Here's To Hostility!
Just yesterday, somebody here criticized Crid for being hostile:
"No need to be hostile," the person wrote.
Crid's response:
Hostility is often usefully propulsive. Stupidity is just corrosive. And annoying.
I seconded the bit on hostility:
I'll often admit to being hostile.In fact, I did when the idiots at the looping company down the block took out a restraining order on me after I called their office manager, Katherine Morgan, a cunt (for taking our residentially-zoned parking and leaving their numerous gated spaces unparked lest Tom Arnold showed up with an entourage).
The office manager complained to the judge, who wasn't finding me terribly fright-provoking, that I was "hostile and unpredictable."
I almost said, "Why thank you!"
Instead, I think I said something like, "Well, yes, I am both of those things, but I am not violent.
I was reminded of the exchange by a piece on anger -- a piece celebrating anger, really, and criticizing the way it's been turned into some namby-pamby psychological disorder -- written by Brendan O'Neill on Spiked. An excerpt:
The wholesale management of anger is an attempt to enforce conformity, spearheaded by politicians, police, officials, judges and health practitioners who seem to prefer a populace that resigns, fatalistically, to the problems it faces, rather than one that asks awkward questions and kicks up a furious fuss.Anger was once seen as an understandable reaction to unpleasant experiences or less-than-civilised living and working conditions; it was a rational, sometimes even dignified 'strong feeling of displeasure' (7). Now, in the Anti-Angry Decade, it has been psychologised: anger is looked upon as a condition, a disease, a moral failing on the part of individuals which must be treated and corrected.
It is striking that the MHF and numerous commentators use the disease-linked word 'epidemic' to describe the alleged spread of anger, and continually conflate anger with rage. Traditionally, a distinction was made between 'rage', which referred to an individual losing control and lashing out explosively, and 'anger', which was considered a passionate, even high-minded expression of displeasure with the state of things. As Thomas Aquinas put it: 'Anger is the name of a passion. A passion of the sensitive appetite is good in so far as it is regulated by reason, whereas it is evil if it set the order of reason aside.' (8) Today's blurring of the boundary between the reasoned passion of anger and the unreasonable expression of rage, so that everything from having arguments to committing a crime to getting agitated in the workplace can be labelled part of an 'epidemic of rage', shows the extent to which anger has been reworked as a psychological disorder.
Some now talk about 'anger syndrome', and in the US - the birthplace of psychobabble - serious anger has been relabelled Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Fittingly sharing an acronym with Improvised Explosive Device (IED), Intermittent Explosive Disorder is 'a behavioural disorder characterised by extreme expressions of anger, often to the point of uncontrollable rage'. Apparently, 16million Americans suffer from IED (9). These days we don't have 'angry young men' - we have Intermittent Explosive Disorder Sufferers.
...The psychologisation of anger has two consequences: first it separates our anger from the experience or the condition that gave rise to it, so that our 'expressions of rage' are always judged to be disproportionate, irresponsible and illegitimate. This can be seen in the relentless rise of rages, from 'air rage' to 'golf rage' to 'work rage'. People who suffer from these rages, from the alleged psychological condition of losing the plot in airports, on golf courses or around the water cooler at work, are seen as irrational individuals with moral and mental flaws rather than rational actors expressing loud'n'rowdy displeasure with having been treated badly.
So apparently it isn't the long queues at airports, the ceaseless security checks and the patronising treatment by airline staff that make some people angry at airports; it's because they have a diagnosable condition: 'air rage'. Even worse, it is not low wages, poor working conditions or smarmy bosses that make people angry at work - it's because they suffer from 'work rage'. A recent study claimed that 79 per cent of British workers suffer from this medical condition (11). In the past, anger at work was considered by many, not only to be understandable, but to be a powerful sentiment that might be motivated to force employers to improve pay and working conditions. Today, it is seen as shrill and divisive, something that must be treated by an army of anger managers. Indeed, even trade unions 'are far more likely to organise anger management courses for their members than to incite them to feelings of resentment and class hate' (12).
This leads to the second consequence of psychologising anger. In robbing anger of its social element, and transforming it into a personal problem that requires one-on-one corrective therapy, the anger-management movement nurtures a society that is obsessed with policing individuals' inner lives rather than focusing on transforming the world around us. From the anti-angry worldview, society should devote its resources to correcting rage-afflicted individuals rather than fixing the things that made us angry in the first place.
In the words of the anchor from Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
You?
I'm more of a Sybil the Soothsayer fan myself.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at April 12, 2008 2:58 AM
As I am in an agry frame of mind this post was priceless to me.
Nothing ever got done that was world-rocking without a bit of oomph to get it rolling whether personal or public.
By the way, that woman sounded like the living embodiement of my definition of cunt. Especially in a city with tight parking.
You rock amy
rsj at April 12, 2008 6:55 AM
Well said.
I have always been a person of ill temperment, but I temper my temper with a dosage of self control. We can all do that, and most of us do, most of the time, but there are occasions when we simply must let a little anger loose at the incompetence, indifference, or systematic abuse of or by those around us...or we are not self controlling, we are sheep. If we treat perfectly reasonable emotions as mental disorders, we give power to the state to tell us how to feel...bad enough they can already punish people for what they think.
Where will it end?
Robert at April 12, 2008 6:59 AM
I'll agree that anger is sometimes the only rational response to circumstances, and certainly warranted. However, I have known some people who seem to be "anger junkies" and seem to get off on going off on everyone around them. Anger is their favorite emotion, whether they admit it or not, and they use it as a tool to dominate everyone around them.
deja pseu at April 12, 2008 7:00 AM
PS I forgot to mention something about my very sweet boyfriend, who little old ladies (the soothsayers of love and dating) always tell me to "hang on to," and who's like a big kind bear...until there's some sort of injustice.
When the NYT Magazine was trying to edit Elmore's story, "Comfort To The Enemy," to be in keeping with journalistic style, and do other really dumb things, Gregg rose to the defense of Elmore's prose again and again, as he always does, and somebody at the NYT Mag called him "apocalyptic and threatening."
A badge of honor.
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 7:07 AM
I'm pissed off at Whitey for gangsta rap.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080411/D8VVUAHG0.html
eric at April 12, 2008 8:19 AM
There's good polemic and bad polemic, though. Good polemics are angry arguments, with reasons. Bad polemics are just angry for no reason.
Still, there's nothing quite so satisfying to the moral sensibility like a good, angry polemic.
Eh, except a good shagging.
Jeff at April 12, 2008 8:30 AM
Great post! I think a lot of people use the anger dodge the same way they use the fear angle to discredit your point of view. I always get angry when I hear someone being called 'homophobic' or 'xenophobic'. The fact is while you simply disagree with somebody’s political stance, you are being tagged as being irrationally afraid of them. That way they delegitimize your position in their minds by painting you as irrational. Anger is not only useful but necessary. Everyone needs to vent once in a while. If you never do, you just let that crap well up inside you and it just causes stress problems which create physical problems.
The thing that really pisses me off about this is that the same people who decry my anger at my government doing things that the majority of the American people are dead set against, will riot in the streets and carry on like out of control children over issues like global warming or a marine recruiting office and other things of hugely inflated importance they can do little or nothing about. See the arrogance here? My anger is always ok and justified, yours never is. The part of the article that talked about enforcing conformity was is right on the mark.
When Barak Obama recently made comments about people being ‘bitter’ in Pennsylvania and got in some trouble for it, this whole anger thing was at the bottom of it and very few people picked up on why. When you say someone is bitter about something, you are implying they are angry without good reason. If you lived in a PA small town, and you lost your job only to see scores of Mexicans move in and work for less than minimum wage while your small town starts to resemble a small barrio, you have every reason in the world to be pissed off about it. But no, you are an angry xenophobe, therefore we can discount your opinion. You just need to get on board with the program.
I have one good friend who I ever discuss politics with, he is British. I call him Tony, you limey fuck. We can discuss politics all the time and it gets real heated sometimes, but that’s ok. You can’t be afraid to have conversations with people just because it might get heated. Almost all of my other friends are too cowed to get into a strong debate because they couldn’t tell you the name of the vice-president. Frankly, most of the best discussions I have ever seen on a blog involved one or more persons getting hostile. The thing about injecting a little hostility into a discussion is that the facades come down and you tend to hear more of what people really think and get at their real motivations for taking the position they do.
Bikerken at April 12, 2008 8:41 AM
In my experience, arguing with a feminist about gender issues almost always results in them saying, "You are so ANGRY!" What this means, of course, is that, so long as they perceive "anger," they can disregard anything being said.
Nice, huh? Anything serious enough to evoke anger can't be discussed or acknowledged until the anger disappears.
I wonder how feminists would take it if they were told to STFU unless and until everything they said was stripped of anger. Talk about RAGE!!
Jay R at April 12, 2008 9:17 AM
People always accuse me of being angry when they shout into cell phones and I don't respond by just taking it. To name just one example.
It's one thing to be always be raging about nothing, but I find it morally bankrupt to rage at nothing, if that's not too cryptic.
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 9:18 AM
PS Debate makes you a better thinker. Oh yeah, and Hitchens advised me to always be able to argue the other party's side better than they can.
Also, regarding feminists: I read some nitwittery last night on Feministe (went there to read the link about Women of Color blogging - what a bore). Anyway, they posted all this ditto-headed know-nothing-ery about a meticulously study (by Gaulin and Lassek) that I have read and even heard presented at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference.
I pointed out why, specifically, they were wrong (they were all arguing from emotion, if they could be said to be arguing at all), and I also noted that I found them to be the print version of Lord of the Flies.
What was especially weird on that site was the bit about "feminist" men. Ick. I didn't want to post anything, as I guess it would be erased, like my comments when I caught those on Marcotte's site stealing work of a cartoonist. But, I was tempted to say that I'm 1. Not a feminist but somebody who's for fair treatment for all, not special treatment under the guise of equal treatment, and 2. I'm not anybody's victim, and 3. That my boyfriend not only opens the car doors for me and pays for my dinner when we go out to eat, I usually ask him what I should order when we're in a restaurant. Heh heh.
Yeah, all of you here know what a submissive little flower I am. The truth is, Gregg always orders better than I do, and I'll be happier if he picks my dinner.
And the truth is, I've always been perfectly fine with alternating who pays, and treating friends and boyfriends alike, but Gregg's a little older than I am, and he about lost his teeth (and they're attached to his body) the first time I tried to pay for him. No biggy. If you're secure about yourself, and don't identify as a victim, things like this don't matter.
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 9:27 AM
This is only going to get worse as crowding in the US increases.
Radwaste at April 12, 2008 9:32 AM
The NYT tried to edit Elmore? That makes ME angry!
Jim Treacher at April 12, 2008 9:33 AM
Cheers on anger (based on my recall, anyway):
Dr. Crane: "It's not healthy to stifle your emotions."
Woody: "Well, back home in Indiana, we never talk about problems. If you've got a problem, you just stuff it down. And over the years you just keep stuffing it down, stuffing it down, stuffing it down." (walks away)
Dr. Crane (to nearby patron): "Tick. Tick. Tick. BOOM!"
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 12, 2008 9:49 AM
> they use it as a tool to
> dominate
They (we/I) can try to do that, but anger doesn't work as a tool for domination on people who have good boundaries.
When people get harshed in online communities, it's usually because they've been presumptuous. Usually, on a blog like this one, they're people who don't work with words or spend time in challenging company. Often they're expressing their thoughts publicly for the first time. And they have all this goofy stuff rattling around in their heads and they think everyone else has it too. And so they put it out there, and it gets deservedly mocked. (Hello, Jody! Hi, Conan!)
Part of the problem is that people watched TV eight hours a day for two or three generations. All those pandering commercials and simplistic narratives may have convinced people that we're all basically the same, because on TV, One Size Fits All. And we knew that everyone else was getting the same signal. In the back of their minds, TV watchers probably assumed we were seeing these messages for a good reason. And so maybe everyone in the world needed to see that ad for Odor-Eaters™, and everyone enjoys an extra serving of potatoes at participating Red Lobster® Restaurants, and everyone (even black people!) agrees Dolly Parton is a gifted entertainer from America's proud heartland. Point-to-multipoint communication, like TV, demands that you sacrifice part of your immortal soul if you're going to take part.
Multipoint-to-multipoint communication, like a blog, doesn't do that. The jokes and catch-phrases you get from the internet can't be shared at as many water coolers as the ones you'd have gotten from CBS sitcom thirty years ago.
But neither could many of the other indefensible stupidities that come flying off of people's keyboards. ("Mark Steyn wants you to throw bricks through windows!" "We need leadership and independent thinking from a president!")
Most bloggy bitch-slapping is mundane, but it helps ensure that everyone's awake.
Crid at April 12, 2008 10:09 AM
> Dr. Crane (to nearby patron):
As I was saying about the shared experience of TV...
Paul started it, with the network reference.
> This is only going to get
> worse as crowding in the
> US increases.
Who says the United States is crowded?
Crid at April 12, 2008 10:13 AM
The NYT tried to edit Elmore? That makes ME angry!
I was furious. He's a novelist, not a journalist, and they tried to apply journalistic stylebooks to his work; for example, making a guy who was saying something about Arkansas in the dialogue, say "Ark." People don't talk like that.
Fuck with Elmore's dialogue, and Gregg will eat you for lunch until you cry uncle. In between getting out of his car and picking up little old ladies who have fallen in the middle of the intersection and helping them across the street.
I similarly don't always go with journalistic style in my column. For example, I write out "okay" instead of writing "OK." Don't like how it looks or reads the other way, especially in the middle of dialogue, which I often use in my column.
Sometimes, when I knowingly break grammatical rules, I'll send out a note below the column from Elmore's 10 Rules of Writing: "If proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go."
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 11:07 AM
Whoops, it was Amy who linked Chayevsky
ChiYevski
Choyebski
Crid at April 12, 2008 12:04 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2008/04/12/heres_to_hostil.html#comment-1539646">comment from CridWhoops, it was Amy who linked Chayevsky
One of my favorite movie scenes. If only it would play out like that in real life.
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 12:06 PM
I've got nothing against being firm and direct and I don't do it often enough, say with cell phone shouters in coffee shops.
I draw the line at calling names though. I would take great issue with someone blocking residential parking with their business on my street, but I would say to call someone working there a "cunt" is going way too far.
There's angry, there's righteous anger, and then there's just plain rude and obnoxious ... the "ugly American" stereotype.
Sometimes you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
RS at April 12, 2008 12:11 PM
But then you're a guy with a bunch of captive flies.
Crid at April 12, 2008 12:13 PM
Actually, RS, what happened is that I went there twice -- went over to their building, through their nearly empty gated lot, and rang the bell outside their giant steel door. The first time, I explained that I'm sort of the unofficial head of the neighborhood association. (I get people to the zoning board meetings and contact our city council person when we need stuff taken care of in the neighborhood.) The office manager at the looping house, Katherine Morgan, came to the door to speak with me. She assured me they'd park in their lot (after I explained that residential parking was scarce, and we have a drug problem in the neighborhood -- vagrants hanging out doing drugs in the bushes).
Then, a short time later (maybe a day, days, or a week), one of their engineers took the last space on my block, when their parking lot was nearly empty, and when my neighbor was on her way back from Costco with loads of groceries and supplies, and two toddlers in the car.
I marched over there (in a little turquoise ruffled skirt and kitten heels, carrying my flea-sized dog, and looking extremely terrifying, I'm sure), and rang the bell of the giant steel door, and asked through the intercom to see Katherine Morgan. Katherine Morgan again came to the door. I told her that the engineer had taken the last spot on our street, and reminded her that she'd told me they'd park in their lot. She sneered, "You know what? It's a public street."
Actually, it's not. It's zoned residential, and if they don't have adequate parking, they should move, not take up neighborhood parking. I said this to her.
Then she said, "If you don't like it, get permit parking." Well, it's pretty common knowledge that we can't get permit parking, as the Coastal Commission won't allow it.
So...our answer is that they just fuck us over and we can't do anything about it?
Nuh-uh.
She was a tiny blonde woman, about my age, and there's nothing that riles a woman about my age than the word "cunt." I said, rather matter-of-factly, "You know what? You're really a cunt."
And lo and behold, a week later, there was a restraining order, filled out by Robert Feist and Katherine Morgan, filled with lies, and leading to a royal and malicious waste of court time.
Oh, and hilariously, they claimed to be quaking in fear of me every time I left my house, but they left the court papers in the mailbox of my neighbors two doors down, three women the color of dark chocolate who live in a decidedly different color house than mine.
By the way, we taxpayers paid for the court time on that bogus restraining order. Just like Arizona taxpayers paid for the restraining order from the woman against David Letterman, who supposedly was sending her secret messages through her TV.
Amy Alkon at April 12, 2008 1:28 PM
They (we/I) can try to do that, but anger doesn't work as a tool for domination on people who have good boundaries.
True, but it sure ain't fun if you have to work down the hall from someone or have a close family member who gets aggressively angry the way some other people say good morning. It's like always waiting for a bomb to go off (and it WILL go off). And after a while, it just undermines their credibility.
deja pseu at April 12, 2008 3:16 PM
Just like Arizona taxpayers paid for the restraining order from the woman against David Letterman, who supposedly was sending her secret messages through her TV.
And nearly 50 million in wrongful death lawsuits(not counting the ones yet to be setteled) against Americas most senile sheriff. Fire Arpio. Vote Saban
lujlp at April 12, 2008 6:23 PM
> but it sure ain't fun
If one's appraisal of the world is based on immediate family and some random office workers, the rest of the planet will certainly seem like a hostile place. But if the meanies aren't credible anyway, then no harm/no foul, right?
Crid at April 12, 2008 6:36 PM
Well, Crid, it's like this. The crowding is both real and metaphorical.
Just a few decades ago, before instant market communications made everyone aware that what they had sucked and what other people had was better, there were few issues and people clamoring for the attention of the Average American. I'm not claiming that Mayberry is that average, but I can point to its enduring popularity in syndication because of an audience that wants simple issues, solved by a wise person that knows them personally. But now, the din is deafening; professional victims compete with advertisers for your attention and dollars, dumbing everyone down in the process by reducing the time any one person can invest in thought about an issue.
Next: indignation is so easily called up now that ordinary activities of the '60s and '70s is now reason to call the SWAT team. Amy has pointed out the ridiculous branding of elementary-school children by "zero-tolerance" policies, but I can tell you there's something worse: every day, you're "permitted" to do less and less of what you want - even if you don't hurt or deprive anyone. In 1967, it was no big deal for me to carry a .22 and a sheathed knife everywhere I went in the East Central Florida area; now, of course, it's a crime. It wasn't until the '80s in Florida that this fascinating idea came to be: a trespasser could hurt himself on your property if it was not properly posted and sue you for damages. I have no idea what posting has to do with liability; suffice to day that money is the reason.
So "crowding" is the reduction of all kinds of space, not just living space.
Radwaste at April 12, 2008 9:52 PM
Somedays it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps to get out of bed.
Bikerken at April 12, 2008 11:23 PM
> The crowding is both real
> and metaphorical.
I like you, but it seems like you're having a midlife crisis, however old you are. You need to hit on a receptionist and get shot down or something. I just bought a supercharged subcompact, and it's really helping me over the the hump in a soothing way. Premium Fuel Only, babe.
> Just a few decades ago,
> before instant market
> communications made everyone
> aware that what they had
> sucked and what other people
> had was better...
Blogger Cosh once mocked a 'silly hipster presumption that Elvis invented fucking.' Envy isn't new: It's one of the Seven Deadlies. This convenient chart can help you spot postmodern instances. "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun."
Mayberry was only a TV show. Lots of literature and drama throughout time has been about a need for "a wise person who knows (you) personally." Considering the national collapse of responsible family masculinity coincident with the distribution of that program, Mayberry seems like a pretty mild indulgence.
There's space here for everyone. Malibu costs too much, that's all.
Crid at April 13, 2008 12:37 AM
Hey, ignore it, Crid, or be dismissive, as you wish. Ask around, you'll find Joe Blow isn't important any more - to anyone. CPS can take his kids away, lurkers wait to molest those kids, his vote will be stolen by the other party, it costs him over $100 to fill his SUV, and all of that's because of other people. Space? Bah. You oughta know that "space" isn't room. And that's not in any way "hump" related. (600 Ninja for track days - I win!)
Radwaste at April 13, 2008 3:37 AM
Rad -
You seem to be missing two important words in your vocabulary meant to be used with the busybodies who would interfere with your life.
Fuck You.
"We're sorry, you can't ride that here." Fuck You.
"You can't eat that, it's bad for you." Fuck You.
You should try it some time. The look you get is often priceless. Seems that the lower people can still be shocked when someone refuses to indulge their bullshit.
brian at April 13, 2008 6:15 AM
> (600 Ninja for track days -
> I win!)
Conceded. But no more whining about a lack of space, even "metaphorically". When you can cover so much of it so quickly in such lurid style while maintaining a Clark Kent persona, you're just not crowded in any sense. No more bitching about the environment, either, you fossil-fueled rascal.
(Also, as we arrive my date will emerge from my car in a cocktail dress, her back and thighs caressed by the feel of the fine leather of my car's interior, and her spirit massaged by the 5-point sound system [including subwoofer {standard on 2008's}]. Your date will be in jeans and will have bugs stuck in her hair.)
> it costs him over $100
> to fill his SUV, and all
> of that's because of
> other people.
Unless Joe Blow was really really good with his hands, he wasn't going to have an SUV if it weren't for other people. A lot of them had to be doing things right before SUVs could be so affordable. I'm starting to think this Joe Blow of yours is a self-centered little dickweed.
Old men always think the world is going to hell. Here are some links to argue it's not so. Presumably this comment will choke on the spam filter and Amy will have to dig it out, which accounts for any late posting
http://www.reason.com:80/news/show/124913.html
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Hunger-Premature-Death-1700-2100/dp/0521004888
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002448.html
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/america_still_works_6606
Crid at April 13, 2008 10:31 AM
Damn, people - haven't you heard about "perception is reality"? Mr. & Mrs. Blow aren't really crowded by endless radio and television ads that they can't have this or that because they're global-warming contributing scumbags - but that's the point being made to them, day in and day out. Especially around Amy!
The bulk of what people think they know is superstition and lies. What is felt is the difference between their current comfort level, even in planning, and what someone else keeps them from doing. Criminy! You think anybody bought that SUV to use? Hell, no. It's a barrier, against other people!
Radwaste at April 13, 2008 4:12 PM
What's your point? They wanted SUVs, they bought SUVs.
Crid at April 13, 2008 4:21 PM
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