Why I'm Angry

[angrycarpenter]

I like to think that I am a pretty sane man. I try to base every opinion I have on as much information as I can get. I also would really like to avoid being anybody's fool. Yet I look at the world where nearly everyone can just look the other way when faced with a persistent ugliness. How can ignoring the suffering of others somehow make it not exist? I suppose that ignorance is bliss but it is also the very thing that pisses me off to no end.

For nearly thirty years now the Neo-Cons have been in power. They have cultivated ignorance as a desirable trait. They can use it to control the minds of the populace to the point that they can stand up and tell us to "be afraid" and we are. What a traitorous thing for them to say. our leaders should be telling us to be courageous, to face the world with head held high. When I hear fearmongering like that I get angry, I don't rush out to buy duct tape.

Fundamentalism is just another word for willful ignorance. This concept is the philosophical equivalent of closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalalalala, Amen. Damn, that pisses me off. Parents filing lawsuits to get creationism in schools saying "I don't care what the facts are, I want them to learn this." The worst part of willful ignorance is the desire to pass it on to offspring.

That leads me to Individualism. The idea that your gratification is more important than the very lives of other people. If you do not see the suffering you cause it does not exist. Gated communities were created to keep out the riff-raff but also to keep up the illusion that consuming and excluding are good. Who cares if that new diamond was dug up by a slave? Who cares that 30 animals died for you to have that mink coat? Or even, Who cares if that $3 shirt I just bought at WalMart was made in an Indonesian sweatshop. Our comfortable lives are built on 3rd world peasant labor, there is not one American who does not in some way benefit from this lop-sided system. Maybe that is why they call us traitors for wanting to change that for the better. Some call it liberal guilt, I call it being a human being rather than some opportunistic ape.

You may have guessed by now that willful ignorance is a constant irritant to me. The blinders that we all put on just to get some kind of joy from the world serve a useful purpose, one cannot bleed for the world all of the time. But the people who never look down to see who they tread upon and who never look back to see the damage in their wake are the ones who make this world a hard place to live. They punish the unfortunate because they see them as being willfully ignorant. Some poor people may be but most simply have no options.

Willful ignorance is when a person has every opportunity to to live a virtuous life. They could be helping others and learning the truth of things but instead they close their eyes and continue consuming this world until there is nothing left. That pisses me off. That is why I am angry.

[patrice]

1. I don't blame you! Willfull ignorance makes me angry too.

It's so hard to understand why, how people can be like this. Very disorienting. The things I thought were true about my country and people are quite different from what I had thought they were. It's not everyone though . . . .

Thank Goodness for the members of my own true Community. Now, how can we work together better to build the world that we need for us and for ours?

[angrycarpenter]

2. There you go man

keep as cool as you can.
face piles
and piles
of trials
with smiles.
It riles them to believe
that you perceive
the web they weave.
and keep on feeling free.

[Tindalos]

3. Yeah, it pisses me off too.

All we can do is keep holding up the truth for them to see. If we keep talking and showing people what is going on, some of them will listen and get angry too.
Eventually enough people will get angry that things will change. I hope.

[Gregorian]

4. I approve this message.

No, really this is one hell of a post. You've nailed it. Absolutely. And I too have lived with your indignation. To the point where I have had to back away (I'm still learning and trying) from the rage. Which is another subject in it's own right. And where I part ways with most who are pissed off about this subject is with "breeding" habits. It's in quotes because even here we have trouble accepting the term. There are six, nearly seven billion because "I want a baby". And yet many of us are, and have been, cringing and dying as we watch the fields turn to concrete.

Simply put, the troubles stem from unconsciousness.

As a bicyclist from way way back, I learned early on what it's like to be crapped on. Big metal boxes with tiny people inside who know the power they wield, and that I can easily be a victim. There's nothing more delightful than a bike forum member who was struck by an object which injured him, but managed to get a license number. Payback. Unfortunately we can't do that in most cases. Enron. Iraq invasion. Or how we just sat back and let the machetes fly in Rwanda.

You said it best. I just want to tag along. But just remember that rage is also an ego driven act. One can accept what is, be negative about it (like me most of the time), or change it. And being negative contaminates the environment. It's why people do the things that enrage us in the first place. The only way we can help out is if we become enlightened ourselves. It seems like a painfully slow process. But it starts with this moment. And then we start to change the media. And then we take the $400 billion that is spent on military, because everyone is so sold on fear, and we put it into schools, teachers, battery research, medical.

I've been angry long enough. It's time. Time to wake up. Because if we don't wake up, the human race is threatened. We are the most important generation that will ever live on planet earth. We decide if the planet is fit for human habitation for the rest of eternity. This is where this all ends up. We're watching the wars, the willful ignorance, and all of the rest. Because it's a wild and crazy time.

[angrycarpenter]

9. I know all about bike rage

once when I was pedaling through the streets of West Palm Beach a Range Rover full of teens pelted me with eggs as they sped by at 60 mph. One of them hit me in the kidney and another in the base of the skull and my vision went dim. I did not see the license number but I heard their laughter as I went down hard.

Random acts of cruelty piss me off too.

I am peaceful man and anger does not rule my life. I do not take it out on anyone but I have no reservations about confronting ignorance when I see it screwing up mine or someone else's life

[hootinholler]

5. I guess I was wrong about that whole hammer-thumb thing I imagined.

:evilgrin:

-Hoot

[angrycarpenter]

7. It happens so much it barely hurts anymore

My left thumb is noticeably flatter than the right and the thumbnail is so thick that I have cut myself with it.

[Connonym]

6. I agree but I can't be mad at someone who buys the $3 shirt because they only make $7 an hour

People who work at Walmart can't even afford to shop there (at least according to Barbara Ehrenreich author of Nickle and Dimed). The real villain in that story is employers paying insufficient wages.

[angrycarpenter]

8. Very true

If a person makes $7 an hour they can identify with working much too hard for too little pay. My beef is with the people who buy,buy,buy with little or no thought to the virtual slaves who make these impossibly cheap goods.

[hfojvt]

10. so you are mad

because everyone is not as smart as you? Am I reading that right?

[Larry Ogg]

13. No, he’s mad because he is wising up, and discovering the true meaning of “ignorance is bliss”.

And that’s a real paradox, you don’t have to be smarter than everyone else to discover the bitter truth, you just have to be willing, and for most that willingness usually comes too late. In other words, if it makes you feel good, read this in a way that suits you best…

[patrice]

16. No. He's angry because many do not TRY. They desire NOT to know.

I think you do bring up an important distinction though. Some people are limited by their abilities.

For some of those who are at a disadvantage in intelligence, the difference between what is needed and what they have is too great to overcome. I believe for others who fall in this category that difference between ability and challenge COULD be overcome if the processes, Family Values + EDUCATION, were in place to make that possible. The kind of Education I'm thinking here would be far far different from that which we have now and it would not be limited to schools. It would be lifelong and available in every media possible.

[Larry Ogg]

19. Hi Patrice. A lot of what you say is self evident too those who

“are tying to solve the problem of what is wrong with this world.”

In addition, there is also a great deal of supporting psychological research and evidence which offer a variety of views in which one can use to form the premise of an objective conclusion to what ails humanity. Such as it is, if such things were taught in public schools, sanity would rule the world and wars and poverty would be a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, in today’s real world, the beneficiaries of such research and knowledge has overwhelmingly been the status quo at the top of the pyramid, and rest assured they have their reasons to control and censer it. Simply put, the dumb downed and psychologically impoverished masses are a lesser threat to their goals, goals which are all about divide and conquer, control and enslave. And if the truth were known to the masses, there would be devastating consequences for those goals, as well as for those who have them…

[patrice]

21. I know some very sober folk who say this is true. The problem with telling others

is that they think you are "a conspiracy theorist" or paranoid, because they make the mistake of thinking that this would have to be an organized effort with Slavery as its defined goal i.e They misunderstand, as Hannah Arendt put it, the banality of evil.

Though there are definitely some of TPB for whom this is indeed an organized effort to acquire power (Cheney, Rove, Norquist et al) and what is happening to us quite likely would not happen were it not for them, the rest of what is happening is the product of millions of individual decisions to accept Slavery instead of Freedom, hence my reference to Family Values because that used to be the situation in which one learned the intrinsic value of things.

It's hard to get people to see the powerfully creative emergent properties of their own ordinary actions and, since you often have to go there by inductive reasoning, the opposition can always, at minimum, confuse the issues by saying it's all abstract and too hypothetical and, therefore, "won't work", when, in fact, it works all of the time. We get the reality we've helped to create.

[angrycarpenter]

20. Not at all

I am under no illusion that I some kind of super genius. I am just a regular guy who could have taken the path of many who chose to close their mind the minute they got out of school. Instead I took it upon myself to continue learning for the rest of my life.

I chose to keep my eyes open and take nothing for granted. That's all there is to it.

[CampDem]

11. K & R

:kick:

[bvar22]

12. Willful ignorance......

does it exist only in others?

[tavalon]

15. No, we all have it to some extent

Although, with seekers, it isn't willful, just blind spots. The most painful thing I have had to do (many times) in my path, is to recognize when someone else is pointing out one of those blind spots and being willing to not react defensively. I doubt I achieve that high goal more than about 50% of the time.

[patrice]

17. Most definitely not. Real revolution only begins with self criticism.

[tavalon]

14. What you said!

Word

[MedleyMisty]

18. I totally agree

I've been struggling with misanthropy for a while now. At least I've narrowed it down to rich white people now, knowing that they never gave other people a chance to develop to their potential.

[bdamomma]

22. well said angrycarpenter

"ignorance will be mankinds downfall". So true