I have been desensitizing and weakening a reflex, but I still have work to do.
For most of my life, my habit had been to glibly insult people when they were not around to hear, although I didn’t think about it in that way. I rationalized the risk of harm as too mild to be of concern, or I outright ignored that possibility in the moment. I participated in groups where cutting remarks were smuggled in as jokes, and my unkind comments were praised as wit. Such exchanges were dolled up as in-group bonding. It was typical behavior when I was growing up: family, school, work, friends (and their families), books, movies, television, and so on. It is still the norm in my local community culture.
Then, a few years ago, I started examining my behavior less politely. In reviewing all of the excuses, I found that I had none of any merit. I had been hurting other people at a distance for the high. That did not fit well with who I am at my core, or who I wanted to be all the way out to my periphery.
I felt sad, and disappointed in myself. I didn’t want to lose the social rewards that I was getting from others, and I didn’t want to feel that much more isolated from my groups by not participating. But those group dynamics were enabling, and I had to withdraw because it was too easy for me to slip.
I am not intending to chastise or moralize here; after all, it is common for people to complain about such irritants as oppressive bosses, difficult clients, government officials, obstinate equipment, and every other nuisance that ails and assails them. Similarly, each of us will be the object of those complaints from other people. It’s a national pastime in the US, and seems to be common the world over. It tends to be justified as a lesser evil.
I used to accept the general consensus that in-group complaints were harmless. Whether or not I was the object of such comments, I only minded when private jokes came to be broadcast as facts. I failed to pay enough attention to the gangrenous spread of social and professional contempt. My world is too small, and too full of coincidence, to safely take those sorts of risks. So, over time, I have been increasingly opting out.
People vary in their motives for choosing to engage: to attack, to draw boundaries, to rally support, to defend, to shift moods, to deflect, to vent, to get high, to empathize, to defame, to gossip, to seduce, to alienate, to intimate, and so on. These reasons all blend promiscuously. Sometimes there is no deliberate purpose, being more a matter of reflex or addiction.
Some people say that they have to let off steam now and again to keep from exploding. Justifying “accrued aggravation” as the risk in this way pretends that “restraint” is dangerous. A pressure release valve (PRV) then becomes defined as the only mechanism that can avoid an acutely violent explosion. Justice is held (in turn) to be served when that release of blistering steam is aimed at the enemy, namely those people who are blamed for having turned up the heat in the first place. The person acting as the boiler (claiming a lack of control over their own thermostat) can then steam clean their conscience while they’re at it.
This approach survives because it presents a semblance of being reasoned. It has a very thin (but lustrous) layer of truth, so it works well if you only need it to last from one purging outburst to the next. It retains its shine when you only associate with other people who also lovingly polish that veneer (and all agree to use coasters). Because a PRV works along a path of least resistance, this model represents an easy, lazy, self-serving reality.
It is true that not every such release causes harm; in fact, if you are only heating water (or maybe something actively pleasant, like a samovar full of cinnamon hot chocolate), and if no one gets burned (or, as in the case of said beverage, you aim for the mouth), then great good can come from impulsively expressing strong emotions. That’s a beneficial reflex. The harm arises when the boiler contains corrosive toxins (eating away at its guts), and the spew damages everything in its path with scalding heat and lethal toxicity (or just leaves a grotesque mess for someone else to clean up). That’s a detrimental reflex, and I want to rid myself of it (or at least make it volitional).
So, yes, it is true that bottling up volatile material creates a bomb, which is bad, but the solution is not to just periodically eject that poison onto other people; instead, you can turn down the heat, neutralize the toxins, and restore your balance. Then you might express your concerns constructively in this healthy frame. And if you find that your complaints were just an excuse to be praised for your witty insults, then drop them and reinforce your increased awareness.
While restoration is healthier than PRV models, such cleansing approaches remain far less common because we aren’t as familiar with care-based strategies. In the early stages of their development, when you have had less exposure and practice, that care takes more time (i.e., added effort, consideration, empathy, and so on); therefore, the risks associated with suppression have room to grow. Furthermore, because restoration requires additional resources, less of each such resource will be available to shore up your restraint. All that said, when you get to the point where you are skilled with restoration, the process occurs quickly and easily enough that those risks are no longer significant. Which all means that you should be prepared to ask for help in the meantime.
Our experience with physical explosives can teach us about this personal volatility.
As dynamite ages, it becomes increasingly shock sensitive by sweating its nitroglycerine back out of its absorbing stabilizer. (I am absolutely not an expert with dynamite; therefore, my only dynamite advice is as follows: always involve experts.) While exploding the dynamite would remove the risk of that volatility increasing with time, life keeps sending people more dynamite (which again ages poorly), so this would only be a short-term solution. But that explosion, however risky, would at least seem to be better than trying to seal the dynamite in a refrigerator (or other container), because that would both expose the nitroglycerine to motion and create a bomb. Instead of wisely calling in an expert, some of you might decide that it would be safe to detonate the explosives from a distance. Your audience might even applaud the explosion, assuming of course that they were much closer to you than to the dynamite (and didn’t mind some permanent hearing loss and a mild peppering with fridge shrapnel).
I used to view venting as healthy, that is to say, as safer than trying to contain a festering stockpile of frustrated resentment for any length of time; however, that truth is easily scratched to reveal a third alternative, namely the restoration that we have been discussing. Its value is illustrated by the following risk analysis, in which we compare finesse to force.
I am told that dynamite can be “burned” instead of detonated, restoring a safe environment. This burning still requires some care, of course, which involves some additional time to arrange. That time does represent an increase in risk, because the dynamite will continue to sweat; however, if it is burned, then the associated risk of harm to others is significantly lower than that of detonation. Finally, if someone were to develop their personal expertise with this burning method (through appropriate training), then they could neutralize the dynamite with negligible lag time, making this approach far safer than any detonation. The trick is to develop that expertise without blowing anything up, so during your training you will require expert intervention to support safety.
So much seems obvious when dealing with real dynamite, but when it comes to social explosives, people rarely call in an expert. The potential and actual harm to self and others is ignored. This risk is analyzed as insufficient to warrant care, at least until after the bomb has gone off, then sometimes the experts are contacted to help clean up the mess.
Clearly, I have personally come to perceive some kinds of venting as too risky, so I am choosing not to participate. As desperate as I am for a sense of belonging, I don’t feel comfortable buying membership at that price. I don’t want to be harmful without reason or purpose. I don’t want to be unkind by accident. I am going to practice neutralizing my toxins, and regulating my thermostat.
So I have been sensitizing and strengthening a reflex, but I still have work to do.
Endnote
While searching my memories for an illustrative example related to bomb disposal, I found myself directly reflecting upon a distinct recollection that might not, after all, be real. I can’t be sure. I think that it is at least realish.
When I was attending UOP (1980-81), a jar of ether in a campus chem lab was discovered to have been growing peroxide crystals around the rim. (I was present for that part of the story; in fact, I think that it was me who told the TA about the crystals.) Unlike liquid ether, those crystals are shock sensitive. We were all evacuated from the building (with few people knowing why), so I left. The disposal squad put the jar into some sort of relatively safe container, then transported that box out to a floating platform in the Calaveras River (which was only a few hundred feet away, running low between high levees). Then, from the middle of the footbridge to Brookside Road, they shot at it with a rifle. I remember watching the explosion from the levee, looking northeast from the southern end of the bridge. Few people were there.
But because I can only envision the components with which I am most familiar (like the lab, jar, bridge, and river), and not the rest (such as the safety container), I have to at least suspect that I only heard about the later parts of the story from someone else, with my mind drawing me further into the picture over the ensuing decades. While it seems as real to me as some other memories of that vintage that I can independently confirm, I suppose that the chance exists that I made up the incident altogether. Someday, I should try to find this event in The Record, or The Pacifican. For the time being, however, I will leave this as an extra credit assignment for someone else.