Why Are You Driving So Angry?

A few weeks ago we wrote about ignorance.  At II we feel it is important to address popular arguments and strip them of their fallacies in order to educate and help tone down the rhetoric.  It seems that anymore American political discourse has devolved into insult laden, ignorant filled shouting matches that are as helpful to solving the issues as they are enjoyable to listen to.  People remark, "It's nastier than ever," and "I don't even listen anymore."  Corporate human resource department managers struggle to write policies banning political discussions at work.  Social etiquette now dictates that political alignment is private information and disclosing one's views is the equivalent of telling a racist joke in public: a political anathema.  Those brave enough to openly share their opinions risk long lasting social stigma and judgment.  The fact that sharing one's views shows the very real effects and damage that fallacies elicit.  The consequence of ignorance is tangible and is called injustice.  As we wrote in Don't Drive Angry, "there is a mechanism in the human psyche that immediately recognizes and disdains injustice."
Injustice triggers that fight or flight response in our brains.  The Supreme Court today ruled that the family of slain soldiers who were protested against and maliciously maligned could not sue the church organizing and leading the protests.  When one reads the placards or hears the chants of that church calling the soldiers gay and declaring pleasure in their deaths it is difficult, nigh impossible to not feel a sense of injustice.  When one hears of the Libyan leader hiring mercenaries to slaughter his own countrymen it is hard to not feel the injustice.  When one sees a man let a door close on a woman, when one sees a child ignoring their parent's instructions, when one gets cut off in traffic, or when  gets a Coke when they clearly ordered a Diet Coke it is a struggle to fight off the sense of injustice.  Which begs the question: Are people becoming too sensitive?
We touched on this a few weeks ago, "The human mind was not built for nor can handle the massive amount of information we receive."  People are so interconnected now within their own lives, their community, work, and the prevalence of news from around the world it is sometimes overwhelming and potentially maddening.  The first ten minutes of a local newscast presents us with a staggering amount of bad news which feeds one's sense of injustice.  "An apartment building burned down."  "A local official is corrupt."  "A family was murdered."  The human brain is amazingly adaptable but it is hard to imagine that it has developed the physical coping mechanisms needed to keep pace with the exponentially rapid evolution of information flow in today's society.  Not being experts on the subject we at II cannot conclude that the mind potentially struggles from injustice overload but it can help us understand the motivations of people who are either ultra-sensitive or non-empathetic.
And understanding is the key to fighting the ignorance which leads to the feeling of injustice.
Are people becoming too sensitive to injustice?  Working under the assumption that injustice is a natural response in the human psyche we can examine other natural responses.  Does increased frequency to pain make one more or less sensitive?  Certainly people can become calloused to pain and rewire their brains to ignore, divert, or misinterpret those signals.  Conversely those who have known joy find it easier to make their experiences in life more joyous than those perpetually miserable.  It seems that we can hardwire our brains to produce favorable responses more efficiently as we age.  So thereby the ease at which one can produce an emotion speaks to one's motivation.  A simple and perhaps obvious statement, but in the context of injustice one can begin to understand and answer the question on the table.  As we stated earlier the feeling of injustice triggers that fight or flight response in our heads.  Fear and anger are a result of that feeling of injustice.
Here we would like to make a contextual distinction between feelings and emotions here for the purposes of this essay: feelings are natural and brief responses in the human body that lead to emotions which help us frame and determine a situation in order to make decisions.  Fear and anger are emotions with a similar cause much like hunger, lust, or loneliness are emotions caused by feelings in the body.
Understanding that feelings are involuntary and it is the emotions that develop from those feelings that can be managed is the key to wisdom.  It becomes simple cause and effect.  If we hardwire our brains to always react a certain way given a certain input we dehumanize the spirit and puts on exhibit the ignorance that motivated that decision process.  Everyone hates that certain friend whose first reaction to every proposal is "no."  We call singularly emotional people robots.  We euthanize animals whose response to injustice is to always fight.  Being able to manage one's emotions is not only distinctive to humans, but mastery is sagacious.
So, are people becoming too sensitive to their feelings of injustice?  Certainly we are overloaded with information and these feelings are instigated more often now that in human past, however while the frequency by which those feelings are instigated has increased it is the mechanisms by which we develop our emotions that have evolved and all too often over simplified.  If we are to properly address the ignorance in our lives we must learn to properly balance our fear and anger.  Our humanity is exemplified in our ability to do so.
Rarely is the sense of injustice more powerful than when one is confronted with a child molester.  And a shift has occurred in society's reaction to these people from fear to anger.  We have developed lists for post-detained sexual offenders.  We ban them from our society.  We rejoice when they are rounded up and forced to live in inhumane conditions.  We take solace in our imbalanced schadenfreude.  By dehumanizing them we justify ourselves.  Throughout human history people have endeavored to elevate themselves by casting out or relegating the undesirables.  The problem occurs when, in the process of working out our emotions, we create a new injustice.  It is enough in today's society that just an accusation is enough to ruin a life.  It is remarkably dehumanizing for both the victim and those passing judgement.  We should recognize that the method used to form these emotions are likely based on ignorance.  People make poor decisions everyday.  Fortunately the vast majority come with little ramifications.  But we all possess the ability to make that one mistake with profound and overwhelming consequences; and to forget that is disturbingly foolish.
Remember that our fear and anger are the result of our natural response to injustice and that which makes us wise is our ability to manage those emotions.  We are so quick to seek retribution from those who have offended us.  It has led America to become a litigious society.  The politically correct reside in the fear that their emotions will reveal their ignorance.  And the internet has enabled the angry to virulently lash out at those who have offended them either directly or indirectly.  These emotions often signal the ignorance that led to the injustice in the first place.  And the quicker one is able to deduce that the more efficient one becomes in their ability to prevent further injustice.

Don't Drive Angry

I was chatting with a person recently about the Bill Murray movie and asked if they could guess how long Phil Conners was stuck in Punxsutawney; to which they replied "What's Groundhog Day?"

Ignorance: let's talk about.

At The Impudent Iconoclast we strive to maintain political and religious neutrality.  Our goal is to address popular arguments and draw attention to the ignorance and fallacies that overwhelm post-modern rhetoric.  By abstaining from affiliation we hopefully avoid interjecting commentary to allow the reader to unemotionally receive and understand the argument quickly and without internal distractions.  Unfortunately ignorance is prevalent and rampant and there are many challenges to be addressed.  

All too often ignorance surfaces and it is almost impossible to identify, much less control.  It is by its own definition unrecognizable.  One must proactively take difficult and challenging steps to determine and correct their own ignorance.  Compounding the problem there are several kinds of ignorance.

Some types of ignorance include external ignorance, empathy ignorance, and self ignorance.  External ignorance is one of the easiest to identify and correct.  For example current events: today one of the biggest and most destructive cyclones ever recorded made landfall in Australia and yet in America the news of it was confined to a few seconds long blurb.  Hundreds of thousands of people across the globe are protesting government leadership in various countries, most notably Egypt, and yet politicians, pundits, and average people all seem to have clear and defined opinions as to wrong and right in each of these situations when it is likely they themselves have never been to these countries, met a citizen of these countries, could identify these countries on a map, or could name a single person from these countries.  And while we at II cannot claim superiority on these matters nor claim that it is improper or unhealthy to form opinions on world events, we beg that you recognize and remember that your knowledge on these matters is ignorant and simplifying or closing your mind on the matters is unacceptable.  

In the Egyptian debate we would like to think that the protests stem from a purely pro-democracy movement when in reality there are also pro-theocratic, anti-establishment, and others with large reach, influence and power that confuse the situation.  In which case it makes blanket solidarity unwise because it reflects one's ignorance.  We sometimes frown upon ignorance because it can; in some instances, stem from judgement.  And there is a mechanism in the human psyche that immediately recognizes and disdains injustice.

Injustice is often the result of or connected to empathy ignorance.  I once had a friend that was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint.  Due to my own external ignorance I did not know that for many years after.  While I considered them a friend I often passed judgement in the course of our interactions that unfairly distorted my perspective.  I once passed along to them an invitation to an unconventional Christian church.  In my mind I had judged that person to be as open-minded as they had previously professed and knowing they had a history of attending church I thought it would be great opportunity for the both of us to experience something new and address some ignorance of our own.  When the invitation was refused I judged it and the manner of the refusal harshly.  When my external ignorance of my friend's background was corrected I started to understand some of their decision making processes.  But it was not until I was able to address my empathy ignorance that i was able to understand my own judgments and then work to correct them.  I had sometimes attributed chemical imbalances or hypocrisy to some of their decisions or the opinions they had.  And this injustice of opinion to my friend has led to feelings of guilt and shame; the same feelings one gets when they recognize their own external ignorance; and slightly less traumatic than recognizing one's self ignorance.

Self ignorance is the most difficult to recognize and exponentially difficult ignorance to correct.  The longer one views the world from a single perspective the thicker the lens grows on their rose-tinted spectacles.  It is sometimes referred to as a comfort zone.  We hardwire into our brains a flow chart for which our decisions are made.  

Eat Fish? -> Do I like fish? -> No -> Don't eat fish.  

Is Obama right about healthcare? -> Do I like Democrats? -> No -> Obama is wrong.  

The trouble is our objective framework attempts to categorize and classify things that lead to wrong decisions.  Why?  Ignorance.  

Will I like sushi? -> I don't like fish -> I hate sushi.

For decades I denounced sushi and vehemently passed judgement on those who ate it and enjoyed it before I had ever tried it.  However I identified the ignorance and have tried it on several occasions.  It has proven hard and seemingly impossible for me to come to accept it which shows that battling one's self ignorance is not simple or quick.  

Self ignorance often manifests itself in fear.  A common tautological adage is the "fear of the unknown."  Fear leads to hate; and hate leads to injustice.  Examples include racism and misogyny.  And yet we are all guilty.

Therefore:

If there is one thing that II would like to communicate via this post or throughout the whole blog is that ignorance is curable.  It is altogether necessary and important to develop internal and objective frameworks in our minds to assess situations, form opinions, and judge people.  This allows us to make timely and critical decisions. 

There is a truck speeding towards me. -> Do I like living? -> Yes. -> Run.

However we must recognize that while our objective structures help us at times, our subsequent judgments are not necessarily objective.  The challenge is to not be lazy about it.  Once we realize that we base many of our decisions or beliefs in ignorance then can we truly begin to learn and understand; which begets wisdom.  And wisdom is the noble goal all should strive for and the impetus for The Impudent Iconoclast.  

When considering the cure for ignorance remember there is a significant difference between knowledge and wisdom.  Someone once said "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."  One might be able to cure external ignorance with knowledge, but only the wise can use it to cure self ignorance.  So here are some steps that we at II agree one can undertake that will help cure some ignorance and that will lead to happy and sagacious readers:

1) Gather Knowledge:  We live in a tremendous era where information is free and easily accessible.  We have the internet, 24 hour news stations, cheap flights overseas, melting pot cultures, international cuisines, and social networks were one's exposure is only limited to one's imagination.  Incongruously there is too much information available which sometimes encourages ignorance.  As stated earlier cured ignorance precipitates guilt.  The human mind was not built for nor can handle the massive amount of information we receive.  Those that are tuned in know of the cyclone in Australia, the holocaust in Sudan, or the Taliban in Afghanistan.  What bothers some is the apathy one feels when the tragic news is received.  People are often quick to judge celebrities for picking single causes to campaign for because their mother or child were affected by something.  We accuse leaders who focus on one issue for neglecting other important issues.  As much as we would like we simply cannot address or emotionally invest ourselves into every issue we are confronted with.  It is not healthy nor does it help solve the issues we are passionate about.

2) Pick an Ignorance To Solve:  There are thousands of homeless on the streets in the city and one cannot help them all.  A person can donate money or time to a charity and while that may gratify the most superficial of desires and stave of some of the guilt, it will not satiate the hunger for justice: namely it will not cure the ignorance.  However if one were to pour their life into a single homeless person to get them a job and a home and their health then one can rest easy in the knowledge it brings and the wisdom one gains.  For myself I tried sushi even though when I have eaten cooked fish in the past I have reacted violently.  I also became a vegan for a week because I am always quick to judge them negatively.

3) Get Out of Your Comfort Zone:  I tried veganism in an empathetic attempt to break the objective decision making structures I had built in my head.  The more a person can destroy these little structures the easier it becomes to break the paradigms one operates from that was built in ignorance.  It is called broadening your horizons because if one is only staring down the road to get to the destination then one is neglecting the other routes along the horizon that lead to the same goal: in other words, ignorance.  Up until last year I had an ignorant and negative position on Korea and Koreans.  I do not think that five years ago before I started traveling that I would have been able to spend some time in Korea and alter my perception.  But because I have been able to get out of my comfort zone in graduated steps by traveling to different places around the world I assuaged the inevitable culture shock of visiting the country and was able to experience it with an open mind and correct my ignorance.  My new corrected judgement of Korea comes with great fondness and admiration.  However wisdom tells me those feelings are too probably based some other ignorance; an unknown unknown if you will.  Which leads to the last step for helping one identify and correct their ignorance.

4) Foster Honest and Open Relationships:  Gathering knowledge, picking an ignorance, and breaking your comfort zone are all shotgun based approaches for curing one's ignorance.  For a more surgical strike a wise person needs honest communication with family and friends that challenge and confront their ignorance.  For some reason I have always sought out those with unique perspectives: the redneck that loves rap, the Christian that has read Anton LeVey, or the hippie with an MBA.  Coincidentally, two of my best friends are a hardcore liberal and a hardcore conservative.  They both challenge me in different ways to view situations from different perspectives and confront different ignorances.  A person is not designed to self identify ignorance.  Only through human interaction is this achieved.  And once we are able to identify our own ignorances can wisdom be gained.

It is fundamentally necessary to develop opinions, argue them, and pass judgments.  Although it is crucial that a person understand that the method used to form these opinions may have been based on ignorance.  The only way to justify oneself is through humility and constant abrasion with one's own ignorance by gathering knowledge, focusing your energy, challenging your perspective, and fostering friendships.