I screen the comments that people leave for my blogs. Not many comment, actually, and few comments have anything to do with what I wrote. But in several years of blogging I have only had two or three really nasty comments.
Sad to say, my experience is strange.
The anger, the venom, the hatred, the nastiness and the bullying that go on in our world seems to increase every week. Many people have quit blogging rather than deal with the vituperation they get in response. Facebook has become a jungle of poisonous comments, rants and absurdities. And it is not only on the Web.
Students bully and are bullied. The bully in my grade school was not stopped by the staff. I learned as he got older that his dad bullied him and his mother. I did not know them well enough to know if the dad had been bullied when he was growing up. But no one shot anyone in that family. In a strange sense, they kept the venom and anger within limits.
Where have all the flowers gone? asks the folk singer. I have to ask, "Where has all the anger come from?" If I lived in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Gaza Strip or Israel I could probably find answers. But I live in the United States with adequate resources, opportunities for those who are willing to work and live simply, free libraries and inexpensive community colleges, and even free or cheap birth control. What causes all the anger in people?
What jabs the anger button on Denver sheriff's doing jailer duty to the extent they kill or let die the folks they lock up? What causes a middle-class young lady to drink angrily, drive the wrong way on a one way lane and kill one or more folks? I was driving home a couple of years ago and heard the guys in the car to my right arguing with the guys in the care to their right. One pulled a gun and demanded the other driver pull into a parking lot and fight. Over what?
People use the phrase "road rage". Why do we get road rage? Isn't being able to drive somewhere better than having to walk a dusty, muddy path?
What do you think? Can we "fix" it? Leave a comment and let us know.
