Anger, Suffering, and Discipline
I have come to the conclusion that we are a very angry society. We are impatient--does the impatience come from anger or the anger from impatience? We are selfish, almost narcissistic (the very fact I am blogging my opinions, and have Facebook pages, shows how much I want the world to know about me). Does the anger come from the selfishness, or the selfishness from the anger? We are depressed, which is often said to be anger turned inward. We see unspeakable crimes reported on the news, and we move on after shaking our heads. I watched Capote last night and am musing over the fact that his greatest book is over the murder of a family of four, and these kinds of things happen weekly if not more so today (although more likely to be domestic violence today rather than violence by strangers, but that is no consolation and only proves how angry we are as a society).
Where does the anger come from? To say bitterness seems glib, but I don't know where else. And where does bitterness come from? I believe that it comes from believing one deserves more than one has received. Why we believe we deserve so much, well, that I don't know. Perhaps the media has convinced us of a new norm we didn't know about before.
Our anger is destroying us because our expectations are so unrealistic. Not only do we expect more; more is expected of us. Even though the life of a college professor seems cushy, I think back over the last 30 years and how much more is expected of us than back in the '80s. Technology, diversity of students, assessment and evaluation and accountability, and knowledge explosion about our fields and teaching and learning. I like to learn so these things do not bother me but I understand how overwhelming they are for others.
Suffering is inevitable in life; it is our "meaning making" about suffering that matters. My Franklin Planner quote for the day is something about humor being tragedy with its pants torn. I think that is stupid. Tragedy is not a flip side of humor. When an event is truly tragic, it is tragic and there is no humor in it, and the propensity to try to find it shows a childish impatience with the need and responsibility to grieve. We are a people who don't want to grieve, who fear grief and loss and try to fill up the holes as quickly as possible. We need the oldtimey period of mourning of a year, not because we should wear black for twelve months but so that we can get back to respecting loss and death.
Some Christians seem to adopt the Nietzschian quote: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. How ungodly. We will not become stronger through suffering; we will become more dependent, I hope.
Where does the anger come from? To say bitterness seems glib, but I don't know where else. And where does bitterness come from? I believe that it comes from believing one deserves more than one has received. Why we believe we deserve so much, well, that I don't know. Perhaps the media has convinced us of a new norm we didn't know about before.
Our anger is destroying us because our expectations are so unrealistic. Not only do we expect more; more is expected of us. Even though the life of a college professor seems cushy, I think back over the last 30 years and how much more is expected of us than back in the '80s. Technology, diversity of students, assessment and evaluation and accountability, and knowledge explosion about our fields and teaching and learning. I like to learn so these things do not bother me but I understand how overwhelming they are for others.
Suffering is inevitable in life; it is our "meaning making" about suffering that matters. My Franklin Planner quote for the day is something about humor being tragedy with its pants torn. I think that is stupid. Tragedy is not a flip side of humor. When an event is truly tragic, it is tragic and there is no humor in it, and the propensity to try to find it shows a childish impatience with the need and responsibility to grieve. We are a people who don't want to grieve, who fear grief and loss and try to fill up the holes as quickly as possible. We need the oldtimey period of mourning of a year, not because we should wear black for twelve months but so that we can get back to respecting loss and death.
Some Christians seem to adopt the Nietzschian quote: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. How ungodly. We will not become stronger through suffering; we will become more dependent, I hope.
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