I think I have Anger on the brain. I know I have an anger problem, so last year I went through a small course from the Daily Stoic called Taming Your Temper and it really did help dull the edge of my anger. Then I wrote what I wrote on Sunday about Angry Voices, and today during my browsing-while-waiting-on-Excel time, I came across an announcement about Star Wars: The High Republic in io9. I missed the initial release of this new publishing venture, so I got myself caught up in the news.
And then I broke the first rule of the Internet: I read the comments.
I should not have been surprised that there were people who decided to flaunt hipster-style anger (“I haven’t paid attention to Star Wars in fifteen years and here’s five-hundred words about that!”), armchair publishing industry expert anger (“This will flop! Nobody will care! Here’s why my <randomword><randomnumber> profile name is important!”), and the inevitable anger toward Chuck Wendig (who isn’t even mentioned in the video. If he was part of it, they probably edited him out).
I wasn’t thinking specifically about Star Wars inspired anger. I’ve had plenty of that in my heart thank-you-very-much, but just anger in general. Our human tendency to piss on things just because it makes us feel better. We’ve been doing it for as long as we’ve been making art.
This is purely destructive behavior. It adds nothing, but it is, oddly, a boost. We feel clever if we can generate the right put-down. We have books celebrating the put-down, the comeback, the witty repartee. There are websites devoted to the cutting remarks of Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, and just about everybody in history of quotation. I even grew up with a mother that at times showed disdain for things.
I thought it was refinement. I didn’t think of it that was a kid. I was bullied at school. I knew the power differential between the kid who throws the punch (apple, pen, baseball…) and the kid to takes the hit. Somehow I interpreted this disdain as coming from a superior force. Now, of course, growing up my mother and father WERE the superior force. Judgments were passed and who was I to disagree? Then the false association that these powerful people in my life were better than some thing X, and so if I thought the same thing about X, then I’d have a little of that power myself.
And that’s what I think dumping anger into public is all about. Feeling like we are in control. No, maybe not, but it is a defensive mechanisim. If I insult a thing, I’ve hurt it and therefore (by the illogic of childhood) it can’t hurt me. If it does, it’s because it’s only out for petty revenge.
This behavior is also emboldened by the Cult of the Individual. After all, if you approach life expecting the world to conform to your comfort levels, then of course you can piss on things with impunity. That brings it back to power. The strange twisted associations means insults give control.
To misquote an aphorism: Just because you’ve insulting something doesn’t mean you’ve unmade it.
My practice of stoicism has made it clear that I cannot be hurt by these things. New Star Wars books? No pain. Another action flick staring <that dude I refuse to spend a dollar on>? No pain. No injury. A little disappointment that I’ll have to wait for them to die before I watch the movie, but there are lots of movies I’ve never seen. I shouldn’t need to put something down to defend myself from hurt it doesn’t cause me.
This is not where I thought this was going, so let me redirect to what I wanted to say when I started this post. It branches off just after the paragraph following the Art Critic gif.
Why do we celebrate these snarky comments but not great compliments? Why can’t I think of the “45 most beautiful things ever said about people” article to write? Where are the collections of kind words? I mean the kind of words that can inspire great kindness and great love, not some page from the Reader’s Digest. (I was going to go for a Chicken Soup of the Soul joke, but I’ve never read any of them.)
Why is that so hard? The one line I come up with comes from Douglas Adams and I apply to my wife: Brilliant, Charming, Devastatingly Intelligent.
So I want that list. I want quotations of compliments and perfectly-tuned pick-me-ups.