{"id":1444,"date":"2012-01-10T15:18:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T20:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2012-11-30T11:37:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:37:21","slug":"in-ira-veritas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/01\/in-ira-veritas.html","title":{"rendered":"In Ira Veritas?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Atheist blogger Greta Christina is taking D.J. Grothe (president of the James Randi Educational Foundation)<\/a> to task as part of a discussion about sexism and violent rhetoric in the atheist blogosphere. \u00a0Like the last time I linked to a Greta Christina post about sexism<\/a>, I\u2019m not spending \u00a0whole post rehashing the discussion, so let me quickly get you up to speed.<\/p>\n

A person targeting Greta on facebook posted a variety of nasty comments that included a desire to \u201cslap the bitch\u201d and \u201ckick them in the cunt.\u201d \u00a0[and at this point in the post, if you aren\u2019t familiar with the tremendous abuse that women bloggers are subjected to, please pause and read \u201cA Woman\u2019s Opinion is the Mini-skirt of the Internet<\/a>\u201d and learn about the #mencallmethings tag<\/a>, especially if your first instinct was to wonder why people are overreacting to internet spleen].<\/p>\n

The argument with Grothe began when he accused Greta of taking the threats out of context and being too quick to use the ban hammer. He said:<\/p>\n

[T]he guy\u2019s initial comments were reasoned, and then he was roundly and personally attacked by a number of Christina\u2019s ditto-heads in that FB thread. He reacted poorly, and that\u2019s what Christina I think rather opportunistically ran with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now we\u2019ve come around to the topic I want to take on: anger as an excuse. \u00a0Plenty of defenses (and many movies featuring explosions) are premised in the idea that you can only push a good man so far before he snaps. \u00a0So let me just say one thing first: it is one thing for the thing that makes you lose your grip be, oh, everything that happens to Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight<\/em> and another for it to be an internet comment thread. \u00a0Descending into a bestial rage over that<\/em> hardly makes you Milton\u2019s Lucifer.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The internet didn\u2019t do this to you<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The above isn\u2019t meant to be any kind of sticks and stones argument. \u00a0It\u2019s valid to be upset by arguments on the internet and there are a variety of productive ways to try and \u00a0respond. \u00a0But no matter what someone says, your hurt never gives you\u00a0license<\/em> to try and make others bleed. \u00a0The goal has to be to correct them, not to maim them, and, if you\u2019re not the one to do it, and you\u2019ve already outlined your position, maybe it\u2019s time to walk away from a fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What really frightens me is the idea that there\u2019s some monster inside us that we can\u2019t be expected to control. \u00a0It puts responsibility for your behavior on other people who need to be careful not to provoke you. \u00a0It teaches people that they are helpless before their own emotions (and telling people they\u2019re powerless tends to sap their willpower and decrease their own feelings of\u00a0culpability).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no authentic you that gets revealed in moments of high stress. \u00a0You\u2019re not a latter-day Hyde, and your nastiness isn\u2019t some profound revelation about the nature of Man. \u00a0It\u2019s just the same old you behaving badly, and maybe you\u2019ve just learned something about who you\u2019re most likely to lash out against, so you can guard yourself more closely now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m lucky and unlucky that my worst angry responses happen internally. \u00a0I don\u2019t hurt other people directly, but I don\u2019t get called on my bad habits and it\u2019s hard to be accountable to someone besides me. \u00a0My besetting sin is that I tend to wish anyone who\u2019s teed me off is a lot worse than they are, so that I can stop having any kind of moral obligation to them<\/a>. \u00a0And visualizing their bad qualities too intensely tends to let me stop thinking of them as people. \u00a0I\u2019m trying to work on this<\/a>. \u00a0This\u00a0tendency\u00a0is part of who I am, but, whether you call it transhumanism or dressing up as Christ<\/a>, I\u2019m trying my darndest to burn it out.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*The title of this post is \u201cIn anger, truth.\u201d \u00a0When I was asking college friends for help checking my declensions, one suggested that \u201cIn furia veritas<\/em>\u201d would \u201ceither mean we\u00a0tell the truth when we are furious or at least one of the furies tells the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atheist blogger Greta Christina is taking D.J. Grothe (president of the James Randi Educational Foundation) to task as part of a discussion about sexism and violent rhetoric in the atheist blogosphere. \u00a0Like the last time I linked to a Greta Christina post about sexism, I\u2019m not spending \u00a0whole post rehashing the discussion, so let me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,48],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-debatetactics","category-morality-in-practice","tag-anger"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Ira Veritas?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Atheist blogger Greta Christina is taking D.J. 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