Stepping Back From the Inferno: A Strategy for Keeping Your Stinking Piehole Closed

My Back Pages

When I was growing up, newspapers served as a primary means of communication for everything. The same newspaper that told us John Lennon had been assassinated, or that showed us a map of the 7.0 earthquake in Tonga, also told us about a woman’s Pontiac Lemans being stolen on the 900 block of NW 22nd avenue.

The last two pages of The Miami Herald’s “A Section” (the paper’s largest general news section), were always devoted to editorials and readers’ letters.

In other words– just TWO pages, out of maybe 25, were dedicated to opinions. The back pages. This made it ideal material for birdcage lining.

Television news was pretty much the same.

The final two minutes of a 60-minute news broadcast would feature some talking head in front of green screen, giving an opinion on a pressing or contentious current event. The other 58 minutes was mostly straight reporting, sprinkled in between with Rose Auto Parts and Folger’s Coffee commercials. My, how times have changed.

I’m convinced people were every bit as opinionated and divided back then as they are today, but the avenues for venting your spleen were usually limited to the dinner table or the water cooler at the office. The world survived this way for a long time. The opportunities to communicate your opinions to a global audience were simply non-existent to the common bloke. Shit-slinging had hard limits. And I think, as a whole, things were better that way.

Don’t get me wrong, opinion writing has a viable place in journalism. And the appropriate place is probably on those back two pages.

Does Pro-Catharsis Writing Help Us?

It’s a misconception about human psyche that people somehow always need to publicly vent and get things “off their chest” in order to feel validated or “clear”.

There’s a popular belief that the more people speak their minds on a given topic, the more “closure” and resolution they’ll feel. And the more light the rest of us will have as a result. Anyone who has ever watched a Facebook political thread unravel in real-time, knows what total horseshit this idea is.

In one clinical study, participants who read a pro-catharsis message, subsequently expressed a greater desire to hit a punching bag than did participants who read an anti-catharsis message.

Another study showed that while people lowered their blood pressure by venting about things, they did not reduce the overall level of hostility they felt.

“Venting” therefore, can sometimes be likened to scratching a scab– in other words, it can provide a temporary sensation of relief, but can ultimately make all of us feel worse.

Years ago, a really unfunny comedy called Couples Retreat, effectively highlighted this idea. In the film, a group of middle-aged married friends went on a therapy vacation, somewhere in the South Pacific, with the idea of fixing their broken relationships. The retreat hosted intensive counseling sessions that focused on spouses “opening up” about their pet peeves. The couples found that the more they got these things off their chest, the worse their relationships got.

The simple conclusion was that sometimes in marriage, the things you choose NOT to talk about are often just as important as the things you do.

“Venting” can become its own
self-fulfilling cycle of destruction

I’ve thought about this a lot over the past twelve days, as I’ve written and deleted and then rewritten multiple pieces on the Israeli/Palestinian war, sparked by the atrocities committed by Hamas in Gaza.

I am nauseated and outraged by terrorism and the human carnage that has followed. I’m enraged by the weight of military might crushing the weakest in society. I’m repulsed by antisemitism, which I consider a uniquely sinister form of bigotry. I’m scared too for my own kids and their future in a world that is this harrowing and dystopian. I’m jonesing to vent. I want to vehemently denounce antisemitism. I want to likewise uphold the basic human rights of Palestinians. I don’t want to be silent or ambiguous about any of it.

I’ve written about the proper moral response to atrocity. I’ve written about the West’s historical role in this escalating mayhem. I’ve written about religion’s unique role in guaranteeing that this conflict NEVER gets resolved. I’ve written about how people of conscience can walk and chew gum at the same time– i.e. demonstrate empathy and solidarity for the human rights of Palestinians, while supporting Israeli rights to self preservation and peace from Jihadists. I’ve written that criticizing Israeli military action and acknowledging Israeli war crimes doesn’t mean you support the bloodthirsty actions of opportunistic terrorist organizations like Hamas.

And with the world standing on the precipice of something darker than we’ve seen in a long time, I tried to write something again today.

No luck.

And then I realized that venting right now is probably the most unhelpful and unnecessary internet commodity at our disposal. Heated political posturing is about as useful as a witch’s tit. The old adage, “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof“, seems to apply nicely here. Is there not enough heat and hatred to go around?

Re-Directing Bile

At least one study has shown that instead of focusing on bile-spewing, people who reconstrue — i.e. find meaning by stepping back and re-framing the points of contention more broadly– experience less rage and a more grounded sense of hope. In short, stepping away from the roiling waters of our own prejudices and anger, and seeking a wider view outside of our own claustrophobic confines, seems to be a more hopeful path… for all. Regardless of the topic.

American philosopher Daniel Dennett refers to this “stepping back” or re-framing your argument about contentious topics, as steel-manning (in debate settings, this is the opposite of straw-manning). He defines the term this way:

1.) Attempt to re-express an opposing position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that they say, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

2.)List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of existing, widespread agreement).

3.) Mention anything you have learned from your target.

4.) Only then are you permitted to vent

Of course, this is easier to do when one is venting about, let’s say, the high price of groceries or the craziness of the Trump phenomena. And a lot more challenging when attempting to vent about why children’s bodies are strewn around a bombed hospital in Gaza or about young Jewish people raped and murdered at a music festival. Some atrocities are so unambiguously evil that they require no steel-manning.

Even so, we do well to remember that these are ancient hostilities and prejudices. The history is complex and tangled beyond comprehension. Sometimes the evil that men do, is beyond the pale. Sometimes in the wall of smoke, it’s not clear who drew first blood. And some stories don’t have heroes. Or even traditional villains.

Sometimes the best we can do, is step away, zoom-out and recalibrate our whole understanding of what is happening. Stepping back also helps us realize that our opinion– especially when spewed out, but even when dribbled out– contributes little to the world beside aerosol droplets of additional angst and cynicism.

Stepping back isn’t easy because the loudest voices in culture are at the moment insisting that everyone STEP UP, draw clear sides and denounce events in an “acceptable” way(s)—almost as a test of partisan orthodoxy. Monitoring specific levels of outrage and denunciation allows them to see whether you pass or fail the political purity test. I consciously brace myself every time someone on Twitter claims “This isn’t complicated”. What follows is inevitably a hard-line, absolutist conclusion about Israel/Palestine, that’s eager to cite you for non-compliance.

I say empathize with as many as you can. Pull back from those demanding compliance with the most narrow tribal lines of demarcation.

And if somehow all of that fails, maybe for a few minutes, just shut your piehole.