Category: Connecting

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Interesting comments in the the Value of Anger posting. As I expected, this is not a subject that people treat lightly. However, I was surprised at how personally some people took this posting.

For instance, Dave Rogers disagrees, strongly, with the concept of “healthy anger”, writing:

Anger isn’t some transcendent experience. It’s a temporary (hopefully) abnormal condition. Let it go.

Frank Paynter was actually “pissed” because Mike Golby and I talked about the healing power of anger. He wrote:

Anger is a bad thing. It comes from fear, and it inspires fear. Fear has a proximate cause. Root out the cause, displace the anger. Anger sucks. Angry people rationalize inhuman behavior. Angry people foster hostility and resentment in others. Angry people haven’t learned a loving acceptance that transcends helpless acceptance. Angry people are stunted in their personal development.

And both Jonathon and Dorothea saw themselves as “gently melancholic and intellectually pessimistic”, taking exception to the line If it’s angry people that forge a new society, it’s the gently melancholic, the intellectually pessimistic, and the complacent and indifferent people that destroy it.

Considering that I was wrote this line after reading a book based on a period of time 1000 years ago, I wasn’t expecting immediate identification. However, this shouldn’t be surprising. No matter how technologically advanced we get, no matter how we see ourselves advancing as a species, we’re still nothing more than humans experiencing human emotions. Love. Hate. Joy. Compassion. And Anger.

Anger is a part of us. It’s been a part of us before we ever attached a name to the emotion so that we could discuss it rather than act it out. To deny anger is to deny ourselves. Might as well deny love – it, too, can lead to destructive actions.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have no interest in being a saint. And I have no interest in denying my capability for love or anger. I would hope that I expend my love on those that return it – to do otherwise leads to a great deal of pain. And I hope that I can control my anger and use the energy it generates for something productive, such as fighting the current political administration.

Mike had it right – anger is sharing.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I found out this morning that one can still have ADSL without having phone service. My phone is disconnected but the ADSL is still active.

Once the internet has you, it doesn’t want to let you go.

This posting was previously titled The Untouchables. However, I removed the previous contents because I realized this morning that the writing was unfair. I was writing about another author in a context that didn’t necessarily give her a comfortable forum with which to respond. And that’s not right. My apologies to Meg for criticizing her work in a way that didn’t allow her to respond. Sorry, Meg. You deserved better.

I still don’t agree with what Meg wrote in this one instance, even with Jeff’s lovely entry into the discussion – but we’ll leave it at that and close the subject. I left the skeleton of the pulled posting because of the comments. In particular Ruzz has a nice comment and Stavros has a link to a nice posting – I didn’t want to pull these.

I did pull another post, though I know that Mike Sanders has written on it. However, he has pulled out those components of the posting he finds to be relevant to his writing. I should apologize to Mike, but at this time, I’m just too tired to issue yet more apologies.

What’s that you say? Weblogging means never having to say you’re sorry?

I will finish the Thread the Needle application as quickly as possible. Once started, this app should take on a life of its own and grow beyond any one person’s control – that’s how I’m designing it.

Though Needle isn’t necessary for dialogs to continue (dialogs have been occurring successfully without the technology). hopefully, it will provide a way for new voices to enter the dialog and be heard. Those at the center of a discussion don’t need Thread the Needle; it’s being built for those at the edge.

Update: U Blog Senior Lecturer in Tionian Area Studies and Chaplain AKMA and PorridgeBoy’s good twin, Gary Turner (the one who doesn’t put salt in his porridge) have stepped up to gather requirements from the weblogging community for Thread the Needle. Thanks, guys.

Fellow weblogger and Plutonian Sheila Lennon talks briefly about the shooting at her newspaper Saturday:

It can’t happen to us, here in this quiet place. But it has.

Sheila, I’m relieved you weren’t in the line of fire. My deepest sympathies to the families of those who died

Leaving the parking garage for my lunch appointment on Tuesday, I found the exit blocked, yet again, by the construction crew of the new condo across the street. I tapped my horn and when a couple of members of the crew turned towards me, I pointed to the pallets blocking the way. One of the guys holds up his finger in a gesture of “one moment”, walks over and moves the pallets — but not the huge truck behind them, basically giving me just barely enough room to turn the corner and not scrape the sides of my car.

As I fought to move the car around the obstacles, other construction crew members stopped working to watch and laugh at my efforts.

Last week when I took my car into the Ford service center, I missed the regular entrance and ended up driving through the actual center itself. At the center exit, a car blocked the way out, with a mechanic standing beside the car talking to another mechanic driving the car. I waited, not saying anything, not sounding the horn — I was a stranger in a strange land in this place. Eventually, the two guys finished their conversation, the car started to move, and I started to go…

…when I was stopped because the mechanic who had been standing by the car walked directly in front of me, slowly, looking at me, making sure I realized that he “owned” this territory, and that I pass by at his sufferance.

These two acts go beyond issues of courtesy. They were about power. These two individuals were the gatekeepers and I had to pay toll.

With the construction crew, my toll was to be humiliated as I tried my best to drive around the obstacles. At the service center, my toll was being made aware of the fact that I didn’t belong in this place, and I had best remember it.

There are well established (though often ignored) laws about driving to ensure we don’t kill each other. There are roads to enable driving from any point A to any point B. There is also a mapping and addressing scheme that works remarkably well in regards to location of same.

All of which can be arbitrarily shut down by one person who, in a moment of ultimate power, controls my only access to the organized but open system of the road.