Certainty vs Dialogue
AITA? Why I engage with people online...
Anger is a defense strategy. It’s a way of identifying situations in which you’ve been wronged or aggressed against and marshaling your physiological resources to counter the threat. As social animals humans are exquisitely tuned to the expressions and tone of others and anger is a way of creating a genuine affect to tell others ‘don’t mess with me… I’m ready for and capable of violence.’ That’s obviously the function of anger, for we only employ anger against other humans. If a person is threatened by a bear they will experience the adrenal release and dilated pupils and rapid heartrate of the angry person but they’re not angry. There’s an instant recognition that the signaling of anger is wasted on a bear, so instead the person is flung into the overwhelming subjectivity of the ‘fight/flight/freeze’ reflex.
I think I understand something about anger. I’m naturally a pretty angry person, both in terms of enjoying the explosive release, and in terms of cultivating long, drawn-out, nurtured feelings of aggrievement or anger (which is resentment). I also have a condition which can be triggered or greatly worsened by anger, which is why I’m in recovery. The relationship between harmful compulsions and anger was not clear to me and so (as for almost every other idea and rule in recovery) I operated on trust for awhile, believing things only because they were told to me by others with more experience and success. The foundational resource for most anyone in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction is the Big Book, which says:
“Resentment is the number-one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.”
That’s a definitive statement and I still couldn’t tell you whether or not it’s true, but I can tell you that removing unnecessary anger from your life will greatly improve it. It’s a discipline but it’s one that I’ve pursued for long enough that I’ve been told by dates and co-workers and others that I seem like a very calm and patient person now, which is not something that someone would have said before, I think. I’m still the same person, which means I have impatient reactions (if only for a second) and am badly critical, especially in areas where I disagree or disapprove. I limit my reactions to internal sensations, though, and I reflexively remind myself that I too am often wrong with others, that I cause this reaction in other people, and that it’s not my role or to my benefit to judge people in this way. At that point the feeling usually passes and I’ve avoided saying or doing things which might cause conflict with or upset or hurt others.
Anger is only justified when someone is trying to wrong you (not verbally, but materially) or when you’re in a situation where you may shortly have to defend yourself. In every other condition I can think of anger only satisfies an internal emotional impulse but doesn’t improve the circumstances. The current, bastardized popular conception of mental health would ‘validate’ someone expressing anger anytime they feel it, and it might be less stressful for the person to act angry in that moment if they feel the urge, but the distant goal should always be understanding and controlling your reactions. There is no reaction more potentially destructive than anger.
There are certainly people (conflict avoidant, or traumatized, or codependent, etc.) who need to cultivate and grow their capacity for instrumental anger. Even for these people, though, anger should be controlled and its sources should be understood.
Annoyance is a less flammable substance and so the need for understanding and control isn’t as great but I think we can surely say this: annoyance might be vented from time to time (even at the displeasure of others) but annoyance should be understandable and controlled. If it’s often appearing and is not constrained in these ways then it’s the kind of thing which could be productively explored with a therapist. If you’re becoming annoyed at other people who are not violating norms or are doing things which most people find inoffensive or tolerable it might be something to examine. If you’re expressing annoyance at someone who wasn’t trying to annoy you it can be very counterproductive, for annoyance often signals that you consider those people less likable generally, or lower status, and so the hurt caused by displays of irritation can be inordinately great, relative to the brevity of the displays.
The bottom line is that anger and annoyance should be as controlled and transparent (and justifiable) as possible. These are social rules which verge upon the moral and so they’re not the kind of things which are growing in popularity these days, even in the ‘mental health’ space (which is not really devoted to that, much of the time). These norms rely on no objective moral code though; they’re simply truths about how humans relate and behave and the behavior which will serve you best as you move through the world. If someone wants to argue that uncontrolled anger or annoyance which is often expressed, and is mysterious to the annoyed person, can be good and helpful in life, have at it. I’d love to read that essay.
Socrates said that wisdom was deeply concerned with knowing oneself, and the outline of one’s life (its potential and its impact on others), and that it was actually a kind of humility. Feeling certain about facts or issues could be justified along narrow views over short timescales, but the people most in touch with reality are those who understand who little they really know, and are consequently interested in the viewpoints of others. If someone wants to claim that this is not wisdom or that it’s better and wiser to cling to private certainty about huge areas of knowledge and complicated social debates and disregard the perspectives of millions of other people, have at it. I’d also love to read that essay.
What brings me to contemplate anger and annoyance on this Friday morning? Simply this: another week navigating the strange and maladaptive world of social media and how it intersects with belief and society.
Every major advance in communication or socialization necessitated resets or adaptations in our norms and habits and social media is probably behind only the printing press in terms of technologies which have changed how we communicate and associate. We can therefore expect drastic changes and new conventions and social habits to emerge and we know they haven’t emerged yet because the effects of social media have been disastrous, in many areas. That’s what I was going to write about today but I discarded those 1,000 words in favor of this subject. Instagram, for example, is a photo-sharing app which has been closely implicated in depression and anxiety, especially in daily users, especially female ones, especially adolescent female ones. I use it to share photos but my photos from the beach and the gym aren’t exactly revolutionary (or popular). It also functions as a de facto social network, where people can post updates about their lives and share reels and news stories, etc.
I also use it to message people. There are dozens of people I message regularly, some of which are on this mailing list (most not). A veteran who works in a factory in Kansas, a radical feminist in Cape Town, South Africa, a trans woman barber in Ft. Lauderdale… these are all people who I regularly send long and dense messages to and receive replies (although I send much more writing than I receive).
I’ve also mentioned that some of those people have blocked me over the years. It’s not so much (5-6 on Instagram, depending on how you define it) and they all share some common traits. These commonalities are my only source of insight into their state of mind and motivation. They are:
We are old friends, or dates… these aren’t people that are unfamiliar to me.
All of the blocks happened because of politically active content, but never because of especially divisive issues.
The blocks were never a culmination of a long process; I wasn’t warned or rebuked. There was no preliminary message or caution which I ignored. Looking back on it I think that these people were probably angered or annoyed at messages from me for a long time but simply never expressed it. When they reached their decision point it seemed like the end of long process to them, but was sudden to me.
All of these people are well-educated, and all of them are on the political Left (although some of them didn’t seem particularly ideological).
Being in recovery also means devoting time to reflect upon your own actions and words. Traditionally we spend time every morning considering how we can be good people that day, and then we reflect on the day every night in bed. That reflection is called ‘personal inventory’ (so-called because the inventors of the AA 12-step program were disproportionately sales- and businessmen who wrote in the terms familiar to them and avoided jargon or overwrought language). One of the steps in the program is that we “continue to take personal inventory and when we [are] wrong promptly admit it.”
So I don’t believe that I was wrong in these cases (or I would’ve apologized and tried to reestablish contact). I know my motivations and there’s no darkness there, but even the mode of communication and my tone doesn’t seem, in retrospect, inappropriate. So what’s going in these cases? There seems to be some kind of disconnect, or misunderstanding. What do the common elements indicate to me about my interlocutors, now lost?
First, I just realized that every person in question is female. I have brutal arguments with men I’ve known and those I’m close to online from time to time but no man has ever blocked me (that I know of). Blocking is not necessarily an aggressive act but it is an assertive one (and can be aggressive, or passive-aggressive, depending on the state of mind of the blocker). As I said, I imagine that from their points of view there was a long lead-up where it seemed that I was transgressing their (invisible and unestablished, hence really nonexistent) boundaries again and again. That explains the drastic and irreversible reaction.
But I’m sure that that doesn’t fully explain the dynamic. Several of them wrote upset (even insulting) messages before blocking me and none of these people were aggressive or hurtful. Under normal circumstances people only engage in behavior calculated to hurt if they have been hurt or if they earnestly blame their target, for something. All of my messages were frank, and direct (and long)… so how could a person read them as hurtful or hostile? Where did I earn my blame?
That is why I wanted to write about this subject today. They are mistaking errors (or differences) of fact versus those of ethics. This is common for people on the Left today, it seems, and it’s truly a problem, for it makes those people angrier and less willing to compromise, or even deal with those who disagree. Data has shown repeatedly that political liberals in the US are suffering from higher rates of mental health symptoms, and are also less tolerant of having ‘conservatives’ in their lives or relationships or workplaces. I think this confusion explains both of those disparities.
A difference of fact is a difference based upon knowledge or context or incentives or experience. A difference of ethics is one based upon some wrongdoing or unethical belief in the person. Any belief that is grounded in bigotry or the denial of others’ humanity or hate or a thirst for violence will cause a difference of ethics. Some people try to stretch these boundaries. For instance: not defunding the police will lead to more black deaths, therefore the supporter is ignoring humanity, therefore they’re blameworthy! Which ignores the relevant fact that there are a hundred reasons why someone can think defunding the police is a bad idea and still have only good intentions toward black Americans. Just ask most black people. In reality, we don’t need to use logic chains or complicated reasoning to find those who we differ with on ethical bases: most of the time we can just ask them. That also implies that we should credit people (at least most of the time) when they express differences of fact to us.
I will use an example: trans identification and bathrooms. It’s a good example because it’s not a subject I feel strongly about and its an issue which is objectively minor, even trivial. It is symptomatic of the state of ‘culture war’ which we find ourselves in and which I find so discouraging. Yet it’s inflamed enough that it could arouse anger in a believer, on either side. If we break the issue into its clearest and lowest resolution forms we can divide believers on this topic into two groups (this is also a good issue because I don’t have to explain policy conditions or history… it explains itself): Supporters of trans people using their chosen bathrooms and Opposers.
On this issue there are reasons to fall into either camp. I recently had a very relevant interaction with a young woman online (who I know, who’s also grown somewhat aggressive through political dialogue, who’s well-educated, and who is obviously female) who posted something about this issue to be seen by a group of high school students. The statement could have been read to express that opponents of trans-sensitive bathrooms are ‘transphobes’. While that might be partly true, those transphobes don’t constitute most of the opposition on this subject and they’re the least productive people to speak to anyway; better to ignore them. Her post had the glib certainty of a Twitter insult, in which everyone who believes something is not just wrong, but idiotic (and bigoted) too. Now I knew, I was certain, that she would not like my response but: 1.) it’s something that she should consider (anytime someone says there are other points of view which you’re not aware of, that is a positive contribution to a discussion) and 2.) I was curious about her position on the issue. I’ve often sent her long, meandering perspectives and arguments and rarely get anything in return but this time I did.
Hopefully I don’t do too much violence to her response but, among other things, she said that she has known many trans kids and has spent more time considering this issue than any ‘cis’ person she knows and there’s nothing I could credibly add to her views. This gets to the heart of the issue. I wasn’t messaging her about the issue of trans bathrooms… I was telling her that the 45-55% of Americans who oppose them aren’t necessarily transphobic and that giving that impression (even in a fuzzy, or implied, manner) to teenagers couldn’t do any good for anyone. Teenagers are already plenty self-righteous and intolerant of opposing views. But by qualifying her (unclear) statement on ‘transphobes’ I wasn’t saying anything she necessarily disagreed with. Disagreement was beside the point. I was aligning myself with the ‘bad’ side and therefore was perceived as having an ethical difference-the justified reaction to which can include anger, and ostracism.
That is a huge part of the mutual incomprehension and social fragmentation in our country. Many people on the Left don’t just see people who want male/female restrooms to stay as they’ve been since we started making the distinction as wrong, or mistaken, or people with different points of view. They see them as bad. They assign an ethical value to their belief, which requires assigning motives to them that they don’t often have. I could give a dozen more examples of this, but I will relent. If you’re speaking to a transphobe (or transphobe-’adjacent’-whatever that means) then the argument is already hostile because you’re in dialogue with an enemy, not a reasonable person with a different point of view. That explains the anger and the assertive finality of the reactions to my messages. While I’m always careful to explain my views and motivations, many people simply will not listen these days. People who would trust me on most important and uncertain topics may not when I’m speaking about my own mind and values. You wouldn’t listen to an enemy either. That explains the insults and anger from people who are not unkind or angry. That explains a great deal of the mystery as to why we can’t solve social problems with the same ease that we used to.
This woman thought that her life experience and education gave her access to a kind of final truth on this issue… but what about everyone else? I know two trans women who disagree with her on this issue. Are those trans women also transphobes? If everyone who disagrees with you is a transphobe then best to sever contact and ensconce yourself in a bubble of agreement. That’s what we see online these days and I believe it’s a large part of the explanation for my own open questions about my personal experience. If everyone who disagrees is not a transphobe, though, then you need to identify those opponents who are decent and honest, and communicate with them. The irony is that my message wasn’t about trans kids or restrooms… it was about the mass of Americans (probably representing most of the country) who seemed to be accused of a great moral crime… that actually rarely applies. Knowing the history and policy concerns might give a person certainty about an issue but that certainty will only cause personal grief and stress, and can’t benefit anyone else, unless he or she speaks to people with different points of view.
That is my primary message, in everything I write (secondary would probably be gratitude for everything we have in this country). While that advice may arouse resentment, despite my intentions, it’s not one that I will abandon. Most people are well-intentioned, and open, and decent. We need to speak to each other.