A funny thing has happened to me lately. I seem to have lost a good part of my ability to become outraged.
I don't know if this is a good thing or not. On the plus side, it means I am calmer. On the minus side, I am perhaps more apathetic.
Whether good or bad, permanent or merely temporary, my current lack of outrage is certainly a new development. For years, it seems, I could get outraged - or at least royally ticked off - about nearly anything. Now I only shrug and murmur, "What fools these mortals be."
Case in point: A biologist writes an op-ed piece in the LA Times advocating the laboratory creation of man-monkey hybrids, not for any scientific purpose, but simply to show religious people that there is no clear dividing line between humans and animals. "It is a line that exists only in the minds of those who proclaim that the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine," he writes disapprovingly.
Ordinarily the suggestion that scientists should literally monkey with human life in such a capricious and twisted way would inspire me to vehement invective. Not this time. How silly, I thought. Some people will say anything to get attention.
Another case: Not long ago I was mightily disturbed to read that a certain Deb Frisch, a university lecturer in psychology, had made inappropriate (violent and sexual) comments about a conservative blogger's two-year-old son. Now it appears that Frisch is still at it, writing equally sick things to the same blogger and to another one. Meanwhile, in an unrelated case, another blogger is being threatened by someone who appears to have physical violence in mind.
I ought to be getting upset about this, but somehow I can't seem to feel much about it, except that there is a vicious cycle at work here: deliberately provocative political blogging > a backlash of angry comments > even more in-your-face blogging > even angrier and more personal comments, and on and on until the situation escalates into something really dangerous. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. Who could expect otherwise?
Perhaps I can't feel outraged anymore because of the incessant attempts to provoke my outrage. Every day, cable news and blog sites and talk radio and print media all do their best to get me outraged about something. About anything. Outrage sells. Except at a certain point, I seem to have immune to it. Like a kid who's had the mumps and is now immunized against a recurrence of the illness, I have absorbed so much outrage and released so much adrenalized anger that suddenly I find myself at least temporarily immune. It's a weird, lonely feeling.
And I can't even get upset about it.
wow... the guy is missing out on the obvious trick to shut up anti-evolutionists
show us evolution in action... at base minimum.. create a self-replicating cell in the laboratory by pure chance & make the process repeatable??? ( is there a ( contradiction here?)
& also someone should tell him that the supposed micro-evolution exhibited by bacteria's resistance to anti-biotics isn't realy scientific too... if you go by conventioal scientific standards... see below link for info...
http://www.alternativescience.com/talk.origins-antibiotic.htm
PS : FYI, I have put in a comments under your blogs concerning re-incarnation.. not sure if that clears up queries...
SMJ
Posted by: SatyaMevaJayate | July 31, 2006 at 10:08 PM
It's a byproduct of reading Eckhart Tolle. And I mean that in a good way.
It is a weird, lonely feeling, and you'll get used to it. And you'll try to go back to the old way of being, try to muster up some outrage as you have here, and it's just not there. It's not apathy, it's surrender to what is, and it's seeing it for what it is, the ego trying to muster up some attention, you said it yourself:
"Some people will say anything to get attention."
You have become the witness, it's a good thing.
Posted by: Claudia | July 31, 2006 at 10:54 PM
>It's a byproduct of reading Eckhart Tolle.
Yes, that occurred to me, too, and I think that is probably a large part of it. I saw some teenagers acting up in a parking lot the other day, being really obnoxious, but instead of being irritated with them, I just thought, "That's ego behavior - they're unconscious." A very Tolle-esque thought.
Also, I think seeing the escalating violence in the Middle East makes me realize how pointless a lot of this attack and counterattack really is. (I'm not condemning Israel for trying to take out Hezbollah, but in the long run, nothing will change in that region unless people start to change their way of thinking.)
SMJ,
Thanks for your comments. I did notice your comments on reincarnation, which were very interesting. Usually I don't reply to comments on old posts because not many people are reading them anymore. But I appreciate your thoughts.
I agree that a self-replicating cell did not and cannot arise by chance.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | August 01, 2006 at 12:10 AM
I agree with Claudia. This has to do with your study of the dynamics of human ego, including your own.
I will quote from a letter I wrote to a friend of mine:
I gradually found the "witness" coming more and more into my life, culminating in a moment alone, driving down the road and supposedly engulfed with spiritual pain and anguish. I raised my voice and screamed at "God", at myself "Why can't I be enlightened?". "Please, I can't stand being stuck in ego consciousness any more". But the spiritual temper tantrum was not credible. I was simply watching myself act in this way, and it looked like an act, and I wasn't really suffering. I couldn't buy into my own cosmic angst.
Since then I have not been able to muster up a good "outrage" about much of anything. And I have discovered Tolle and Adamson and Wheeler and Nibley and a host of others helping to explain the things that were already happening with me and helping to quiet the mind. But the single turning point appears to be that spiritual tantrum alone in the car.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer | August 01, 2006 at 06:34 AM
I suggest this mellowing is to be embraced. After all, there'll always be idiocy and you can either embrace it or fizz over it. Alas fizzing leads to all kinds of physiological imbalance, and those who you scorn usually don't know or care anyhow.
Posted by: Darryn | August 01, 2006 at 04:38 PM
Matthew and Darryn,
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, "fizzing" does seem rather pointless, as do "spiritual tantrums." I think that sometimes - perhaps often - we simply invent something to worry about, or recycle old, outdated worries, because we have nothing else on our minds, and the ego abhors a vacuum. We create an atmosphere of perpetual crisis just to keep ourselves jazzed up.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | August 01, 2006 at 11:37 PM
MP,
The thing that strikes me most is that, with the single exception of the teenagers in the parking lot, all of the examples you wrote about in your blog are only things you read or heard about through media forms.
Even as a child in the 60's, I can remember finding the repeated news of the Vietnam War, riots, etc. depressing and I'd have to take a break from watching TV news and reading the newspaper. Media has many new forms now due to obvious technological advances, so we're even more saturated with this kind of stuff. Talk about overload! I think any normal person reaches an outrage-saturation point when your mind triggers a survival mechanism that begins easing some of the horror for you, otherwise we'd all feel completely hopeless, depressed, enraged, and insane.
This will sound like overly simplistic advice, but IMHO you just need to concentrate on a lot of happy for awhile, that's what I do. Go to Tom Bodett's personal blog and also listen to the "Wait, Wait, I Know That!" episodes that Bodett's on (sadly he's not a regular), the NPR web site. He's one of my heroes, he did something very kind in memory of my son (as you did, MP, which I'll always appreciate so much!) He's also very very funny! Watch The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Sing while you're driving and don't worry about people seeing you. So what? Blow 'em a raspberry and get some happy and some healthy outrage, too .
Posted by: SuzieInFlorida | August 02, 2006 at 02:28 AM
Suzie,
Thanks for the advice. But singing in my car is not an option - not with my voice! I wouldn't even subject my dashboard to that kind of punishment ...
I agree that the news coverage has been so depressing lately that it's only natural to draw back from it. It doesn't help that the cable networks are treating the war as entertainment - almost as if it's a video game, not a real event.
I'm not sure about "healthy outrage," though. I'm starting to think that feeling outraged is pretty unhealthy. Better to just accept the fact that human behavior is mostly destructive and self-destructive, always has been, and (perhaps) always will be. No use getting one's knickers in a bunch about it.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | August 02, 2006 at 02:05 PM
It's funny, I just watched the movie "Heat" again the other day, and there's a part in it where the cop played by Al Pacinom discussing with his soon-to-be-third-ex-wife why he can't share his emotional life with her: "I gotta hold on to my angst. I preserve it because I need it. It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be."
At least he was aware of what he was doing. I wonder if, at some level, that what all of us do: we preserve our angst, our outrage, etc. because we're afraid of what will happen if we let go of it...
Posted by: jimbo | August 02, 2006 at 10:35 PM
"It's our craziness that keeps us sane" Mortal Faults by Michael Prescott :) Words to live by.
Posted by: SuzieinFlorida | August 03, 2006 at 08:03 AM
It's best not to take my characters' advice. Most of them are pretty messed up.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | August 03, 2006 at 02:23 PM
Outrage should be based on a violation of moral principles. If someone does something to you that you don't like, then you can be angry, but that anger should not take over your life. Outrage is acceptable in cases such as the Debb Frisch thing. The Left fringe gets so embroiled in their ideas that they can't stand those who are intolerant. However, it is becoming more and more prevelant.
The media usually want you to be outraged, as you said, it's part of their agenda to make you feel like everthing is going wrong in the world. That's especially true if a Republican is President.
As for that evolutionary scientist, you have to just laugh and make comments like that. It's when people take him seriously that you have problems.
P.S. I got a new site, check it out.
Posted by: Althusius | August 04, 2006 at 05:39 PM
>Outrage is acceptable in cases such as the Debb Frisch thing.
I agree that outrage is acceptable. I'm just not sure it's useful. For instance, I recently got into a silly little tussle with an online guy who writes about the afterlife. He mischaracterized my views, didn't link to my article so his readers could judge for themselves, called me names, etc.
I could get outraged about it, I guess. I could work myself up into a lather. But what's the point? How would getting angry benefit me or anyone else?
Instead, I wrote a couple of serious responses to the evidence he's putting forward, and I also penned a little satire on the guy, for laughs. I still read his Web site. I don't dislike him.
If I had gotten outraged, I would have taken the dispute personally. It would have become a major "issue" in my life, something to fret and stew about. It would have interfered with my concentration, caused me stress, made me irritable and short-tempered. And all for what? The other guy doesn't care how I feel. He doesn't even know how I feel. So who am I hurting, except myself?
So yes, outrage can be understandable and acceptable, but I think it's rarely productive.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | August 04, 2006 at 11:34 PM
Yes, that's what I meant.
>If someone does something to you that you don't like, then you can be angry, but that anger should not take over your life.
When someone mischaracterizes your views and slanders you, you can be frustrated, etc., but you shouldn't be outraged. With moral violations, such as Debb Frisch towards Jeff Goldstein and his son, there a type of "holy anger" that we can exercise. Of course our anger is usually mixed with wrong emotions and feelings. God is the only one who can have true, unspoiled, holy anger.
Posted by: Althusius | August 05, 2006 at 06:35 PM