Why “Peaceful Demonstrations” Usually Get Out Of Hand.

Back when I lived in California, every Friday in a small walking/shopping district that my wife and I walked thru most evenings a little protest was conducted.  On the busiest corner stood roughly a dozen or so very aged old hippies holding up signs saying very silly things like “War is over if you want it.”  In all honesty it was more a nostalgic gathering of a bunch of grass-addicted seniors than anything else.  But soon, on the opposite corner roughly the same number of military veterans of the same age started to show up each Friday waving the flag and wearing whatever remanent of their uniforms would still fit.  It was cute for a while, but soon the traffic increased as people began to drive by purposefully to see the spectacle, honk their horns and yell at which ever corner they disagreed with.  Local vendors soon asked city officials to put an end to it as it was harming their walk-in business.

I thought about that “protest” as I read this article about how best to deal with anger.  In a nutshell, venting your anger does not help, it can in fact can increase the rage.  Turns out quiet contemplation of the issue at hand is the best way to go, according to the article.  Common sense to anyone that had to live through the massive demonstrations and protests of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s that generally broke down into violence – property damage, injury and in a few notable cases death.  One sometimes wondered if such was not the goal of the organizers of these events – not so much to express political unrest, but to sow chaos.

We witnessed a wave of protest of similar composition early in Trump 2.0, built upon the outrage many felt about the fact that he actually won the election, but that grew quickly out-of-hand.

We have discussed a great deal in these spaces about how raw our politics have become – how much is based on sheer emotion, often negative emotion.  We have documented many times how much of the liberal agenda seems to be based solely on being as opposite of Trump as possible, born of sheer disgust at the man.  And that makes me wonder about the whole “quiet contemplation” thing as well.  Seems like these days such contemplation tends to be in a effort to justify our anger or disgust to the point that the physiological arousal the article cited above discusses becomes unbearable.  So much so that we do away with reason and act out in the worst possible fashion.  I have to think that what we quietly contemplate matters as much or more than the contemplation.

Example, contemplating how angry we are, and why, can serve to intensify the anger.  However, contemplating how best to address the situation that has us angry might serve to deplete the anger, or give us a useful path forward as opposed to simply “venting.”  See that’s the thing about protests, they are rarely useful.  Don’t get me wrong, they can be – in some cases they are even necessary.  But generally they are about venting which we are seeing is completely useless.

The key here is not contemplation, but reason.  Don’t react – think.  My cat reacts – I am supposed to be smarter than that.