A couple nights ago, I came down hard on a friend who sometimes uses a phrase, online and in person, that I dislike.
It doesn't matter what the phrase is.
It is loaded––it makes the speaker sound superior––but it's not something that causes harm.
In other words, I wasn't being a social justice warrior.
Not that I approve of call-out tactics. I don't!
But I don't even have the [flimsy] excuse that I was acting in the cause of justice.
No, I was being mean.
We were out with a couple friends and my friend said this thing, and I jumped on it. Rather, I jumped on my friend.
I made it sound like I was making an intellectual point about communication choices. While that was possible, in theory––[the usefulness of the phrase is debatable]––I knew even as I was doing it that, in fact, I was being a jerk because I was personally annoyed.
I had a terrible emotional hangover all the next day.
Only this morning did I get it together to write an apology.
I'm writing about this here because I want to set my intention not to do that again. I don't do it often, but I have done it before, and hurt some feelings.
I don't like myself when I do that.
I think--I hope--it'll help me change if I understand the mechanism behind my mean behavior.
First, it was a matter of timing.
I had let my annoyance with the phrase, and my friend for using it, build up over time. I'd told myself it didn't matter, when the case was that I didn't want it to matter, because I didn't want to deal with it.
This is bad policy.
I know I do better, am kinder and clearer and cause less (or no) harm, if I speak up in good time. If I don't, I get resentful, and resentment is like a spot of mold on cheese: it grows.
So--that's my first intention:
cultivate practices (memory, bravery, perspective, curiosity) that help me to deal with the unpleasant thing in good time.
Then, and this is trickier, I see that my behavior perfectly fit my childhood training.
That's trickier because that training is the underlying condition--the cheese on which mold grows. (Does that metaphor work? I mean, if you live on cheese, you can learn to watch for and scrape off mold, but you can't eliminate cheese itself.)
My parents could be merciless toward people who made mistakes--mistakes that bugged them, anyway.
They acted toward the offending person as if the person had committed a mortal sin, and they, my parents, were the guardians of purity.
AND THIS COULD BE OVER COMMA USAGE!!!
Literally. My mother once quit a publishing job over house style about commas. She acted as if she'd struck a blow for civilization and she was the superior party for, as she put it, not suffering fools.
She was right about the commas, but she was wrong in thinking she was avoiding annoyance (and fools) by cutting herself off from a certain group of humans.
We humans are annoying. All of us.
But, we are the cheese.
I mean, if you cut away all the cheese, you have nothing.
And my mother did eventually end up so hollowed out and alone, taking her own life appeared to her preferable to carrying on.
My father cut people off too, for offending him. Silence was his tactic of choice.
When I was a young teenager, during the lead up to the Iranian Revolution, I said something [uninformed] about how bad the shah of Iran was. My father, a professor of political science, froze me out for an evening.
Eventually he explained the larger situation, that the religious fundamentalist Khomeini, who was worse than the shah, was waiting in the wings.
But education wasn't his first response. Punishment was.
(God, that's weird to look back on.)
My father did a lot better than my mother did, sitting alone with his cheese. Toward the end of his life, he said he was happy with his life, and I believe him.
But I don't want to be like him.
That training is a lot harder to undo.
But I can set my intention and say (again, again, again), I want to do it differently.
Like Richard Feynman, in the talk I wrote about yesterday, I can raise this question with an open spirit of inquiry:
How could I do it differently?
Could finding out even be . . . fun?
It doesn't matter what the phrase is.
It is loaded––it makes the speaker sound superior––but it's not something that causes harm.
In other words, I wasn't being a social justice warrior.
Not that I approve of call-out tactics. I don't!
But I don't even have the [flimsy] excuse that I was acting in the cause of justice.
No, I was being mean.
We were out with a couple friends and my friend said this thing, and I jumped on it. Rather, I jumped on my friend.
I made it sound like I was making an intellectual point about communication choices. While that was possible, in theory––[the usefulness of the phrase is debatable]––I knew even as I was doing it that, in fact, I was being a jerk because I was personally annoyed.
I had a terrible emotional hangover all the next day.
Only this morning did I get it together to write an apology.
I'm writing about this here because I want to set my intention not to do that again. I don't do it often, but I have done it before, and hurt some feelings.
I don't like myself when I do that.
I think--I hope--it'll help me change if I understand the mechanism behind my mean behavior.
First, it was a matter of timing.
I had let my annoyance with the phrase, and my friend for using it, build up over time. I'd told myself it didn't matter, when the case was that I didn't want it to matter, because I didn't want to deal with it.
This is bad policy.
I know I do better, am kinder and clearer and cause less (or no) harm, if I speak up in good time. If I don't, I get resentful, and resentment is like a spot of mold on cheese: it grows.
So--that's my first intention:
cultivate practices (memory, bravery, perspective, curiosity) that help me to deal with the unpleasant thing in good time.
Then, and this is trickier, I see that my behavior perfectly fit my childhood training.
That's trickier because that training is the underlying condition--the cheese on which mold grows. (Does that metaphor work? I mean, if you live on cheese, you can learn to watch for and scrape off mold, but you can't eliminate cheese itself.)
My parents could be merciless toward people who made mistakes--mistakes that bugged them, anyway.
They acted toward the offending person as if the person had committed a mortal sin, and they, my parents, were the guardians of purity.
AND THIS COULD BE OVER COMMA USAGE!!!
Literally. My mother once quit a publishing job over house style about commas. She acted as if she'd struck a blow for civilization and she was the superior party for, as she put it, not suffering fools.
She was right about the commas, but she was wrong in thinking she was avoiding annoyance (and fools) by cutting herself off from a certain group of humans.
We humans are annoying. All of us.
But, we are the cheese.
I mean, if you cut away all the cheese, you have nothing.
And my mother did eventually end up so hollowed out and alone, taking her own life appeared to her preferable to carrying on.
My father cut people off too, for offending him. Silence was his tactic of choice.
When I was a young teenager, during the lead up to the Iranian Revolution, I said something [uninformed] about how bad the shah of Iran was. My father, a professor of political science, froze me out for an evening.
Eventually he explained the larger situation, that the religious fundamentalist Khomeini, who was worse than the shah, was waiting in the wings.
But education wasn't his first response. Punishment was.
(God, that's weird to look back on.)
My father did a lot better than my mother did, sitting alone with his cheese. Toward the end of his life, he said he was happy with his life, and I believe him.
But I don't want to be like him.
That training is a lot harder to undo.
But I can set my intention and say (again, again, again), I want to do it differently.
Like Richard Feynman, in the talk I wrote about yesterday, I can raise this question with an open spirit of inquiry:
How could I do it differently?
Could finding out even be . . . fun?
It's always tricky to ask for something before it gets to the point of causing an outburst. Asking for what you want (in this case asking for sensitivity in language) exposes the asker something of the same way anger does. That may be why you tried to frame your reaction as coming ex cathedra.
ReplyDeleteYes, good point, Sparker: I don’t like feeling exposed and definitely do try to hide behind the altar screen!
ReplyDeleteBit of a Catch 22, when both clear
Deletecommunication and anger involve trusting the other party, and the way they are communicating makes one uncertain as to whether one can trust them.
What an interesting post! I have certainly been in a similar place, having said something I later regret, and I know what you mean about allowing bad feelings to fester and then exploding. I like your cheese metaphor! Perhaps you've made your friend think about that phrase a little more deeply, which isn't a bad thing, even if you were more harsh than you would have ideally liked.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, an interesting post. As I woke up today in an emotional hangover also from asking a question at a public meeting.
ReplyDeleteConfrontation is hard for many of us especially if we tend to be more of an introvert.
Sometimes just recognizing what is happening is half the battle.
My parents did and my sister does the cutting people out for almost anything as they, too, considered themselves the guardians of purity.
Kirsten
STEVE: I'm glad you found it interesting--writing it helped me see clearly. Yes, it's a classic, waiting too long and then saying something we regret... My friend wrote a thoughtful reply and I think we did, in the end, come to some more mutual understanding, so I do think the muddle was worth it in the end. Better than disappearing into silence anyway!
ReplyDeleteSPARKER: That Catch-22 is so real! There are several people I don't trust enough to bother even trying to tell them how I feel or think. Of course those are pretty empty relationships...
KIRSTEN: Confrontation & conflict. I hate it! I think of myself as a "friendly introvert"--I'm pretty outgoing but need to retreat and be alone.
Especially after intense contact with people.
So, good for you for speaking up at a public meeting! I would have to go to bed after such an outing. :)
Ah, the Guardians of Purity. Aren't they at treat! I feel the attraction---how nice to be always right! But have seen too much of the downside, and try hard not to drift into such certainty.