Kevin Williamson has some thoughtful comments about the power of rage. By his lights, and not just his, anger makes you stupid.
Here is a sampling:
Rage makes you stupid.
Our politics is full of performative outrage, histrionics that are designed to imbue unserious people with an air moral seriousness and to keep the rubes emotionally invested long enough to get them to a commercial break. It almost inevitably is the case that people have the strongest feelings about the things they know the least about; people who actually know about any subject of genuine interest understand that such subjects tend to be complicated, and that expressions of outrage, however cathartic, do not render them any less recondite.
Does some of this sound familiar? It will sound familiar to readers of this blog. With full awareness that correlation does not necessarily entail causation, I am happy to quote some of my own remarks about one Rebecca Traister and the trouble with outrage… from a post nearly three weeks ago:
They [Traister’s feminist sisterhood] need not collect evidence and draw rational conclusions. No, they should rage, like histrionic maniacs, because it will make them feel powerful. And, because their rage will work like Crazy Glue, connecting them all from here to eternity.
None of us would dare to say that women are too emotional. It’s a sexist trope that we have long since abandoned. And yet, what is Traister, rabid feminist that she is, proposing: if not that women need to be more emotional, less rational, less thoughtful. They need to let loose, let fly, attack men… because men are the problem. Female outrage would then be the solution to everything that ails everyone.
The problem is, too much outrage, poorly applied, makes people sound stupid. It makes them sound stupid because it makes them stupid.
As they say, great minds think alike.
"None of us would dare to say that women are too emotional".
ReplyDeleteOh yeah?
Women are too emotional. There.
Of course there are notable exceptions, and the spectrum of "too emotional" is a broad and multi-textured one, but for the men in my sphere the women in theirs confirm the statement as a general truth. Not a condemnation, more a recognition of difference- women are too emotional for men to comprehend and successfully integrate with may be more accurate. Female problem-solving and overall motivation is much differently oriented than male. And there are plenty of examples around, some are most entertaining but some are frightening.
Interesting topic that connects to the previous post on feminist men.
Considering that women were at one time what was thought of as being a "computer," it telling that a significant number of Left leaning feminists are so prone to rage. I have to admit that I would do nothing to change that proclivity because it makes them easier to defeat. I suspect there is a rule that states,"The more anger and rage the lower the ability to possess a rational thought process ."
ReplyDeleteSadly too many have allowed themselves to follow such despicable people who identify with hatred.
Perhaps its better to title as "Rage makes you stupid". As soon as you act through rage, you are corrupted, and you're likely to do and say things you may regret later, and you risk becoming what you hate, and risk making things worse through your own self-deceptions. It is harder to act when your self-righteous rage is gone, but if truth is your goal, justice requires you to be in control over yourself first.
ReplyDeleteHere's a story I recall from the Power of Myth:
https://excellentjourney.net/2014/12/19/joseph-campbells-samurai-tale
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CAMPBELL: Let me tell you a story of a samurai warrior, a Japanese warrior, who had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. And he actually, after some time, found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. And he was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. And the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away. Why did he do that?
MOYERS: Why?
CAMPBELL: Because he was made angry, and if he had killed that man then, it would have been a personal act, of another kind of act, that’s not what he had come to do.
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Acting out of anger is foolish. Here's a story I recall from The Power of Miff:
ReplyDeleteCrumble: Let me tell you the story of a mighty warrrior...
Mylar: Please don't.
Crumble: A mighty warrior got, like, super-PO'd at some guy and said, "What is best in life? To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women."
Mylar: Why?
Crumble: The power of miff.
Anger can be either hot or cold. Hot is rage. Cold could be vengeance, or just
ReplyDeletetit for tat.
Inciting rage, however, is the goal of much (if not in fact most) political propaganda. Enraged people will take blindly thoughtless, often even violent, action on behalf of...whatever cause the propagandists want them too. Antifa is pure contentless, conscienceless rage. Nor am I sure the screaming feminists are actually sure what they're screaming about, it's rage for rage's sake. I was most taken with Jaques Elul's 1960s-ish book "Propaganda." One thesis of which was that Stalinist propaganda was based on Pavlovian conditioned reflex while Hitler's was based on Freudian ideas of libido and group psychology. Either way, bypassing rationality.
ReplyDeleteDon't be a degenerate, the accurate spelling is STOOPID.
ReplyDelete