Free Speech, Rageoholism and Flaming

Last week, I was privileged to be at an Art Slam party. That was the way a friend of mine decided to celebrate her birthday. What a fabulous idea! It was lots of fun. I made a small collage, someone else did some beading, another lady brought knitting—many people were engaged in artistic flight.

We were gabbing about this that and the other. One of the women is a journalist who runs a news blog. She was a little down because her postings on a topic that has been hot and heated in my local community had been “flamed” in the comments section. The same people, over and over again, seem to have the understanding that the blog forum is an appropriate place to say whatever you want in whatever way you want to say it. “Free Speech,” these people stridently claim when they are asked to please be nice and keep it clean. The attacks usually escalate, becoming vicious ad hominem discussions, calculated to bait you into the argument. One news blogger I know had to disallow the comments feature altogether, which she could do, because hers is an independent blog.

Is uncivil discourse in public forums really Free Speech?

No. Of course it is not. It is rageoholism, a problem rampant in our society.

If you haven’t heard of rageoholism, I would be really surprised. However, I have no doubt that you have been at the receiving end of its senseless venom.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of the term rageoholic:

A rageaholic or "anger addict" is a person who gets excited by expressing rage, or a person prone to extreme anger with little or no provocation. While "rageaholic" is not a formal medical diagnosis, it has been developed as a lay psychology term by counselors and anger-management groups seeking to help people who are chronically angry and who compulsively express fits of rage. There are also 12-step programs for dealing with rageaholics, such as Rageaholics Anonymous in Los Angeles, CA.

Key indicators of rageoholism in an individual are: compulsion, obsession, denial, withdrawal with craving, behavior that is unpredictable and irrational. It is an addiction. We had the term “road rage” long before we had the term “rageoholism”, but most road ragers are rageoholics; these folks just take out their anger from behind the wheel of a car.

When the rage addict finds the open, forum of blogging to be an easy venue, particularly within which to act anonymously. When the blogger is a purveyor of news, it is difficult to censor the community.

Rageoholics think that they have the right to behave badly, that it is okay to vent—even that venting is a healthy thing for them to do.  Ragers are “cup mostly empty” people. There can be desperation to their actions, but mostly the craving is for control of other people’s thoughts—the rager really, really wants your attention in the worst way, and needs your enabling participation in order to perpetuate the angry behavior.

When ragers act over the internet, what they do is called flaming. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on flaming:

Flaming, also known as bashing, is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users. Flaming usually occurs in the social context of an Internet forum, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Usenet, by e-mail, game servers such as Xbox Live or Playstation Network, and on video-sharing websites. It is frequently the result of the discussion of heated real-world issues such as politics, sports, religion, and philosophy, or of issues that polarise subpopulations, but can also be provoked by seemingly trivial differences.

Deliberate flaming, as opposed to flaming as a result of emotional discussions, is carried out by individuals known as flamers, who are specifically motivated to incite flaming. These users specialize in flaming and target specific aspects of a controversial conversation, and are usually more subtle than their counterparts. Their counterparts are known as trolls who are less "professional" and write obvious and blunt remarks to incite a flame war, as opposed to the more subtle, yet precise flamers. Some websites even cater for flamers and trolls, by allowing them a free environment, such as Flame-Wars forum.

You could call the syndrome “Bait and Bitch” and not be far from the truth. This is a mental illness that feeds on victimization and control. Every victim who engages with the rager empowers the rager to more and ramped up behavior.

This kind of rage is impotent, yet it is destructive. Victims are scarred. Damage is real.

This is the illness of a sick society.

Rageoholism is not free speech, it is the war at home.

Let us pray for our wounded society, where some people feel they have license to thrive on wounding others, because that is the only way that they can feel as though they have control or power. Let us pray for those who are wounded in this war.

--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rageaholic

independence day

not from,

but to;
more specifically:
to be,
no matter
who,
what,
when,
where,
how or
why—
independence
to integral connection,
to the mindful dance
of spatial presence
and understanding,
of communion
within community,
where imperfect us
sings the chorus
to perfect now,
anticipating silence
will sing the verse
that opens our hearts
from inward outward to together.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen 

Transcriptions

A cacophony of voices rises,

along with the noises of Life;
the shrieks, crashes and throbs
of man, machine and beast—
a polyphony of distractions.

There is no substitute for listening,
even among the best thought partners,
and doubly true that is for the transcriptionist
who must gather a single thread,
from among the knotty ribbons of fire,
that will allow Theseus to quit the labyrinth.

Loudness and speed or lowness and length
are symptomatic of a need for supremacy.

On the one hand, those windows of silence,
that would bring necessary context,
are lost in the wall of loud, louder, loudest.

On the other hand, many words run too fluidly
to make out with any certainty whatsoever.

And so the peace and understanding
of all the world hangs on the ears
of the lone and earnest stenographer,
to accurately record life, libation, living and love
as a single strand of thought, a manifesto.

The wings and winds of distraction
whip at curtains of indecision and disillusion,
not to say disinclination,
to forge something real from delusions,
something that will last beyond a convenient now,
something that will cancel the end game.

But, there comes an end to all our talking—
we must breathe to speak, and so we stop;
all is futile, futile, utterly futile,
even while the earth glows with Life—
we are mostly deaf to Life’s music;
it plays beyond our petty cravings,
beyond our ignoble dominions and wars.

Silence comes only because we must stop,
and welling, as from within an eruption of silence,
a truer answer finds voice and flight,
one that only the transcriber can hear.

The answer is heard by one,
but goes unrecorded;
truth often lies outside
the contractual agreement.

© 2011 by Elisabeth Eliassen

Dialogue

Light pierces darkness;
water kisses dry land;
grasses and vines
lift up their heads,
sing their beauty,
as seeds and as fruit.

Light speaks in darkness,
wine moistens parched lips,
bread responds to hunger,
lifting the soul, as
an open vessel,
into silent conversation.

See the light,
feel the water,
taste the earth,
sing the song
and know that it is
God, speaking with you.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Fog Over Mountain

Fog flows over the mountain,
fog flows across the bay,
fog flows through my spirit,
fog flows through me,
refreshes me,
and all, indeed,
is refreshed.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

When I was coming to be

When I was coming to be,
I had no tongue and
I had no eyes—
there was no need
for these extras;
mindness saw,
mindness expressed:
this a more subtle tool.

After I was coming to be,
there were lips and tongue,
eyes and ears, even hands and feet—
now these clumsy aids
were needed
in order to be vertical,
so as not to be clumsy
when bumping into others.

For a long time after,
there was a parallel-motion
of this supple mind knowledge
and had-to-be-learned tongue—
different languages,
though one is not language;
I cannot translate this mindness
into thought or spoken word.

Now, little seems to remain of that mode,
of that knowing transmission of awareness,
of that, which was so easy and so pure;
usurped by thinking and speaking,
that subtle and more precise form
has retreated to corners of dreamtime,
where I await, to catch me off guard,
to remind me of the truths beyond now.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Coherence

Walking in sand,

polyphonic motion,
a response
to the song of the sea.

The lapping of waves
is but an invitation
to join the rhythms
of the rising song.

The sun answers the moon,
who sings her verses in the night,
music that shimmers
of cool mystery and allure.

The sunsong brings warmth and light,
calling the birds and the fish,
calling to the upright:
challenge the horizontal plane,
challenge the vertical plane—
challenge being particulate
by being instead the wave,
or by just being,
or being within being
being.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen