Back when I used to write newspaper columns, I would on occasion try to bug people deliberately. My justification for it was:
- Good writing pushes people’s buttons.
- They might get angry, but at least they’re reading.
- I’m entitled to my opinion, and have the right to express it.
- People that get bugged by this stuff are just cranks anyway.
- It’s fun.
Anyone who thinks this way is an a--hole; and like the a--hole I was, I preceded to write obnoxious pieces in the hopes of getting a reaction from people.
At the same time, I was also under the naรฏve assumption that my opinion pieces might change people’s minds over to my way of thinking. Somehow I didn’t put together that if my audience was pissed at me, they’d have no interest in changing their minds to my way of thinking. I also didn’t realize that people don’t read the opinion pages in order to make up their minds about anything… but that’s another Rant.
I was regularly frustrated in my attempts to be obnoxious by the fact that people weren’t offended by anything I meant them to be offended by. I’d accuse our local congressman of pandering to the local Satanists and wouldn’t hear any reaction to it.
The offenses always came from stuff I didn’t expect. Fr’instance, I’d use the word “crap” in a column and that would get a reaction. We had one regular nut-mail contributor, an old guy who contributed to every local newspaper, but only to complain about any inappropriate word or term he read in the papers. The only solution he ever offered was to fire the writer. He suggested I be fired many times. Naturally, no one took him seriously. (If he were to read this blog, he might have a stroke. But he’s probably dead now.) It would always be the little things like that.
Eventually I grew to the conviction that this wasn’t being Christian at all. Fun or not, there was no good excuse for such behavior and it had to go. So I repented and stopped.
I still annoy people, though.
Again, it’s for stuff I don’t expect. I’m either misunderstood, taken out of context, or the story gets passed around until it’s unrecognizable. When I taught junior high, I regularly had to meet with the principal about rumor control. Something I said in the classroom had got home, the parents were offended, and I sometimes had to spend hours explaining, “That’s not what I said,” or “That’s not in context.”
“Okay,” my principal said after one such meeting. “Just be careful what you say in the classroom.”
“I am careful,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t make any difference. The kids hear what they want to hear—whatever strikes them funny—or add their own attitudes to my statements, and the next thing I know I’m back in here.”
“Well…” she said. “Just be careful.”
That was as constructively helpful as she could be. It didn’t help me any. We still had further meetings. Some even had to include school board members.
Interpretation… has been a fruitful source of strife all the world over. No matter how explicit the [text], people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purposes. …Selfishness turns them blind, and by a use of the ambiguous middle they deceive themselves and seek to deceive the world and God. One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the [text] by the party administering it. Another is to accept the interpretation of the weaker party, where there are two interpretations possible. Rejection of these two rules gives rise to strife and iniquity, which are rooted in untruthfulness. He who seeks truth alone easily follows the golden rule. He need not seek learned advice for interpretation.
—M.K. Gandhi,
The Story of My Experiments with Truth, ch. 17
Gandhi was talking about contracts, but I believe this can be properly applied to any conversations between civilized people.
In my experience, it also works this way: People are generally negative. Perhaps they’ve been burned too many times, or because most of the people they know are sarcastic and self-centered they assume everyone is going to start from that attitude. I think, for the most part, they’d be right.
What if they started from an opposite attitude? What if they assumed that everyone was attempting to be civil, and that any apparent rudeness (as opposed to obvious rudeness; let’s be realistic here) was simply an accident or their own misinterpretation?
Think there’d be less arguing?
I have found that, once I took that attitude, that I don’t get offended as often; and what’s more, I find that most people honestly didn’t mean to be rude. (That, or they took it back immediately after they realized that I was going to be civil to them.)
I’ve also found this silences gossips. When someone just has to tell me what another person said, the comment, “Perhaps they didn’t mean it that way” usually shuts them up. Because usually they weren’t there and don’t know how anyone said anything, they instantly realize they’re in no position to judge.
Unfortunately, there’s little that can be done about writing. People typically read what you’ve written in whatever tone they personally have. If, inside, they’re a really angry person, they’re going to read my stuff in a very angry tone. If they’re sarcastic, they’re gonna read it as if I’m the most sarcastic guy in the world. If they’re bitter, their bitterness is going to come out of my words. And there’s not a bloody thing I can do about it.
Read that last sentence a couple different ways and you’ll see what I mean. Read it angrily. Read it sarcastically. Now read it the way I meant it: with resignation. Note the differences.
Also unfortunately: Whenever I critique something, people are also going to automatically assume that I have the attitude they usually have when they’re arguing. They’re going to think I’m pissed. Angry. Furious. Screaming. Bitter. Insulting. Whiny. Take your pick. But those of you who have heard me Rant out loud know that I might raise my voice—not in anger, but because I’m loud—but that I usually have a grin on my face and that I usually end the Rants with “Aw, well, what’re you gonna do about it?”
Attitude is everything. Keep yours positive.
So much for my Sermon of the Day.
