Philosophy Weekend: Anger Issues

Last weekend’s blog post “A Dollar’s Worth of Morals” may turn out to be the most unpopular thing I’ve ever written on this site. Several typically friendly Litkicks commenters posted in no uncertain terms that they hated the piece … including my own beloved wife.

Ironically, I didn’t expect this reaction at all when I wrote the piece. I was only trying to tell an amusing story that had, I thought, a positive and good-natured moral.

Clearly, my writing skills failed me. As they say, “If three people tell you you’re drunk, sit down.” I now see what went wrong with this piece, and I understand why it left so many of my faithful readers cold. I’d like to explain where I went wrong, and maybe salvage some part of my original message, which completely got lost in this disaster.

The story I told is a simple one: as I was leaving work one day, a co-worker named John T. raced down the building lobby after me, causing a lot of public commotion, so he could give me back the dollar he’d borrowed earlier that day. He evidently lived in moral horror of ever forgetting a debt, and the point of my telling this story was that I found his priorities ridiculous, especially since he had recently disappointed me by failing to speak up to our boss about a workplace problem we were both concerned about.

I was trying to make a subtle and esoteric point, in a non-judgemental way, that we often put too much emphasis on petty issues involving small amounts of money or insignificant possessions, failing to emphasize instead the things that really matter in our lives. I’m very interested in the psychology of wealth and possessiveness, and I meant this piece to reflect upon the same questions I’d brought up in earlier Philosophy Weekend posts like this one or this one.

But a strange thing happened between my conception of the story and my telling of it. I thought I was writing in an amused and jokey voice, but somehow a vein of hidden anger became exposed, and the tone of my story became shrill. I began accusing John T. of following a shallow and legalistic code of ethics, and went off on a strange half-paragraph rant about how he had betrayed our friendship. This harsh stuff did not match the intended warm tone of my blog post at all, and I ended up making readers feel sorry for poor John T., who I was beating up mercilessly for the very minor crime of paying me back a dollar.


What went wrong here, and where did my anger come from? The story I told is all true, but if John T. ever reads it (and I pray that he won’t), he will be extremely surprised, since he and I worked together for three pleasant years without any drama ever passing between us. We didn’t even know each other very well, but I liked John as well as I knew him — he was a sharp guy, great sense of humor, a Mets fan. I’m sure he wouldn’t expect me to be writing about him on a blog at all, and the intensity of this piece doesn’t match anything that ever transpired between us in real life.

And yet, apparently something had transpired in my mind. Somehow, between the time I began writing this blog post and the time I finished it, I had been overcome by deep feelings of anger towards a co-worker that I barely knew.

Where did this anger come from? Well, as I relate above, John did disappoint me after we’d both discussed a serious problem within the company — a bitter rivalry between our software development group and the server operations group — that had escalated to the point where it was greatly harming our productivity. I urged John to stand with me when I spoke to our boss about it. In the end, I spoke to our boss about it alone and John stayed mum. He wasn’t the type to stick his neck out.

So I guess I was angry at him for making such a big deal about returning a dollar to me, but not coming through for me when it would have really counted. Even though I didn’t realize how angry I was until I read the piece I’d wrote.

Sometimes you have to read your own writing to find out what you feel. Anyway, my misdirected bitterness ruined what should have been a good fable and a popular blog post, so the joke is on me. I still think it’s pretty dumb to care about paying back a dollar for a soda, but I guess I’m in the minority here.

It’s funny how these things happen. Watching the L. A. Lakers/Oklahoma City Thunder NBA playoffs this week, I observed a telling moment involving Metta World Peace, the great basketball player who changed his name from Ron Artest last year. Now, it always seemed to me that the reason Metta World Peace changed his name is that he (Ron Artest) had a reputation as a brawler and a troublemaker, and he wanted to show that he had changed his ways. But then, earlier this season, Metta World Peace smacked James Harden in the neck with his elbow. And, during the playoffs, he tried hard not to commit any fouls but ended up getting called on a flagrant foul that he probably didn’t even commit. Watching this, I thought about all the trouble he went through to change his name to Metta World Peace, and how he still had anger issues even with the new name.

I wonder what Ron Artest/Metta World Peace is so angry about? I have no idea. I sometimes wonder what I’m so angry about too, and I also have no idea.

9 Responses

  1. …i didn’t hate it…thought
    …i didn’t hate it…thought it was relevant and a good story…the mum ones…the non neckers…

  2. It can be difficult to know
    It can be difficult to know how you sound and what, perhaps, you meant to say without walking away and then returning to the words. Blogging doesn’t typically welcome such a process. We have all returned to our own blogged words and sighed.

  3. I didn’t like it much for the
    I didn’t like it much for the fact that I related it to my own experiences of wanting to pay people back when I was down on my luck. I eventually did so with great pride, which was so damaged by having to ask in the first place… Very humbling situation where my pride had to wait to show itself, humility had to stand up for a long time. Some people are too proud to beg, those people often don’t have mouths to feed though.

    Anyhow, after I read the article I just thought, “well, I suppose I just don’t agree with Levi on this one.”

    Now I understand it though.

    Eamon

  4. I liked your post very much.
    I liked your post very much. I think it’s better to be genuine than to be funny or amusing or have a tidy moral. Your former co-worker might want to read that scripture about straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel sometime. I can’t see his Teacher breaking his neck over trying to repay a dollar for soda while letting a friend twist in the wind.

  5. Writing is a tricky business,
    Writing is a tricky business, Levi. I have regularly faced the dilemma of jocular pieces being misconstrued as fiery fulminations, comic essays confused as serious journalism, and conversations working on a satirical level (even when the subject is in on the joke) being mistaken for bona-fide Mike Wallace-style grilling. No less a figure than Anthony Burgess was astonished to learn that much of his serious labor was perceived to be comic novels. While there’s certainly a strong case to be made about listening when enough people perceive something to be altogether different from your intentions, there is equal wisdom in disregarding these reactions. Ultimately the essay you write isn’t yours once it is done. It becomes the property of readers, who often wish to read things that often aren’t there. On the other hand, the fact that anything you write can be widely interpreted is one of the joys in doing it. I wouldn’t take some of the reactions too much to heart. I didn’t agree with your previous essay but I saw no reason to equip myself with pitchforks. Perhaps this exercise affords us another necessary reminder to forgive the original, the unique, or the eccentric voice for her apparent sins. Life’s too short. Why hate someone for telling you something you don’t want to hear that clearly isn’t intended as vituperative?

  6. I stand with the minority. Is
    I stand with the minority. Is the cost of a coke equal to a truth?

  7. Thanks, everybody, for the
    Thanks, everybody, for the thoughtful and supportive comments. Overall, I think this has been a “teachable moment” for me as a blogger, and I’m glad it all happened.

  8. Levi, your response to my
    Levi, your response to my comment could have been, “Yes, Thoreau returned the axe sharper than when he borrowed it, but he didn’t chase the man through the woods with it.”

    Can you imagine, some wild man brandishing an axe comes running after you, shouting. You trip and fall.

    “Oh, God, I’m doomed!”

    “Here’s your axe back, dude.”

  9. Funny one, Bill!
    Funny one, Bill! Thanks.

    Actually, just for the record, I’m quite sure that Thoreau would have agreed with me that it’s irritating for a friend to make a big show of paying back a small loan. As I was writing my original post, I thought of this great line in Walden:

    “For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man’s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again.”

    He’s talking about a dinner invitation rather than a small loan, but I think the sentiment is similar.

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Litkicks will turn 30 years old in the summer of 2024! We can’t believe it ourselves. We don’t run as many blog posts about books and writers as we used to, but founder Marc Eliot Stein aka Levi Asher is busy running two podcasts. Please check out our latest work!