not all that interested in trying to understand why Neo-Nazis feel what they feel, whether it is contempt or it is hatred; I don’t really care. There isn’t a way to feel hatred for an entire race that is justified the way my wife’s hatred is justified, because an entire race of people cannot be guilty of heinous acts towards a single person. Contempt for an entire race is also moronic, as my contempt for my students would be if it lasted more than a few seconds; but after they all know what the due date is, we go back to discussion of George Orwell, and they have intelligent and interesting things to say, and I realize they’re not at all idiots, and I was being a jerk when I thought they were. I don’t understand why Neo-Nazis and Klansmen don’t have that same realization. I kinda think they’re idiots. That is the biggest difference: my contempt is only momentary, and never very serious; a Neo-Nazi feels a long-term, maybe even a permanent contempt for the contemptuous object. Enough to make him willing to join the swastika crowd. The Neo-Nazis that aren’t idiots – and of course there are some such – either feel hate, or they are those who can be turned away from their hate groups, those people who make a friend of a different race and realize they maybe shouldn’t be marching in the hate parade.

Here’s what matters. Contempt can frequently be dismissed as unimportant, because it does not incite violence. Nobody wants to hit someone they feel contempt for; the object of contempt is too pathetic, too insignificant, to go through all that trouble. You might shove them out of your way, but you would never pursue them and beat them; you would never run them down with your car, or hang them from the nearest tree. Those are acts of hate. Hate, obviously, should not be dismissed as harmless. That is not to say that everyone who hates is violent or murderous; but the emotion creates the chance of violence, where contempt does not.

I think a lot of our treatment of Neo-Nazis and Klansmen and other white supremacists is contemptuous. We make fun of them, we belittle them, we dismiss them. We feel contempt for them, because we think that all they feel for their victims is also contempt, so we don’t really worry about them doing harm. (Also: they’re idiots. I think.) By contrast, our treatment of terrorists is fearful: because we know that they feel hate, and therefore are they very dangerous. People who would set off a bomb in a crowded place are full of hate. People who would drive a car, or a plane, into innocents, are full of hate. And if and when we see white supremacists marching, at night, carrying torches, chanting “BLOOD AND SOIL!” we recognize that as more than contempt: that is hate. You watch video of police officers setting attack dogs on civil rights protesters, it is clear: that is hate. Hate, genuine hate, must be treated as something dangerous, because it is. Treating a person filled with hate as if they only felt contempt would make us vulnerable; we can turn our backs on people who feel contempt. We can get up in their faces during a rally, we can yell at them, we can follow them playing “Ride of the Valkyries” on a tuba. We can laugh at people who feel contempt. It is dangerous to treat those who hate as if they only feel contempt. That is the first mistake we have made in the past, and hopefully, the events of Charlottesville will remind us that ignoring, dismissing, belittling those who actually hate is never going to make them go away. For them, we must make them go away: we must enforce separation. Which probably means law enforcement.

But here’s the thing. When we treat those who only feel contempt as if they actually feel hate, that is ineffective, too. Because it isn’t justified: a guy who makes racist jokes doesn’t need to be on an FBI terror watch list. Some putz who hangs a Nazi flag on his house, or a Confederate flag on his truck, doesn’t need to be treated as if he is about to explode into violence. And if you confront that person and say, “You’re full of hate!” in whatever way you say that, they will say, “No, I’m not. I don’t hate anybody. I just think racist jokes are funny, and the Confederacy fought for Southern pride and state’s rights.” They may say, “I have plenty of [black/Jewish/female] friends.” And maybe they do, though I think it is hard to be friendly with someone for whom you also feel contempt. But regardless, they do not feel hate. They can reasonably deny any label that they are members of a hate group, or that they are a violent threat to a civil society. If you try to force that label on them, they can turn it around and call you intolerant, and a bigot; they can call you Communist or antifa or the alt-left. They can claim that you are limiting their freedom of speech by keeping them from speaking on your college campus. They can take the moral high ground. Then they can argue for greater freedom for their groups and their causes – and then that means greater freedom for the members of those groups and causes who actually feel hate, who are genuinely dangerous.

Then you get Charlottesville.

So the issue is, we have to make a distinction between those who feel contempt, and those who feel hate. And we have to treat them differently. The hateful must be watched, and prevented from doing harm; the contemptuous we should ignore.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’ve gotten in my plans for how to fix all of this. I do not know how to discern hate from contempt; they probably blend together for the observer, they may both be present in the same person. No reason why a Neo-Nazi couldn’t feel contemptuous of Jews and hate African-Americans, for instance. Or feel contempt for African-Americans and hate black policemen, specifically. A contemptuous person may get angry and sound just like someone full of hate, even if that feeling fades quickly, where it wouldn’t in someone who genuinely hates. But I do think that we will make more progress, and have better results, if we treat the two categories differently when it is clear which is which. That crying Nazi who got banned from OKCupid, for instance? That dude is not full of hate. A man who hated non-whites would hate them more after they got him banned from Tinder. He might lie about it, of course; but I think he probably would not cry.

Though maybe that thought is coming from my own contempt.

I hate that.

I Suck.

Dusty Leave a comment

I want to be honest. Want to clear the air.

We have a new president. And he may have many good qualities — though hope for that is fading fast — but there are a number of things about him that are highly disturbing. Perhaps the worst are that he is narcissistic, and indifferent to truth, facts, and transparency. And I don’t mean that as a cheap insult, a dig at him based on his political difference from me or even his appalling personality; I mean quite literally that he appears to be a true narcissist, in love only and always with himself; he really doesn’t seem to care what the truth is so long as he can spin it to reflect well on himself. So extreme arrogance, and dishonesty, are the fundamental issues here — though again, that may only be the scum on top of the cesspool. There may be worse stuff lower down. But for now, these will do.

I just got chewed out, a couple of days ago, by a former friend on Facebook for some of my bad habits. And it hurt, but only because he was right, and I have been fooling myself about those bad habits, pretending they aren’t as bad as they are, or that other people wouldn’t even notice them. Not true. I was lying to myself, in order to protect my ego.

I was like President Stump.*

(*I refuse to type his actual name on this blog. Here’s why.)

Okay. Not that bad.

The guy who tore me up is, let it be known, arrogant on a scale I can’t match, and also a manipulative, obnoxious fuckbiscuit. But that doesn’t matter: that’s for him to deal with, not me. I have to deal with me.

See, the thing is, I spend a lot of time on this blog, and in my fiction books, saying what I think is right. And that is an essentially arrogant stance to take. It is worse for me because I base my authority merely on my opinion of myself, and my ability with language. Which is nice and all, being able to string words together, but it certainly doesn’t make me right all the time: the words reflect thoughts, and to be really right words, they have to come from right thoughts.

However, as I was telling my class today, the only thing a writer can ever be sure of is his own opinion of his work. While writers should consider their audience, we can’t really know what people think of our words and our ideas (Which is why comments are always welcome and appreciated! Even critical ones, because then I know when to pull back on the stick.), we can only know what we think. I think my stories are interesting, which is why I write them. I think my insights are insightful, which is why I share them. It’s the only reason I can ever have to share what I write: I think it’s the right thing to say.

I don’t have a problem with that truth. I can accept that my interests are my best subjects, and that if I think something sincerely, then I will write about it better than something I pick because I think other people will like it. I don’t mind at all that other people don’t always like what I like. I accept the basic egotism of being an artist. But I don’t want anyone thinking that I see myself the way President Rump sees himself. I don’t want people to believe that, just because I act like I’m all that and a bag of chips with a philosophy degree, that I, too, am a fuckbiscuit. I’m not.

So here’s the truth.

I’m arrogant. I think of myself as more intelligent than most people out there. I recognize that other people have knowledge and abilities that I don’t, and I know there are things I know nothing about, and could not learn; but I also think those things aren’t as important as what I know and what I’m good at. I have no valid reason for this belief; I just think it because it makes me more awesome. I think fast and I talk fast and I write fast, and voluminously, excessively, mind-numbingly, all three. Too much. All three. What I don’t do enough of is — listen. Read. Learn. If true wisdom is knowing what you don’t know, then I’m an idiot: because I think I’m a genius.

I argue this way. I don’t read carefully enough what my opponent has to say, I just — and this hurts to say, because I tell my students they should never do this — I find a flaw in the argument and then I attack it. I don’t pay attention to the rest of the argument, as long as I have my weak spot to stab at. I elevate my diction in order to seem objective, but really, it’s a cheap dodge to cover the basic flaw of most of my arguments, which is this: I’m making it up on the spot. I don’t have a whole lot of basis for a lot of my opinions. I think they make sense, and I strive to make them make sense, but there’s not a lot of foundation underneath the surface. I am logically shallow, just good at poking at weak points, and also talking really fast and saying a whole lot that doesn’t have much substance behind it. Sounds good, though. Well — to me.

I teach this way. I do not prepare very much, because I know I can entertain a class, and give them at least a veneer of insight that I come up with pretty much off the cuff. But I don’t read literary analysis, nor pedagogy textbooks, and I don’t try to improve what I do on a fundamental level. I change around what the classes read, and when I remember an insight from a past class (I do have a good memory, which helps) I add it in; but the aspects of my teaching style that don’t work very well stay in place because I don’t do the work necessary to change them. Largely because I think that my system is just fine. Because it’s my system. And I’m arrogant.

I write this way. I don’t edit much, or do a whole lot of drafts; I haven’t studied writing other than studying literature. I know there are flaws in my writing — I talk too much, mainly — but I don’t try to fix them. Because the way I write is fine, because it’s the way I write, and surely that’s good enough. My lack of tangible success is a reflection of the world not seeing my genius; not any reason why I need to change.

Along with arrogance is this: I am lazy. I am damned lazy. I know about my bad habits, but I don’t change them, because it would require effort. I thought about doing my exercises tonight, but I just had Cheez-its, instead. I planned to read much more this year, but so far, I’ve mostly spent time playing mindless video games. My usual habit is this: I recognize a problem with my arguing or teaching or writing, or with myself and my lifestyle; I castigate myself for a little while, until I feel like I’ve suffered enough angst for the flaw — and then I tell myself that I can’t change who I am. Then I start building rationalizations, false justifications for just staying the way I am. Not because I think my flaws are good — but because I don’t want to put in the work to change them. I don’t want to edit my writing. That’s hard. I’d rather just bang out a single draft and call it good. Well, really, I’d rather play mindless video games and listen to Hamilton.

I think the best word for me is glib. I react quickly and perhaps wittily, but without a whole lot behind it. I don’t think about things for very long, and I don’t spend time trying to learn what I don’t know. I am facile, and perhaps charming, and so I get encouragement from the people around me, which confirms for me how cool I am. Though I don’t really need that: because I know I’m cool. And my opinion is enough. Anybody who thinks less of me is clearly wrong and probably a jerk.

There’s more: I have a pretty serious temper, and I tend to cover it until I blow, usually without warning, and then I yell and curse a lot, pitch a fit, and then withdraw to feel put-upon and pouty. I can genuinely hurt people when I blow — I have scared students by yelling loudly; I have hurt the feelings of those I love: I have said terrible things to my wife, to my friends, and to my brother and my parents. I have yelled at and terrified my pets, throwing things and hitting things to make loud noises. I’m sarcastic, and often insulting, particularly in argument. For a guy who wants to be honest and usually claims to be fundamentally honest, I sure lie a lot. Mostly to students. Sometimes it’s even justified. And, obviously, I’m a hypocrite: I criticize other people for not being open-minded, for not trying to learn and improve, and then I sit back on my steadily widening ass and eat more Cheez-its. I talk about the importance of deep thought, and of honesty, and of valid, genuine argument. And then I do all the shit I do.

I am sorely tempted to finish this up by talking about my good qualities. But I think for once I will stop myself from going on. This is what I wanted to say: in a lot of ways, a lot of really important ways, I suck.

Just thought you should know.

A last postscript: it is — I don’t know, probably? Definitely? Surely? — true that the fuckbiscuit isn’t really that arrogant. It’s just that he had the gall to point out my flaws, and be right. (He basically said I talk faster and more than I think, get snotty to cover up my own confusion which is caused by my tendency not to take my time and think things through, and that I insult my opponents and then act put-upon and pissy when they call me on my own bullshit. And that I do this so I can stroke my ego, not so I can actually learn or improve myself or my opinions, which is why I claim to argue. So, I’m a liar, too. All true.) And I don’t like the way he did it, but then, it was effective, and I’m not sure that another approach would have been. So if he is manipulative, it might have been, really, for my own good.

Though I’m not taking back the “fuckbiscuit” part.

 

Further postscript: I recognize that this post seems like a confession that puts the lie to what I’m confessing — I can’t be that arrogant if I talk about how much I suck! I can’t be a liar if I can be this honest! — but this is one step back from years of these bad habits. I don’t think it balances the scales. I really am all of these bad things; this post is just an anomaly. I want to say that I’m working on these things, and maybe I am. But maybe I’m just going to eat more Cheez-its.

The Big Short: Rage And Wall Street

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The Big Short
by Michael Lewis

 

(*By the way: I haven’t seen the movie. This is just about the book.)

Oy.

That’s kind of all I can say. Oy. Or maybe Oof. Like I’ve been punched in the stomach.

I mean, I knew it was coming. I knew what happened in 2007 when the economy collapsed. I knew it was because commercial banks turned personal finance accounts into commodities. I knew they overextended themselves, leveraging assets 35-40 times, creating hundreds of billions of dollars of imaginary wealth, largely in order to earn commissions. I knew they made the financial system collapse, and then the government bailed them out with TARP, handing over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars without any stipulations, because the companies were “too big to fail.” I knew that millions of those dollars were used to pay bonuses to the brokers and executives that devastated the economy. I knew that nobody went to jail, and I’m pretty sure that Wall Street is back doing a lot of the same things again, for exactly the same reasons.

But still, having it broken down for me in even greater detail was like getting punched all over again.

Oof.

It’s a pretty good book. I think it didn’t quite go basic enough for me, though I liked the way that it was written. Essentially, Michael Lewis — who started as a Wall Street guy back in the 80’s — went out and found the people who figured out that the collapse was coming before it came, and reacted accordingly. Then he got the whole story from three of them: a hedge fund manager in California, an investment group, and a small brokerage firm. In each case, these people saw, because of their own unusual perspectives, that there was something deeply flawed about the market in the first half of the 2000’s. And they bought and sold based on what they saw, and while the economy collapsed, they made money hand over fist. But it’s not a story of capitalism, not really; the overriding impression you get is that these guys went from excited for the opportunity they saw, to deeply disturbed that nobody else could apparently see what was happening, to horrified about how bad the problem was going to get before things simply broke.

And why did all of that happen? Why did everything break? Because people were making money. Sure, doing so was ruining millions of other people; but what does that matter? As long as I get mine.

So yeah, the book made me angry, all over again. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I’m angry over the financial system in this country, nor over the collapse, nor over the way our government handled it. But this time I was definitely angry.

So I can’t say I recommend the book. It was a little hard to follow, as it assumes a certain basic understanding of bond trading, of interest rates and tranches and collateralized debt obligations, that I didn’t really have. It does explain most of the technical matters quite well, but I still had to ask my wife about some of it. And, of course, the subject won’t interest most people, and if you are interested, it will likely make you really angry. It did me.

But if you want to get angry — or if you’re already angry, and you’d like to know more about why and how — then read it. It tells the story extremely well.

Oy.

Book Review: The Fallen Country

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The Fallen Country

by Somtow Sucharitkul

I think I may have learned a lesson from this book. Actually, two.

You see, I read this book when it was new, in 1986, when I was an angry twelve-year-old boy. I was angry for the usual twelve-year-old reasons, and to the usual twelve-year-old degree – for both, the answer is “Not much” – and reading this novel, about a boy who escapes his truly awful life of neglect and abuse through his neverending rage, which takes him into a world of snow and ice, where the cold deadens the pain and his white-hot anger is a great and powerful weapon, may have helped me realize that I didn’t really have much to be angry about, and really, I wasn’t all that angry. Not angry like this character is. There’s a scene in the book where his friends accompany him to this world, the Fallen Country, and in order to take them there he asks them to think of all of the injustices they have suffered, all the torments they have endured, and focus all of their anger into helping him reach this other place; afterwards, they confess that they were thinking about – getting grounded. Or failing Algebra. Or being jealous when their crush was smiling at another boy. Only the main character is angry about the years of systematic, violent beatings he has suffered every night from his adoptive father, or the way his adoptive mother ignores this terrible abuse, along with everyone else he has ever known, who have all been unable to help him in his war against the Ringmaster, the evil god who enslaves and tortures all of the inhabitants of this magical realm.

I think now that this book may have helped me realize that I was more like the friends, and less like the main character. And that that was okay: because while his anger gives him great strength, and the Fallen Country sounds like a wonderful place to escape to – he rides a dragon and rescues princesses, slaying hydras with his ice-sword of rage – the point of the book is that this is not a good way to live. And it makes that abundantly clear: you do not want to be like this kid. Harry Potter does the same thing, shows that while it’s awesome to be a wizard in a magical world, really, it’s probably better to have parents that weren’t murdered when you were an infant. Same thing here, only more so, because the beatings that Sucharitkul described are truly terrible.

And now that I have gone back and re-read it, here’s the second lesson I learned: books I loved in my youth should, sometimes, stay there. You see, this isn’t that great a book. There are some good things about it: the characters of the friends are nicely drawn, good renditions of Average-teenage-kid; the Fallen Country is incredible, both enchanting and terrifying, poetic and with the ring of truth; the plot and the final resolution between the main character and the Ringmaster are nicely done. But the way that the abused child is rescued by the people around him, after not having been rescued in the past, is cheesy in the extreme, and very hard to believe – nobody has cared before, even though he shows up to school daily with bruises and cuts and welts; then these characters decide to care, and lo, he is saved by their caring – and the adult characters are all awful. Not terrible morally, though the abusive parents certainly are; but just unrealistic and superficial. There’s a school counselor who doesn’t realize that her job is to report the abuse until she is talked into it by one of the teenagers. Whom she also flirts with. Yikes. It feels like the author was trying to simplify, as this is intended as a young adult book, but honestly, it my be a little too dark for that; and the result is a good book, based on a good idea, that isn’t written very carefully, or very well. Sucharitkul underestimates his audience, assuming they will believe the cardboard characters, or at least not care that they are cardboard; and the same for the weak points in the plot.

You know, I wonder if the reason I liked this author so much was because none of my fantasy/sci-fi friends had ever heard of him; I discovered this book, and I was the only one who read Sucharitkul. I also remember being enchanted by the foreignness of his name; I remember memorizing the way it was spelled, and practicing what I assumed was the correct pronunciation (Since I was never exposed to any other Thai names at the time, I was probably wrong.), and thinking how cool it was that he was also an accomplished composer of classical music.

Dammit. I was a teenaged hipster. Yeah: some things should definitely stay buried in the past.

Heroes and Villains

Dusty Leave a comment

I don’t wake up easily from a deep sleep. My wife has had to suffer the consequences of this for years – consequences that include getting whacked across the head with my arm when I roll over too vigorously, and my apparent indifference should she feel scared or upset and want companionship – or if she would like to register her displeasure with a recent arm-whacking; my first response to her gentle prodding is just more snoring, and should she poke me aggressively enough to disturb my sleep, my response is to pet her sort of how one might pet a Wookie, with too much force and not enough aim, my hand making contact and then moving over face, hair, shoulder, blankets, whatever, while I mumble, “’Sokay. Don’ worrry.” Then I roll over and go back to sleep. Not terribly helpful when she heard a disturbing noise outside, or wants to talk about the nightmare she may have had.

This would probably work.

 

But last night, I was torn from sleep by terror: in the middle of the night, my dog barked. Sammy never barks. Not just because he is too friendly and curious to be a watchdog, though he is; but also because his barking noise sounds nothing like a bark: it’s a strange, yodeling kind of sound that starts high and squeaky and ends in a broken-note rumble, kind of like Dory the fish doing whale noise. We call it a bodel, for “bark-yodel.”And it turns out, when one is completely asleep, it sounds a lot like a dog screaming in agony. And before I even knew what I was doing or that I was awake, I was out of bed, out of the bedroom, my heart in my throat as I ran to find my dog and save him from whatever was killing him.

Nothing was, of course; he just happened to be awake (Toni didn’t sleep well last night, and was up and down a lot; Sammy was probably trying to keep her company) and heard something that he felt needed a barking. Might have been the dogs next door, who are kept outside all night by our douchebag neighbors; might have been a glimpse of a rabbit or a cat outside the front window. When I came tearing out of the bedroom in a full-on panic run, I’m sure I scared the crap out of him just as he had done to me. I grabbed him and hugged him and made sure he wasn’t missing any limbs or vital organs; Toni came in (she had been awake already) and calmly said, “He was just bodeling.”

Toni’s face when she realizes that I won’t wake up for her, but I leap out of bed to save the dog.

 

That’s the most scared I’ve been in a long time. Since the night our dog Charlie died, when we woke up in the middle of the night to find him thrashing in a grand mal seizure. I’m sure that memory, which is seared into my nerves and chiseled into my bones, had something to do with moving me out of sleep and into panic before Sammy had even finished making the noise that woke me. After I went back to bed, I couldn’t go back to sleep; I lay there for a good 30 or 40 minutes trying to calm down, and instead imagining other scenarios in which I could suddenly lose my family: I imagined car accidents, armed intruders, catastrophic house fires, you name it. Even once I knew everything was fine, the fear wouldn’t leave me, wouldn’t let go of me that easily. I’m starting to think that once it sinks in its fangs and talons, fear never lets go. It’s always there, and it’s always terrible, and it changes the way you think and the way you act, forever afterwards.

Which is why terrorists murder people. Because the fear, both the fear of being murdered and, perhaps more insidiously, the fear of seeing those we love murdered, will change the way people think and the way we act. Once that fear gains a strong and lasting foothold, we will never tear it out, and it will become much easier to think: Maybe if we just let them have their way, they won’t bother us; then we won’t have to be so afraid.

We really don’t want to be afraid. Fear is a terrible thing. It’s a sickening feeling, and an entirely overpowering one. Really, the only way to stop it coursing through us is to summon up a stronger feeling. Like anger.

How many of us have seen it and heard it in the last week, since Daesh terrorists struck Paris on Friday the 13th? “Those bastards, those maniacs, those savage barbarians – they should be killed. They should be wiped out. We should just bomb them flat.” Other people have turned on a closer target, and attacked those who express sorrow or anger over the deaths in Paris: “What about the people in Beirut?” they ask. “What about Kenya? Where was your outrage then?” For myself, I can’t understand why it’s wrong to feel grief for a terrible loss, even if one hasn’t felt it for some other loss: I don’t think grief is subject to hypocrisy. Though self-righteousness certainly is; because the reason more people weren’t grieved by the attack in Kenya was that the media didn’t report it the same way, not because people saw the story and thought, “Pssh, who cares? They weren’t white Westerners.” (Okay, Trump probably thought that.) And if you were one of the people who attacked everyone else for their uneven outrage – where were you when the attack happened in Kenya? Or in Nigeria? Or Beirut? Or now in Mali, where a hotel was attacked by armed gunmen yesterday? Did you spread the word? Do what you could to make up for the mass media’s failings? Take advantage of social media, which has the word “media” in its name for a reason?

Probably not. Because the goal of these people is, in my estimation, the same as those calling for fire to rain down on the Middle East: getting angry stops us from feeling afraid. Ask the average American gun-owner why he feels he needs a deadly weapon by his bedside, and you will probably get the same progression: he will speak of an intruder, someone threatening his family; and then he will speak of his intent to bring bloody vengeance with the fiery sword. The word “motherfucker” will probably make an appearance. A red rage will gleam in the eyes of the most mild-mannered.

Because violent anger leaves no room for fear, and violent anger feels better. Violent anger has a target; fear makes us the target.

And you know what’s even easier than violent anger? Hatred. Because hatred doesn’t need to be stirred up, doesn’t need an immediate, proximate cause; hatred just sits inside us, calmly simmering, and spinning off little bursts and pops of bitter cruelty. Hatred never has to fade, the way anger does, leaving room once more for the fear to rise up again. And hatred gives the illusion of control, which anger takes from us as much as fear does. When we hate, we can pretend to act rationally: we can speak calmly of the need for caution when deciding what to do with the four million Syrian refugees; we can say that it isn’t in the best interests of this country to uphold the ideals on which the country was founded; we can pretend that our proud role as global leader doesn’t include acting responsibly; we can say that the last thing we should do is treat other people precisely the same way that our people were treated in the past. We can turn our backs on people in desperate need of help that we could easily provide. When we hate, we can lie. When we hate, we can betray. And because we hate, we can pretend that we are doing the right thing.

There’s an obvious parallel here. The new Star Wars is coming out soon, and so like many other fanfolks, Toni and I have been watching the movies. We started with the more recent trilogy (Because epic stories should be experienced from the beginning. And because the supreme irony of these movies is that the biggest fans followed the same progression: fear that the movies would be bad led to anger over what flaws there were [Flaws that were already present in the original trilogy, and ignored because childhood things are shinier in the memory than in the hand.] led to hatred of JarJar Binks and the artist formerly known as Saint George.), and so the downfall of Anakin Skywalker was fresh in my mind, all this past week. When I saw rational, good-hearted people speaking out on Facebook against refugees, or for violent and brutal retaliation, I immediately thought, “That’s because of fear.” And then right on the heels of that I thought, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to the Dark Side.” This was confirmed for me when I saw posts claiming that all Muslims are dangerous; that all Middle Easterners are potential terrorists and not to be trusted, just like the Russians; and when I saw someone tell a Marine “If ya could take out some of those sand worshipers for me that would be great.”

The Jedi and Sith are metaphors, allegories; but what they represent are quite real. The Dark Side is the pursuit of power and dominance; and the road that leads to it begins with fear. Fear for our loved ones and for ourselves – fear that very well may be founded in reality (I won’t say “rational” because fear never is); when Anakin feared for his mother’s life, he was correct: she was in danger, and she did die before he could save her. Terrorists are a threat, and as the actions of Daesh clearly show, they are a threat to all of us, to anyone, anywhere; because they seek power and dominance.

But here’s what really matters, here’s the heart of this issue: you don’t fight the Dark Side with power and dominance. When you do that, you become it. You fight the Dark Side by removing the fear of those who serve it. When Luke trusted his father, showed love for him, Anakin lost his fear of being alone; he turned away from the Dark Side and remembered his goodness. And because of that, the Sith were destroyed.

I am not saying we should embrace the terrorists themselves; they have gone too far, have been completely corrupted – there is no goodness left in them. Emperor Palpatine had to be thrown into a nuclear reactor, after all. But just like the leaders of our terrorist organizations, Palpatine used others, and then discarded them when it suited him, when doing so would cause the most harm, and bring him the most power and dominance. And just like Darth Sidious, the only ones who can stop those people are the people they corrupt, the ones who serve them and believe in them. We in the West have killed dozens of terrorist leaders; and all that happens then is another one takes their place. The current leader of Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is the third to run this particular organization; the first two (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – remember him? – and Abu Ayyab al-Masri) we killed. We might as well call them Darth Maul and Darth Tyrannous. (I really don’t want to point out the parallel in the similar first names, or the fact that all of these names are not birth names, but were adopted for symbolic reasons. But I will point out that George Lucas is an extremely smart man.)

What we need to do is what Luke Skywalker did. We need to trust that there is still goodness in people. We need to encourage that goodness. We need to deny our own fear, even at the risk that the thing we fear will happen anyway. Look: we are all going to die. There is no guarantee that we won’t be dying really soon, in an accident, or even in an attack. There is no guarantee that our loved ones won’t be taken from us; in fact, they probably will. I am sure that I will grieve for Sammy as I grieved for Charlie. All we can do is try to make the world we leave behind into a better place. We can remember what would make our loved ones, our lost ones, proud, and try to live up to that. We can honor our dead, and our ideals; we can live up to our responsibilities; we can be good people and do the right thing.

And we can fight back against fear, and maintain control over ourselves. Not power and dominance over others: control over ourselves. As long as we react to the fear, we are giving power away to others, and losing our control. We are increasing the power of the terrorists, because we are feeding them terror. And when we react with anger and hatred, we are doing the same: it is no coincidence that terrorist activity swells after each callous, arrogant intrusion into the Middle East from the West. No coincidence that Daesh is centered in the Iraq that we made when we invaded, that al Qaeda and the Taliban were centered in the Afghanistan that the Cold War created.

I don’t mean to blame the West for the actions of terrorists: they are the ones who turn to the dark side, who allow their own fear to turn to anger, to turn to hatred; I blame those who pull the triggers, who detonate the bombs, who hijack the planes. Even more I blame those who take scared, desperate people and, for their own aggrandizement, turn those scared people into human weapons, in order to create more fear and misery. But blame is not the solution. The solution is to remove the fear, from both sides, from all of us – and the only way to do that is with kindness. With compassion.

By the way: I’m not Yoda. This is Yoda. (He even sounds like Yoda.)

 

Just imagine: if instead of four million angry, desperate, miserable refugees, stuck in camps in the Syrian and Iraqi deserts, who have nothing to turn to for solace but their own faith, and who are therefore easy pickings for the corruptors who call themselves prophets of that faith, there were four million people living in the West, filled with gratitude to the nations and the people who saved them and their families from the villains – those same corruptors – who destroyed their lives and homes. Imagine if the Syrian refugees stopped thinking of the West as their enemies, and thought of the West as their home. Imagine what allies they could be in the quest for a lasting peace and a stable Middle East. Imagine the people who could become leaders, diplomats, mediators between the countries of their birth, and the countries that welcomed them in when they were in desperate need. Don’t you see how that would make an end to organizations like Daesh and the Taliban? They drive the people out, with anger and hatred; and we take them in, with compassion, and without fear.

It would bring us strength. It would grant us control. It would make us Jedi.