Thursday, August 13, 2009

What's with the anger?

A question I muse over often:- Was the world always this angry? Maybe I've just calmed down. I certainly used to be a far angrier person than i am today.

What's certainly true is that we live in a world with far more access to expression than we once did. Everybody can air their opinion on blogs, forums, comment sections of online newspapers. Maybe we were always like this and now we've been given a voice. Maybe that's healthy. Maybe it's better to know the less than sane views of some, the occasionally refreshing views of others.

But, in the main, the impression it leaves is of a cacophony of discord; thousands of voices all shouting at once. It's a wonder how anything gets done at all.

I must admit to being hooked on the The Guardian's comments section. I really wish I wasn't. Far from being the bastion of leftie thought, the comments it attracts are often of the extreme right. It's to be expected really; people want an argument; they want a fight.

It seems it's a given to hate something. People variously hate the lower classes, the upper classes, the middle classes, black people, pakistanis, indian people, racists, fascists, anti-fascists, socialists, capitalists, do-gooders, libertarians, anarchists, tories, labour, lib-dems, republicans, democrats, muslims, christians, jews, benefits fraudsters, greedy bankers, and on and on it goes. Everybody hates someone.

I don't pretend to know the answers but i'd bet my house that the problem is not what you hate but that you hate at all.

For starters, hatred of a group of whatever form is flawed from the very beginning. Social groupings of whatever type are rough and generalised. Unless you have personally interviewed every single person on earth it seems a little presumptuous to form an opinion of a particular social group.
"Yeah but black people are.." You don't know them all mate. Idi Amin and Martin Luther King were both 'black'. One was a genocidal monster of history, the other was a firm advocate of peace and equality. The only thing they probably have in common is a similar shaped comb.
"Yeah but the lower classes are all feral vermin", "Yeah but the upper classes are all chinless wonders". Again, you don't know them all. All you display is ignorance with statements like that.
Probably the worst thing about this is that some of the people who come out with all this are erudite, intelligent human beings, capable of very complex justifications for their views.

In a sense, sometimes i think what really unites the human race is our capacity for petty hatred. We are all capable of being foolish and reactionary.

The famous novelist and social commentator GK Chesterton was once asked to contribute an article to The Daily Telegraph on the topic of 'What is wrong with the World?'. He replied in the form of a letter which read

'Dear Sirs

I am.

Yours faithfully
GK Chesterton'

I take my hat off to the guy. I take it to mean I am responsible for my actions. That, when all is said and done, telling you what to do is all well and good, but it's how i live my own principles that really matters.

Ghandi once said 'be the changes you want to see' which, to me, means that if i want a peaceful world built on a foundation of justice then i need to be peaceful and just.

Well, thank you for reading this. I thank you even if you consider it a pile of liberal hogwash, hippy nonsense, pie in the sky, whatever, I thank you.