I've been thinking a lot about why there's so much anger and hostility in the world right now. Is it just that we now have access to the internet? Has this stuff been around all along?

I'm sure to some extent people have always had their disagreements. There have been stalkers and murders, and people have gone berserk and done terrible things in a fit of rage. Clearly.But right now seems to be a worsening of these things.

You can find things to blame. The economy. Violence on TV and in video games and movies. Overstimulation. Drugs. Alcohol. Competition. Hunger. Poverty. Loss of religious beliefs or morals or ethics.

I don't see these things are causes, but as part and parcel of what is happening.

All my life I've felt curious about people who are different from me. Different cultures, different religions. How 'men' think. How 'women' think. We're in a weird place now where it's almost not okay to notice differences because it's seen as stereotyping. White people are said to have privilege no matter how poor or sick or 'underprivileged' they are.

People of color are said to lack privilege. Women are said to lack privilege. Men are the most privileged and white men are so privileged that we feel justified in screaming at them, even the ones who are poor and sensitive and progressive. They're not allowed to make any mistakes.

There's a hierarchy of privilege, it seems. I understand that this term is being used differently than the traditional definition. I understand the intent of making it that way to begin with. Because people who have this privilege tend to be blind to it. It's normal to them. So calling it privilege is intended to raise awareness of how it's not normal for so many other people.

This is an incomplete and frustrating solution to this perhaps insoluble problem. While it does point out that many people don't have the same rights, freedoms, respect, opportunity, what it doesn't do is show anyone how to fix it. Many people in the privileged classes (that is, white people, men) have had hell knocked out of them many times, and although they can walk down the street and hide it under their color or gender, they also suffer. Sometimes they suffer a lot. Some of them suffer from depression or anxiety. They've lost spouses or lovers or best friends, or their dog. Their wives or husbands wont sleep with them. They've been fired from their job, or are in a huge amount of debt. They have a serious but hidden illness.

Any sort of generalization we make about these people, any people really has a decent chance of being wrong. But suppose, just suppose they're just assholes. Like you think they are. Okay, yes. I do think some of them are assholes. Psychotic assholes. Why waste your time? It's nearly impossible to change a sociopath. But these people are a tiny minority.

Leaving this tiny minority of people aside, what about the rest?

So many times recently I've seen people shouting when reasoning might have worked. Shouting doesn't work. It almost never works. Does it shame? Yes. Does it anger? Yes. Does it convert someone into a gentle, compassionate person? Almost never. Especially not online.

I don't know. I guess just ask yourself what you're aiming for. What kind of outcome do you want? What kind of society, country, world do you want to live in?

Here's my thinking. What's being called privilege is often just  human rights, respect, dignity, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And it's true that not everyone has these things. And maybe, just maybe, those with the most of these things need to allow some of what they have to go to others who have less. Not just money, but respect, education and so on.

I think people who are just above the line feel threatened by the idea that others should have some of what they feel they worked for. This is understandable. But what they probably don't think about is that some of those with less, work just as hard, and sometimes harder. If things are ever going to be more fair, it's up to us to make them more fair. Which may at times seem less fair to us.

Maybe those with less haven't had the same opportunities as others. Some high minded individuals have recently informed me that equal opportunity doesn't mean equal outcome. This is a statement of the obvious. If you drop ten balls of the same size and weight from the same tenth floor window no two are likely to end up in the same place. In life, it's more like you drop different balls of different weights, sizes, shapes and materials. Some will bounce. Some will flatten. Some will kill someone when they strike him in the forehead. Now add to this what is almost never equal opportunity. Some will be dropped from the fifteenth floor. Some will be dropped from the first floor. Some will be played with by children inside a building. Which will last longer? Which will get the best chance to 'be a ball'? Which will fulfill its destiny? Which will sink to the bottom of the sewers? 

A person comes with baggage from their growing up and part of it is how they were treated based on many things. The individual things we can't really address except to say, try to be accepting of differences. But things like race and gender which play a huge part in how people are treated, how for many generations their families may have had lower status than others. Those big things we do have a chance to address.

I'm so weary of this fight. I know what it is to want to give up, retreat, when even those who are on your side seem to be against you. When there's much shouting and little progress. But even if I must do it with my thoughts alone, I will continue to work towards a better, more compassionate world.

Downer

Don't read this. I wouldn't advise it, anyway.

It's the day before Christmas eve. It's a very stressful time for me. I should be the happiest I've ever been, but there are a lot of stressors in my life right now. I keep realizing more and more how abusive a past relationship was.

I've been anxious since I left it. Now I've started having dreams about it. I wake up from them thinking about things that really happened. It's hard to explain without a lot of backstory.

But basically, I have terrible eyesight. I voluntarily gave up driving on the highway because I didn't feel I could drive safely at high speeds. My husband at the time knew this, yet there were occasions when he would ask me to drive on the highway, while he drove another vehicle. In panic mode, I would follow him, carefully obeying the speed limits, trying to make sure I didn't lose him or drive into anyone. He would call me on my cell phone and tell me I wasn't driving fast enough. I'd be driving 65. He'd be going 80. Anyone who's seen me struggle with visual things would get that I shouldn't be driving that fast. I could see fine, but I couldn't read signs at high speed and I had to really pay attention to things on the periphery because my peripheral vision is quite impaired. He would yell at me to drive faster  or he was going to leave me behind. How did I stay so long with someone who made me feel so unsafe?

At the end of one of these drives, he'd be angry with me because I didn't drive faster automatically.

I've been away from him for three years and it's only now hitting me how badly he treated me.

I see this relationship as similar to the way the government treats people. People stay. They accept. They don't know any better.

Peace on earth

I'm a peace lover. I don't tend to fight about things. 

I'd like to see the world more peaceful, fairer, more just.

And not all imposed from above.

Some people don't want peace. That was a shocking thing for me to accept. There are people in the world who don't want peace, because they gain from violence. There are people who don't want fairness, because they want advantage.

I'm not saying I think all worldly goods should be distributed equally. It feels as if, if there were no way to get ahead by effort and ambition, the world would be depressing. We're a curious species. We want to see what happens when we do this. And we like being rewarded for effort.

But I also think that people who can't or don't want to work their butts off, who can be satisfied with a simple life, for whatever reason should still have minimal resources to feed themselves, stay warm, be safe. I think we'd achieve more as a species if we felt safe and supported.


I don't expect us to achieve perfection over night, but I feel like now we're moving in the wrong direction entirely.


I'm just going to write here, anonymously, because this is stuff I don't feel like I can say in this politically hostile time. I've had way too much shouting and dealing with hostile people. But there is a part of me that needs to speak up, to be responsible, to help make a change. Maybe I'm just a voice crying in the dark. But maybe my voice will give others courage. Not to fight, but to speak. 

The pen is mightier than the sword. Education is more powerful than war. There's a lot of darkness right now, on this the darkest day of the year in the Western Hemisphere. With the trip back toward longer days, I hope we will begin to move toward the light in other ways.

Love to all.