Post No.: 0699
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Sometimes the overriding sentiment we feel in life is people can be really annoying! This can then make us feel exasperated or enraged, which may mean that we’ll say or do something we’ll afterwards regret.
We need to live in harmony to be productive citizens. But many things are easier to preach than to practice – like curbing our ****ing outrage! And it’s much easier to spot the foibles and annoying habits in others than in ourselves. We’re generally better at telling when others are expressing only their biased side of a story, or when they’ve oversimplified or exaggerated something (e.g. who’s to blame for an argument), but very poor at telling ourselves. And if others are annoying or making mistakes, it’s attributed to their general personality, yet if we’re annoying or making the mistakes, it’s attributed to exceptional circumstances (e.g. “I was distracted” or, “I was just kidding”) i.e. we intuitively make excuses, like blame our tools or others. (Thus we need to ask for feedback from trusted people – there’s no more direct route to self-deception than avoiding feedback.) So what can we do?
We can firstly lower our expectations! Our irritation or frustration is just evidence of how unrealistic our expectations were. Even with truly poor service, we can lower our expectations to match reality (e.g. we can expect customer services to take a week to respond to our email). You can complain in order to improve standards and not be taken advantage of – yet privately not be that affected by what you receive.
It might help to think each morning ‘I will likely meet some annoying, irksome folk today but I’m mentally prepared for them if they come’. This isn’t about seeing the worst in people – we should see the best in others, but be prepared if something does **** us off, cause us envy or other negative emotions.
We can anticipate the future in a beneficial way. Where, today, are we at risk of letting ourselves down and acting in ways that we’ll later feel contrite about? In what alternative ways can we act? Are we expecting too much and setting ourselves up to be disappointed? How might it be okay if things don’t turn out as hoped? Will having less demanding assumptions about how perfect someone’s behaviour should be, and acknowledging the responsibility for our own emotional reactions, smoothen a relationship?
There are arguably appropriate contexts for wrath, for retaliation, though, to show that we shouldn’t be pushed around with in the future – not as punishment per se but to hopefully improve the offender so that they don’t repeat their offence. The emotion can be appropriate when fighting for social justice. But does aggression usually correct future behaviours or lead to social change, or is it usually destructive? Warriors don’t build towns – they usually turn them into rubble through their fighting. Aggression is natural but violence and threats don’t solve many problems lastingly. They typically make things worse. Anger motivates us to change a situation (that’s either out in the world or within ourselves) but the key is to turn it into something constructive. Peace requires the mental state of calmness and poise, not anxiety or aggression.
Notice that what’s annoying to some isn’t annoying to others. Therefore nothing is objectively annoying i.e. we can decide to be less reactive. Regardless of our own natural temperaments, being less reactive leaves us happier and the world more peaceful. Rage can also get in the way of us making a cogent and convincing point because we’re just roaring and swearing! We might regret the short-term gratification versus the longer-lasting costs of lashing out. We’re not rational in this state of red mist and can make bad decisions in the heat of the moment.
As parents, we may feel righteous indignation about giving a naughty child what they ‘deserve’, but corporal punishment harms children rather than helps them. It does teach them a lesson – that they should fear or hate you. Umbrage can lead to power-tripping self-righteousness. Revenge has a tendency to escalate and beget counter-vengeance, and each party will naturally want to deal the last punch. Violence can thus destroy relationships.
Your current mood, plus a trigger, leads to a judgement or appraisal of a situation and what you want to do about it. Your inhibitions regarding what actions you think are appropriate, which are shaped by your core beliefs (e.g. men can’t hit women), then lead to a behaviour. This will then feed back to the other party and observers nearby.
Behind a wheel under road rage – people often say or do things they wouldn’t if they started off face-to-face with their counterparts in most other contexts. Reasons may include the stress of a potentially dangerous situation of piloting a weapon amongst other weapons on the road (at the root of all aggression is fear), deindividuation and feeling braver behind a shield of metal. Owners are also quite precious of their vehicles – they can indeed be expensive to repair. But even merely scratching the paint is like scratching the owner her/himself because it’s like an extension of their intimate parts – somehow, the external state of one’s car supposedly represents one’s character and status in a way that, say, one’s computer doesn’t. Even otherwise benign individuals can suddenly, reliably, transform into ****s behind a wheel!
A clear majority of drivers, when surveyed, also believe they’re above-average compared to other drivers. There are disagreements about whether driving skill falls under a normal distribution or not, in part due to how to operationally define ‘driving skill’, and therefore whether this data can fit reality. But this analysis misses the point – when drivers are asked this question, they’re not checking how many traffic citations they’ve received compared to others but answering whether they think they’re better than others according to aspects like their hazard perception, risk assessments, consideration towards others, reflex speeds and vehicle handling prowess; and moreover regardless of whether they’re actually that good or not. Even if they’ve received speeding tickets, they can believe they’re totally safe at these speeds. Even the fault of accidents can be rationalised away (e.g. accidents between two road users are sometimes partly down to both the parties in some way, yet they’ll typically try to fully blame the other). So the hubris is captured in these surveys.
We might wish harm onto another driver even though an accident was totally averted. It would’ve been an accident anyway, not personal or intentional – yet we might react as if it were. After a near-miss, the other driver might feel apologetic but vehicles cannot express a full repertoire of communication through their indicator lights and headlamps, thus we’ll assume the worst in another driver’s intentions or carelessness. (There have been concept cars where basic humanised expressions can be conveyed to other road users via the car’s exterior but they’ve never made it into production.) We also feel we need to shout above the traffic noise. A person on a bus or train trying to squeeze through to reach a door is able to express embarrassment to mean no offence. A good driver would therefore assume no harmful intentions from others, assume the best, and not take it personally, either.
It’s a classic case of assuming that our reactions speak about others when they more reliably speak about us if we respond dangerously to perceived slights or errors from others. Some drivers will honk their horns and furiously react, to make another driver know or just for their own release, to every instance of poor driving they perceive from other road users (but not from themselves) – while other drivers who face the exact same incidents will understand that having any kind of reaction, except calmly slowing down or even emergency stopping if required, keeping observant and obeying a minimum ‘two/three-second rule’, won’t make a difference to what’s already happened and can’t be changed, or nearly happened but didn’t. So some people work themselves up over things while others take everything in their stride. The amount we angrily react and complain about other road users when driving is probably negatively correlated with our own driving skill, even though we’re likely to believe the opposite!
Similarly, ‘backseat drivers’ speak more reliably about themselves. And they can be the cause of crashes themselves since they can be distracting and take up some of the driver’s attentional resources.
On occasion, we can be in the legal and/or moral right but still it’d be sensible for us to be the one to hold back (e.g. as a pedestrian crossing a zebra crossing when a speeding vehicle is approaching).
We definitely know that bullies and trolls speak only about themselves, so we don’t have to feel affected by their words. Their words may be direct attacks to our minds, and sometimes our very identities – but know that we are ultimately in control of our own emotions. It’s not about letting perpetrators off the hook but ensuring that we don’t increase the hurt on ourselves, and to perhaps gain a clearer head regarding what the apt and proportionate response towards them should be.
Know your triggers and avoid them if possible in the first place, which here includes from social media or comments sections. If annoying people are difficult to avoid then don’t engage in an attempt to change their opinions or respond in kind. Save your energy. Cyberbullies and trolls should be tracked down and dealt with by social media platforms. Use the block, mute and report functions, not just concerning cyberbullies or trolls but anyone who drains your energy online (although try to avoid creating an echo chamber by silencing those you simply disagree with).
Curb curiosity on social media about where others have been on holiday or what they’ve just bought too – stop being so nosey and you’ll feel less envious! Avoid gossip, even if it might concern you. We find it easier to tell others, “Don’t be concerned about what others say about you” but we need to follow our own advice too. Some people are truly stoically non-reactive towards what others say, even if it’s said in their physical presence, which also means that a person’s silence isn’t necessarily a tacit admission that what’s gossiped about them is true – they’re just sangfroid enough to not be perturbed by what others think. Meow.
Try to consciously stop ire brewing as soon as you can because once it grips you, it becomes difficult to rein it in and you won’t then think rationally. Hold your tongue, take deep breaths. This again doesn’t mean letting transgressions off the hook – it means not acting hastily. The annoying or hurtful person might even apologise if we give them a chance so we could listen to their explanation first before bellowing at them or sulking for hours afterwards with an ill resentment that poisons future interactions with them.
When we’re less angry, we’re more happy too! And we make ourselves angry or calm, not other people or external events, no matter how annoying or vexing they may be. It’s not other people’s actions to blame but our judgements of them. (Then again, no one’s to blame – you could say that it’s just the universe doing its thing without intelligent design or intention.) Really, if we stopped blaming others and started treating each other with more empathy and common understanding of humanity, we’ll find that others will, overall, treat us more kindly too. We’ll create a virtuous cycle that improves our, and everyone’s, well-being. Instead of reciprocations of suspicions and/or violence, we’ll get reciprocations of love and peace. And like kindness and forgiveness – equanimity is for our own benefit, such as for our own blood pressure and ability to sleep without ruminations.
Meow. We might find it hugely humanity-affirming that people are, overall, able to coexist in their millions in cities and countries in reasonable harmony rather than chaos.
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