Blogs as Anger Management
In his "Yellow Doggerel Something Something" (formerly the "Yellow Doggerel Democrat"), which I have been reading for 4 or 5 years, Steve Bates, recently ran somebody's clever little cartoon in which one dog tells another that "pointless, incessant barking" is a better use of his time than is keeping a weblog going. And with that and in a subsequent comment Bates said that he wasn't going to blog anymore for a while, though he agreed with one of his commenters that blogging did serve the same purpose for him as a form of anger management.
Not recently but for various periods of times in the past I have also stopped putting posts on this site, but I never announced it.
One reason was that at the beginnings of those sabbaticals I didn't know that I wouldn't be posting again for a while. I would just skip a day out of plain forgetfulness. Then a second such day would pass, and another, and before I knew it, I would suddenly start thinking that a long period of time had gone by since I had said anything, and what should I do about it?
Another reason for my not declaring that I would stop was that at no time was I angry. Nothing about blogging or the state or the nation or the world situation or even the human condition makes me angry. They dismay me but they don't anger me. I long ago learned to fight tooth and nail against letting anger have any control over my state of mind. In my opinion, and to my experience, anger is absolutely pointless and useless.
Steve Bates has some dire physical conditions that I think contributed greatly to his non-blogging state of mind, and I think another of his afflictions is that he is also an angry man, because he sees that those with the power to change things for the better are paying absolutely no attention to his very sensible injunctions (most of them) or to those of people like him.
This doesn't bother me much, because I've paid a great deal of attention not only to U.S. history but also to the history of as many other groups as I could comfortably ahsorb, including a great many that haven't existed for many hundreds of centuries. And it seems to me that at no time and in no place have human beings been in a truly enlightened state. Some few individuals might have done a few enlightened things, but at the very same time a lot more were indulging in the same old barbarities and ignorances, from the time of Neanderthals right on up to the present Era of Everpresent Cellphones,
Instead of worrying about being listened to, blogging has other beneficial purposes and benefits, I believe. One is that it's a good way to spread around that most important wealth of all: information, even if it's just the seemingly insignificant things that all of us happen to be doing or that interest us, from one day to the next -- that is, if at least an attempt is made to pass it on with some style.
Not recently but for various periods of times in the past I have also stopped putting posts on this site, but I never announced it.
One reason was that at the beginnings of those sabbaticals I didn't know that I wouldn't be posting again for a while. I would just skip a day out of plain forgetfulness. Then a second such day would pass, and another, and before I knew it, I would suddenly start thinking that a long period of time had gone by since I had said anything, and what should I do about it?
Another reason for my not declaring that I would stop was that at no time was I angry. Nothing about blogging or the state or the nation or the world situation or even the human condition makes me angry. They dismay me but they don't anger me. I long ago learned to fight tooth and nail against letting anger have any control over my state of mind. In my opinion, and to my experience, anger is absolutely pointless and useless.
Steve Bates has some dire physical conditions that I think contributed greatly to his non-blogging state of mind, and I think another of his afflictions is that he is also an angry man, because he sees that those with the power to change things for the better are paying absolutely no attention to his very sensible injunctions (most of them) or to those of people like him.
This doesn't bother me much, because I've paid a great deal of attention not only to U.S. history but also to the history of as many other groups as I could comfortably ahsorb, including a great many that haven't existed for many hundreds of centuries. And it seems to me that at no time and in no place have human beings been in a truly enlightened state. Some few individuals might have done a few enlightened things, but at the very same time a lot more were indulging in the same old barbarities and ignorances, from the time of Neanderthals right on up to the present Era of Everpresent Cellphones,
Instead of worrying about being listened to, blogging has other beneficial purposes and benefits, I believe. One is that it's a good way to spread around that most important wealth of all: information, even if it's just the seemingly insignificant things that all of us happen to be doing or that interest us, from one day to the next -- that is, if at least an attempt is made to pass it on with some style.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 10:56 AM
3 Comments:
Carl, thanks for the attention and for reading my stuff for so many years. I don't mean to say that blogging is in all ways pointless, only that those who think it has any political effectiveness are fooling themselves.
People come to blogging by different routes. I was a card-carrying, phone-banking, block-walking Democrat (i.e., I was indeed an angry man) for many years before I started a blog. I started a blog the year Bush stole the presidency, because I needed a better means of distributing my political writing (including doggerel) than the email list that preceded the blog; people were mostly annoyed at receiving the list mail... even if they themselves requested it.
As much as I hate to acknowledge the fact, my tenacity through the Bush years has led only to the Bush-"by-any-other-name" (Obama) years. I had real hopes when we elected Obama. Those hopes have since been dashed. ("The Oh-Dash-It-All of Hope"?) Giving up blogging (for now) is part of my admission, to myself as much as to anyone, that my politicking has had little if any effect on how our nation is governed.
So for now, I'll sit home reading about cosmology and particle physics... for an amateur, it's just as mysterious and complex as politics, and a lot less exasperating. So be it.
I think that blogging is a great way to release anger that you are having about anything. I have anger management issues and blogging about it definitely helps me deal with it. If people want more information about anger management check out http://onlineceucredit.com/edu/social-work-ceus-cti.
Has your anger damaged your relationships with your spouse, children or other family members? Has it caused complications at work? If your reactions to anger have made you regret things or have caused strife in your every day life, you may want to seek the support of an anger management group.
Anger Management Groups Denver
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