Pain makes us stupid

Pain makes people stupid.

Nobody is exempt. We all say stupid things, do stupid things, make stupid decisions, when we are in pain.

I’m not talking about stubbing your toe, and I’m not talking about a chronic pain condition that you’ve had for years and have, amazingly, learned to manage. I mean the kind of pain that overwhelms you. And that obviously is not limited to physical pain.

Your dog is sweet and obedient, but an injury that makes them shriek and yelp will also mean you’d better wrap them tightly in a blanket to take them to the emergency vet, because they’ll do their level best to bite your face off.

And we have this bad habit, too many of us, me included, of responding to stupidity with insults.

I have people in my neighborhood who don’t sleep under a roof. Many have a substance abuse problem. The single biggest driver of addictions in our time is pain med abuse, so take a guess what they’re trying to blot out. Clearly that isn’t everyone, but a lot more are existing in the ruins of a life that used to be a lot better.

And I know a lot of people in this town who have compassion, who understand that our housing situation is a tangled mess, and all the simple diagnoses of it are absurd. But for every one of those, I know ten who can’t speak a sentence, or even listen to a sentence, on the subject without exploding into ridicule and mockery.

If someone you know well makes a simple boneheaded move, and you tease them for how stupid it was, you might constructively get their attention and motivate them to rethink their choice. But when you insult someone for stupid choices that are the surface layer of deep pain, there is zero chance you’ll improve their thinking, and your act in itself is unspeakably cruel. And it doesn’t reflect too well on your own abilities as a thinker. There’s a reason most middle school bullies grow out of the behavior: they see for themselves that the only outcomes it brings about are ones to be ashamed of.

And of course, there is an even bigger ball of thinking and speaking and deciding in our very recent past that people are quick to call stupid and answer with insults. And every time that happens, it’s the rerun of a fantasy that the stupidity is fire and the insults are water, and just a few more insults will extinguish the stupidity.

But the words and deeds and decisions are the surface layer of deep pain, and the insults are not water on the fire: they’re gasoline.

Donald Trump is not the illness; Donald Trump is a symptom. Kamala Harris brought a box of band-aids to treat a big mass of gangrene. Don’t think for one minute that we can’t re-run this mess again and again and again.

Red states and blue states are divorced. We have no relationship. We have no desire to seek one another’s company. But we are divorced co-parents of a child, and that child is the United States. Many, many, many divorced co-parents say, do, and decide dizzyingly stupid things, compelled by the very deep hurt of their failed marriage. They insult their ex because the insult is accurate. The fact that the insult hurts their child is too easy to overlook, or ignore, or rationalize away.

Stop it.

There is one way out of the corner this country has backed itself into, and that way out is to focus like a laser on one priority: we have got to rebuild a basis for trusting each other. If what you’re tempted to say doesn’t add a brick to that building, then clench it between your teeth and swallow it.

I imagine if this runs there will be some spicy replies. I will nod, and probably sympathize, and say to myself, “How fascinating. Now, how does this contribute to rebuilding trust? And if it doesn’t, why did you say it?”

Ben Voth

Director of Debate & Speech and Professor of Rhetoric in Dedman College at Southern Methodist University

4 个月

Great analysis.

Stephen Andes

Professor of History at Bushnell University

4 个月

Love it! Well done, Doyle!

Robert Rich

Writing Instructor at University of Rochester and Crisis Counselor at Crisis Text Line

4 个月

The divorce makes it harder for the two groups to view each other justly, but it also makes it harder for either to understand the people who don't rigidly cohere to either side. The Americans who aren't all that political or who are political but not ideologically rigid really are a lot like the children who have no reason not to get along with both parents, aside from the fact that they constantly hear each parent villainizing the other. A lot of people find it baffling that there were people in AOC's district who voted for AOC for congress but voted for Trump in the presidential race. There are lefties who insist that Joe Rogan is a far right ideologue, and there are conservatives who think Sam Harris is a woke leftist with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from all of this is that a lot of people simply need to get out more.

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