Lately my attention has fixed on a fascinating human disposition:
indignation. In my
last post I expressed my longing for an effective hate-word for white people. I mused that "honkey" and "cracker" were both fashionable slang. They sound hip and cool; therefore they are ineffective as they fail to elicit the desired response --
indignation. Even as I was snapping the next bullet mark, my mind was churning over
honkeys and
crackers.
Why don't they give offense? That's their intent. When you make a wrong turn, wind up driving down Harlem Avenue and hear a roadside projects resident yell
"you crachah-ass honkey," he's not paying you a compliment. Believe it or not, he's expressing hostility (and registering his complaint on the off-chance you're the banker who repossessed his family's farm home.) So a word desinged to offend is failing to disgruntle its target audience. What's happening here?
An important idea resided in that bulleted quip. And this cracker was going to get to the bottom of it, right after he called his broker, mailed a birthday card to The Man, and smeared some more mayonnaise on the sandwich he was eating.
At once the answer struck me. White people simply
decided not to find the term offensive -- regardless of its intent. We didn't all sit down together and have a formal meeting on the matter. Independently we all decided that these terms don't rise to the level of offense. Some of us went a step further and decided to find these terms
fashionable. In doing so we rendered the epithets harmless. We defanged them. Whites have effectively immunized themselves to epithets by resolving not to take offense. Could it be that simple? Can people simply
decide not to take offense to offensive behavior? Could renouncing indignation go beyond epithets and into other points of conflict? If so, what are the implications? Could resolving not to take offense be the foundation of world peace? Of inner-peace?
Forget about epithets for a moment and take a macro-view. Look at entire cultures. It's fair to say that the more indignant the culture -- that is, the more likely it is to take offense -- the bigger the pain in the ass it is to the rest of the planet. Tip-toeing around indignant people is exhausting, painstaking work that rarely succeeds in keeping the peace. That's the disconcerting thing about indignant cultures: the more you yield to their sensibilities, the more sensitive they become, so that pin drops cause earthquakes. That's why America is having such trouble getting into the rest of the world's good graces. By merely wearing tennis shoes, eating Big Macs and giving our movies happy endings we've pissed off three-forths of Europe. And I don't need to enumerate the number of ways the successful sit-com
Will and Grace agitates the Middle East. The Food Network alone has most of the countries in Africa frothed. We've got like 2 countries on the planet who don't hate us yet -- Canada and Australia. And we're one mocking "eh" away from Canada beating us to a pulp with their hockey sticks and snow shoes. As far as Australia goes, let's just thank our lucky stars that sting ray wasn't an American citizen. Anyway, there's so much indignation out there, we can hardly degrade the ozone layer without somebody planning our demise. Just what are we supposed to do?
If indignation is a threat to foreign affairs, it's cancer to personal relationships. The more indignant the person is, the more
annoying he is. You know whom I'm talking about. This is the person who throws a shit-fit because the guy in front of him ordered his Whopper with no onions (Have it YOUR way, mother fucker! Not the douche-bag-behind-you's way!). Indignant people suck. Conversely, whom do you admire most? Whoever he is, he's forgiving, even magnanimous, bigger then the petty offensive bullshit the rest of us fret over. He doesn't have the patience to nurture indignation over stupid shit like whether somebody was talking on a cell phone when he cut him off in traffic, or whether Clay Aiken met with more success in the music industry than Bo Bice. [I'll just have to get over it. That twerp Clay Aiken is selling millions of records an swimming balls-deep in adolescent cooter. Bo Bice is going down on the landlord for a week's rent. You got such pretty long hair, Bo. Now suck it before I have you evicted.]
Indignation is an encumbrance. You're forever having to become angry, to fight the good fight, to defend the honor of this and that. For instance, you have to declare your moral outrage every time someone at work takes a second bagel "before everybody has had a chance to get one."
Relax, Denise. I'm eating the onion bagel. Nobody ever wants the onion bagel, you busy-bodied twat. I'm not suggesting that feeling anger from time to time is detrimental. You naturally feel anger when you rack your head on a shelf, learn your car battery is dead or clog the shitter. It's indignation -- anger with the component of
perceived injustice -- that's detrimental to one's relationships with others and to one's own mental health.
The more indignant one is, the more vulnerable to manipulation one is. After all, what's more tempting than
annoying somebody? When somebody gives you the power to annoy them, it obligates you to seize the opportunity. Remember the one neighbor who posted a KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign on his lawn? Remember how you would make a point of playing Smear the Queer with seven of your buddies on his lawn just because of that sign? Case in point. Did you ever ding-dong-ditch the house belonging to the easy-going hippie? No. You hit the cranky old lady at the end of the street who was always shooing you off her segment of the sidewalk. She's the one who got the flaming bag of poo on Halloween, or was it Christmas Eve? Ah, I remember now. It was
both. Looks like Comet left you a flaming bag of his own Christmas sentiment, Mrs. Anderson.
For both personal and geo-political reasons, we must renounce indignation. But refusing to become indignant doesn't mean becoming others' punching bag. During the Second World War, we had a problem with the Germans. We didn't become indignant and lather ourselves into a righteous frenzy over their ambitions to conquer the region and persecute millions of Jews. We simply recognized that Germany had become the boisterous drunk at the end of the bar and we needed to kick his ass to sober him up. In fact, if we immobilized ourselves with indignation, wringing our hands over "the injustice of it all," we may have lost the war. Instead, our attitude was ,
Yep, looks like we need to go over there and kick the shit out of them. During the entire Atlantic campaign, American soldiers were known for their cheerful dispositions. Contrast this with French soldiers who became so indignant over German occupation that they could barely muster any contempt for American liberating forces dying to recapture French freedom. American soldiers' ability to maintain their sense of humor under the most miserable of circumstances was the key to their success. I think it was Buddha who said,
If you can laugh while you're kicking the crap out of somebody, you're a truly enlightened being. Amen.
I believe the heaping pile of indignation Christianity carried around for so long gave rise to the contempt many have for it nowadays. Christianity damns a lot of normal, harmless behavior and does so in righteous indignation. For a long time, this was a pain in the butt to everyday folks, who felt moved to question the Church. Martin Luther had to meet the Pope in the
Thunderdome just to back the Church off.
Two Christians enter; one Christian leaves. But Christianity is relaxing its indignation. Take Catholics for example. Many non-Cathoilcs denounce the entire doctrine of Catholicism because 1/100 of one percent of priests may have victimized children. Forget the wonderful virtues Catholicism teaches. Forget the millions of Catholics who live virtuous lives, care for their neighbors, give generously to those less fortunate, and have the good sense to whip their children with wooden spoons when they sass the parents. Father O'Reilly touched a kid's pecker.
So screw the lot of them. Catholics appear to be taking the criticism in stride. No crusades the last time I checked. They're learning to let go of indignation. Meanwhile, if you sneeze on the Koran you could start a holy war. So with organized religion, too, we need to tone down the sense of indignation.
Let's do our best to squelch indignation from our collective psyche. How dare you not agree?
