Passion and Civility

The other night I got into a political discussion with a few of my housemates and some party guests. The discussion quickly turned into a fiery debate when someone made a comment about the Third World having a choice on whether it conforms to US-designed IMF and World Bank policies. As the person implied, Third World countries have only themselves to blame for the mess that they're in because they chose to open their markets and, as a result, they chose the exploitation that decision brought with it. Long story short: it's their own damn fault that they're impoverished. Pretty ridiculous stuff, I know. But Globalization isn't what I want to write about (aside from saying that the above is easily the most uninformed opinion I've ever heard on the subject). What I want to write about—and defend—is not my (much more informed and well-evidenced) opinion, but my manner of expressing myself.

You see, when I heard the above remarks, I got angry. I got angry and I started to shout (actually, I didn't feel like I was shouting, but, apparently, everyone else in the room did), so very quickly the discussion was diverted into an attack not on my opinions but on my manner of expression. I was chastened for "trying to convince everyone that I was right" and for sounding "threatening" and for "getting mad". Mind you, I wasn't the only person who got mad. In fact, one of my opponents apologized to me afterwards for, in her words, "getting mad and telling me to shut up," and we made our peace. But I was the only person who got rebuked for my conduct (in fact, the person who apologized to me was praised the next morning for "standing her ground").

In retrospect, I'm sure much of the focus on my "passion", as one person termed it, was a red herring. It's easier to attack a person's emotional outburst than it is a well-reasoned and sound argument (and, though I was drunk and upset, I was still reasoning clearly). At the same time, I'm sure many people genuinely were bothered by my anger and genuinely felt threatened. But it wasn't me in particular that they were threatened by; what scares most people about anger is that it's a real and honest emotion and as such you can't predict or control it. Put another way, anger isn't tame—it's uncivilized. And that scares people.

In truth, my "passion" was as much a part of my argument as my reasoning. Emotional expression counts. It doesn't count in a world governed by abstract thought and abstract, bourgeoisie morality, but it counts if you value honest expression, as everyone should. Anger—and I mean genuine anger not posturing—is one of the purest and most honest emotions that exists (although I grant that it has an ugly, bullying side as well)—and it’s nothing to be afraid of. In fact, the world would be a much better place, in my view, if more people got angry. For one thing, fewer people would believe the Third World is responsible for its own poverty if more people were angry and impassioned enough to speak out about what's really happening (and maybe then the exploitation would cease). Moreover, if more people got angry about the way our government treats not just the Third World but its own citizens, then we might not have many of the problems with poverty, crime, and environmental waste that we face within our own borders—problems which every one in the discussion agreed we had to solve. Fact is, anger has a purpose. Anger emboldens us, it motivates us, and it punctuates our beliefs. In my case, I wanted to show the sincerity of my convictions; I couldn’t do that through logic alone. I also wanted to make it clear that the views held by my opponents weren’t innocuous. In my view, people who defend Globalization are defending abusers and attacking victims. That’s a serious claim and I want it to be taken seriously. Also, in order to have my more radical and already marginalized views accepted on an equal footing, I needed to show that I was not only sincere and serious about my beliefs but confident in them. You can’t accomplish that logically—not when your opponents feel that the world and God are on their side, in other words, not when you’re arguing against established opinion (i.e. Capitalism is an effective means of giving people what they want; America isn't perfect but it's the best country there is or ever has been; we’re much freer and better off today than we were in the Stone Age or at any other time in history). Logic is easy to tune out. Anger isn’t. Anger lets people know that you’re serious. Moreover, when you’re confronted by anger, the tendency is to get angry in turn—to get passionate. And when the experience becomes a passionately felt one, you’re more likely to remember, and, conceivably, learn from the event.

So it’s no mystery why people felt threatened by my anger (which, by the way, wasn’t personal; I never called anyone a name or told anyone to shut up, for example). Anger is a real threat to the system and to all those who belong to and believe in the system. Plainly speaking, the system couldn't exist if people weren't emotionally repressed. It couldn't exist if "passion" was allowed to flourish. People are afraid of passion because it isn’t phony. They’re afraid of passion for the same reason they're afraid of violence, one potential outcome of human passion. Of course violence is a common aspect of all natural interaction, including human interaction, but, living within the system as we do, we don't have to see the violence. We don't have to hunt and kill or pluck our own food; instead we go to the grocery store. So many of us are fooled into thinking that the system--i.e. governments, the "free" market, and other abstractions—and not our natural environments makes our lifestyle—no, our LIVES—possible. So instead of worshipping and giving thanks like so many primitive cultures to the wildlife that sustain us, we worship the system (and we forget the fact that our lifestyles are funded by other species AND other humans--i.e. humans in the Third World) and we defend it against everything deemed not a part of that system, such as passion.

If you believe in the system, then anger—passion of any sort—is indeed the enemy. People are confused, however, when they assume that the opposite of systemic violence and systemic aggression is non violence and pacifist, non-passionate behavior. Liberals certainly have the right idea when they attack the system's forceful abuse of power, but what many of them don't realize (and all of the people in the debate considered themselves to be card-carrying liberals) is that the problem with institutionalized violence is a class problem; it isn’t a problem with violence. The truth is that pacifism and institutionalized violence go hand in hand. To quote Feral Faun, “Pacifism is an ideology which demands total social peace as its ultimate goal. But total social peace would require the complete suppression of the individual passions that create individual incidences of violence - and that would require total social control.” He goes on: "There is no systematic violence in the wild, but, instead, momentary expressions of specific passions. This exposes one of the major fallacies of pacifist ideology. Violence, in itself, does not perpetuate violence. The social system of rationalized violence, of which pacifism is an integral part, perpetuates itself as a system.”

The bottom line is this: freeing yourself from the machine requires the liberation of your thoughts, your body, AND your emotions. Repressing the so-called beast in you will only serve to rid you of your humanity; it won’t make you freer. So people are right to be threatened by anger just as they're right to fear violent resistance and just as they’re right not to fear exclusively pacifist resistance, because anger—genuine passions of all kinds, for that matter—and violence are genuine threats to the system that people falsely believe provides them their basic needs. Repressing your natural passions is the same thing as destroying those passions—and that’s exactly what the system wants. The system can't perpetuate itself if we maintain our natural human—in other words, our animal—selves.

So don't be fooled by the pacifist pathology. If you’re passionate about your opinions, then show people that you’re passionate—express your ENTIRE self, even if, especially if, that means getting angry.



http://www.anti-politics.net/feral-faun/insurgent-ferocity.html