WARNING: this post is by turns morose and faintly idealistic.
I've been reading various blogs about [American] college football, as well as the letter pages on Salon.com. I am struck by how vitriolic the tone is. For sports fans, that's part of the experience I suppose -- death to the other tribe! -- but the letters on Salon.com about children, feminism, mothers who work outside the home versus those who don't, father's rights, etc., etc., are depressing.
They're depressing because people are so damn angry about their lives, and they feel compelled to try and direct other's lives, tearing them down in the process. I made the mistake of putting a tongue in cheek response to one thread, and got jumped all over. And the ridiculous thing is, I felt slightly hurt.
At a personal level, I finally put it down to this: it's not so much that I dislike having people dislike me -- it happens. It's that I want people to dislike me for accurate reasons, not because they can't grasp irony. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.
But looking at this in a general societal context, I disliked the experience of all the negative energy (man) for other reasons. The older I get, the more I am saddened by the fear, anger, and daily struggles that people seem to be contending with. It appears that they seem to have limited ways of coping with it, demonstrated inter alia by their lack of perspective. This is by no means restricted to users of the interweb, it seems to be spreading throughout the polity.
For instance: I don't always like the strain of being a sole wage earner for a few years, but it was our choice, and it's not like we have to make any hard decisions like buy medicine or pay the rent, not both. Others on the interweb seem to take the view that troubles in affording middle class lifestyles is the fault of feminists, or corporate bosses (getting warmer), or the decline of society's interest in men, or whatever.
Alternatively: I worry about educating my children and the hurts that life might have in store for them, but it's not like I have decide which one goes to school until they are 10 at which time the money runs out, or that I have any risk of seeing them die of hunger, or be abducted into a child army, or something. Others on the interweb seem to think that there's a conspiracy to break all women by raping them, or to break men of their spirit and to devalue their contributions to society...
So why worry? Well, I have to live among this and raise my children among it. A society full of angry people who are not really have-nots but still feel some sense of deprivation or injustice (demographically, the odds are that they wouldn't be posting to the web, if they were materially deprived) is not one that can deal with important questions of balancing personal and social rights and entitlements.
Nor is it a society that can deal with making justice too commonplace to be surprising. People's vitriol for the other breaks down the social ties that make it possible for a nation to address real problems. And that extends to a lack of interest in the places where the horrible things that I mentioned above, do happen.
I know that I'm overstating the case, being melodramatic, and such like. I know that the world is not just angry Americans on the web, and they are not the only or the most dangerous people. I know that you can't make people be decent to one another. But I think the notion is instructive. I used to laugh at people who talked about peace, love, and understanding but now I am in the Elvis Costello camp. More laughs, less hate, man.
I've been reading various blogs about [American] college football, as well as the letter pages on Salon.com. I am struck by how vitriolic the tone is. For sports fans, that's part of the experience I suppose -- death to the other tribe! -- but the letters on Salon.com about children, feminism, mothers who work outside the home versus those who don't, father's rights, etc., etc., are depressing.
They're depressing because people are so damn angry about their lives, and they feel compelled to try and direct other's lives, tearing them down in the process. I made the mistake of putting a tongue in cheek response to one thread, and got jumped all over. And the ridiculous thing is, I felt slightly hurt.
At a personal level, I finally put it down to this: it's not so much that I dislike having people dislike me -- it happens. It's that I want people to dislike me for accurate reasons, not because they can't grasp irony. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.
But looking at this in a general societal context, I disliked the experience of all the negative energy (man) for other reasons. The older I get, the more I am saddened by the fear, anger, and daily struggles that people seem to be contending with. It appears that they seem to have limited ways of coping with it, demonstrated inter alia by their lack of perspective. This is by no means restricted to users of the interweb, it seems to be spreading throughout the polity.
For instance: I don't always like the strain of being a sole wage earner for a few years, but it was our choice, and it's not like we have to make any hard decisions like buy medicine or pay the rent, not both. Others on the interweb seem to take the view that troubles in affording middle class lifestyles is the fault of feminists, or corporate bosses (getting warmer), or the decline of society's interest in men, or whatever.
Alternatively: I worry about educating my children and the hurts that life might have in store for them, but it's not like I have decide which one goes to school until they are 10 at which time the money runs out, or that I have any risk of seeing them die of hunger, or be abducted into a child army, or something. Others on the interweb seem to think that there's a conspiracy to break all women by raping them, or to break men of their spirit and to devalue their contributions to society...
So why worry? Well, I have to live among this and raise my children among it. A society full of angry people who are not really have-nots but still feel some sense of deprivation or injustice (demographically, the odds are that they wouldn't be posting to the web, if they were materially deprived) is not one that can deal with important questions of balancing personal and social rights and entitlements.
Nor is it a society that can deal with making justice too commonplace to be surprising. People's vitriol for the other breaks down the social ties that make it possible for a nation to address real problems. And that extends to a lack of interest in the places where the horrible things that I mentioned above, do happen.
I know that I'm overstating the case, being melodramatic, and such like. I know that the world is not just angry Americans on the web, and they are not the only or the most dangerous people. I know that you can't make people be decent to one another. But I think the notion is instructive. I used to laugh at people who talked about peace, love, and understanding but now I am in the Elvis Costello camp. More laughs, less hate, man.
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