Why Are You Angry?

Why Are You Angry?

Are you angry about anything? If you say no, you are either a liar or an emotionally challenged human being.

If you say yes, what are you angry about?

This is the crux move of evaluating anger. What is the source of the anger?

Are you justified in feeling your anger?

Was there an injustice? By who’s terms? Was a horrible wrong committed?

What is the target of your anger? Is that subject responsible for the wrong thing that happened?

Are you angry at yourself? Did you commit the same behavior that you are angry at others for?

How do you express your anger? Do you justify your expression of it? Do you ever feel badly about it? Do you regret it later? Why?

Does it matter to you what other people’s reaction or non reaction is to your expression of anger?

If so, does that reaction or perception of what you did change the way you perceive your anger?

How do you judge other people’s anger? Do you ask them what they are angry about? How do they respond?

Listening is love. Ask. Reply to questions. Live.

Truth Is Peanuts

A discussion came up at work the other day. Three out of four people on the crew weighed in on the ultimate question. I was the only female on the four person crew, for whatever that is worth. What was that question?

“Peanuts are legumes” said one of the guys. This was a discussion about the differences between nuts, fruits, pits, seeds, etc. “But peanuts grow under the ground as part of the root system”, I said.

I immediately thought back to a time when I was about 12 years old and had sent away for peanut seeds (raw peanuts) to grow my own. As a science experiment, of course, not a Jimmy Carter get farmer rich quick scheme. A note that this was the late 70s and our peanut farmer president spawned all sorts of interest in areas related to his personal biography.

I remember looking at the black and white line illustration of the profile of a peanut plant showing the peanuts themselves (dozens per plant) growing underground. I remember harvesting my pitiful handful of peanuts from maybe three plants that actually grew. And having to dig them out from the ground. Then washing the dirt off them before roasting.

The other two guys on the crew said no. They had done pipeline work through peanut fields and they specifically remember the peanuts hanging off the plants just like peas, beans and other legumes.

I told them of my experience. They insisted they knew what they saw.

I questioned out loud my own memory. After all, I was 12 when I personally experienced the detailed growth cycle of a peanut plant from empirical experiment. They were adults, knowing nothing of the growth cycle of peanuts but traipsing through a peanut farm at a certain time of maturity and seeing what they remember they saw.

I googled it. They did not.

The next day, I introduced the topic again with a question framing my only interest in this particular discussion of peanuts.

“What is your confidence interval for believing that peanuts grow above ground and not below?”

Are you 90% sure, 80%, 70%, what? That peanuts grow above ground and not down under the soil?

“90%”, said the most reasonable of the two guys. “90... 99%!” said the other.

99%?... really? Did you google it?

I don’t need to. I know what I saw.

The most reasonable of the two guys started googling on his iphone thingy. (I am a techno ignoramus, so I have to get on my laptop in evenings to do such self-questioning).

Peanuts grow underground.

They are not part of the root system. They grow from a shoot sort of like a rhizome and the peanut grows underground. And they are legumes.

Heads did not explode. The guys accepted the truth of subterranean peanut growth... then began to wonder how their memories were wrong. They knew what they saw. Or they know what they remember seeing. Maybe they saw eroded peanut hills with ready to harvest peanuts already exposed near the base of the plant eroding out of the soil? Probably.

The guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said, “well, it doesn’t matter”. What doesn’t matter? “Whether peanuts grow above or below ground surface.”

I bet it matters to a peanut farmer, I thought. But, I said, “I think it matters that most people go through life with a 99% confidence interval of their rightness on issues they are completely wrong about.”

Boy, does it matter.

The final lesson of this episode came when the guy that was not the most reasonable of the two said that he staves off the problem of false high confidence by questioning himself.

Seriously. He said that without any hint of irony.

I hope nobody really wonders why the world is so screwed up.

 

I was the one that questioned myself. The boys did not consider questioning themselves in light of my shared experience with them. I questioned myself based on THEIR shared experience with me.

 

All it came down to was respecting another's experience enough to consider it. In the end, we were both right and both wrong. But the truth came in the questioning, not the false confidence of self-righteousness.

The Bill Cosby Effect

Bill Cosby is a wonderful person. He is a humanitarian, a philanthropist, a mentor, a humorist with great wisdom and insight.

 

He is also a creep. He did rotten, criminal, horrid things to certain people when there were no witnesses to his actions, when he could get away with them.

 

If you believe that he could not possibly have done the awful things of which he is accused because he clearly has done so much genuine and sincere good, you are kidding yourself.

 

If you recognize that he certainly did do the awful things, but believe that removing his good work from the public record is an appropriate response to that reality, you are as dishonest and foolish as he is.

 

His awful behavior does not invalidate his excellent behavior. His excellent behavior does not exonerate him from his awful behavior.

 

Deal with each for what they are. There are people like this in all walks of life. They deserve to be treated appropriately for ALL of their actions. There is clearly something very wrong with Bill Cosby’s brain that allowed him to act in the despicable way that he has. Maybe the very good person that exists alongside the mean and shitty person is the pathway to redemption and change.

 

I think it’s too late for Bill Cosby. His celebrity and wealth is too heavily invested in his lies. The criminal nature of his ugly behavior is too much of a legal liability for him to admit to his actions to seek forgiveness and get the therapy he requires.

 

But, for the other Bill Cosbys in this world, the ones that so many family and friends know as wonderful people... when something leaks out from a long silent victim of theirs... take heed. Don’t be so quick to deny the possibility of selective and secretive rotten behavior. They need help as much as their victim does.

The WORST Insult

I have been told recently that it is the worst insult to be called racist. Yeah. You read that correctly. Being accused of racism is the WORST insult one person can say to another. Really. I am just an insulting person to describe what racism is and apply the definition appropriately. Really?

 

I think that actually BEING racist is the worst insult. Of course, racism-denying people don’t believe they are racist, and therein lies the main problem with this disagreement over what is insulting and to what degree.

 

How insulting do these same racism denialists think it might be when they accuse of being anti-police, people who are only standing up for fairness, equality of law, and justice for all? People who are exercising their Constitutional right to free speech, to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances are anti-police? Really??

 

How insulting do racism denialists think it might be for New York City’s “Top Cop” to declare that people do not have a Constitutional right to resist arrest? I must have missed the recruitment posters for the “March for your Constitutional right to resist arrest” event. Do they think that Eric Garner’s family should NOT take that as the WORST insult? Really???

 

How insulting is it for Officer Darren Wilson to have no remorse whatsoever about taking the life of another human being, no matter how much he believes he had to? I have heard accounts by others of having to, indisputably HAVING TO, take the life of someone to save themselves or defend others. It is the HARDEST thing they have ever done in their lives. Not Darren Wilson. “It” was a demon, after all. Hulk Hogan. A fiction, perhaps? Hmmm.

 

How insulting do racism denialists think it might be for us to hear that they themselves are not racist because they have nothing against black people, they just don’t like niggers. How about that n-word? Does just using it, regardless of the context, make ME racist? How about the people that actually speak that rationalization and really believe they aren’t racist? How about those that never have ever used the n-word in any context? Does that exonerate them from racism?

 

How insulting is it to be called the n-word? Can a white person even understand how insulting that might be? Say, compared to being called a cracker? Ooooh, are you soooo insulted by the cracker-word? Can’t say “the c-word” because that is something else. Are the meaning and history of the words equivalent in implication? How about the “folly of insult” that racist people are always whining about... that insulted people are being overly sensitive about being insulted? Yet, the racists are sooo indignant about being justifiably and accurately called racist.

 

How insulting is it to read news editorials in mainstream publications say that young black males like Trayvon Martin should stop committing so much crime if they don’t want to be gunned down for suspicion based on nothing other than race. Never mind that Trayvon was committing no crime whatsoever and behaving precisely as the racist editorialist suggests. Just minding his own business and stood his ground against a creepy aggressor. An aggressor who was NOT minding his own business, but baselessly judging another person then shooting them dead due to his own stupid assumptions and prejudices. (But, don’t forget, Terri, Trayvon was “going for his gun”. We KNOW that happened because Zimmy said it was so. Yeah, Zimmy’s head was smashed repeatedly against a sidewalk, too, even though his bald noggin was never smashed even once against a sidewalk, as per clear and obvious evidence to the contrary.)

 

How insulting is it to have the racism denialists declare that black people are targeted more by law enforcement and criminal “justice” because they are more criminally inclined? Really? Might that not be a self-fulfilling prophecy? You know, like if black folks are really just the same as white folks, but the false perception that black folks are more criminal subjects them to extra scrutiny and baseless assumption resulting in the expected result? Oh, “number crunching” they say... just some figment of some whining descendent of slaves’ silly imagination. Did they mention that slavery really wasn’t that bad for black folks? Historic revisionism they say. So many loving, Christian slave owners that gave the gift of Jesus to those otherwise hopeless savages are just not appreciated for their love of the lower black people. And Jesus.

 

How about those that just can’t bring themselves to say, all by itself, black lives matter? How about proving that you really do NOT care about black lives, by ignoring what black lives witness as their personal experience? How about ignoring the pain of having a family member killed for no good reason and then being told that the fault is their own for not having family values? Really??

 

How about not listening?

 

Listening is love. Refusing to listen, REALLY listen, is not being loving. How insulting is it to not listen to someone when they are begging you to PLEASE listen?

 

I think people that don’t listen to a plea to really consider what evil is in this world, I kind of think they are disgusting. I think they do not care about fairness, equality of law, liberty and justice for all.

 

I call them assholes sometimes. Because I think they are assholes. And I still love them. They matter to me or I wouldn’t bother to weep for their failure in humanity. I do this as I have my own failures to attend to. I take responsibility for my own failures, but I will be damned if I will take the blame for others’. What they choose to put out there is on them and them alone.

 

I can’t help but feel despair, but I will never, ever give up hope for redemption. The day I do that is the day I stop learning. And it is the day that I no longer want to continue living myself. Go on. Insult. I will listen. And I will respond and possibly insult, too.