Where has all my patience gone?

I’ve noticed that I’ve been kind of a Dee I See Kay lately, at least on my blog. I’ve been reacting strongly to strong stimuli, but I’ll not cop to over-reacting. I have grown exceedingly impatient with people’s dismissals of things they don’t agree with. Isn’t that what I do?

No, it is not. Thought-through reactions and gut reactions are not the same thing. While one may certainly disagree with someone and do it strongly, I don’t think one could claim that anyone can type fast enough for long blog posts that get thought about before being typed up, revised before and after being published and sometimes sit in the que while I make sure I still want to publish them count as gut reactions. The whole point of a gut reaction is that it comes from somewhere else than our rational brains.

Having a gut reaction like, “You’re wrong,” or, “I disagree with that,” or, “No!” to something that is actually thought-through is irrational and foolish.

And it’s insulting. Say that Julie tells Billy that she’s upset with the way that he, I don’t know, gives in to his controlling best friend too much. Julie thinks it through, formulates it and expresses it as clearly as she can. Billy gets mad at being told he’s wrong, and he reacts with a, “Fuck you! You’re a bitch!” Gut reactions to reason are something animals can do, you know.

Someone I know and see every single day (!) likes to tell me that “it’s hard to disagree with [me]“. I try to shut up if I haven’t thought yet. I try. I often fail. Reactions that pass from the outside world right back out without running through the filter of our rational faculties are unintelligent. Am I claiming to be smarter than my just-as-educated interlocutor? Certainly not. Am I claiming to put more….consideration into my “position” than gut reactions to the contrary? Yes.  They could, too, but they don’t.

And that’s what’s so fucking frustrating about semi-universal gut reactions. While I know some backward people (SHIT!), for the most part, the people that surround me personally are intelligent. So when we react stupidly, it’s frustrating precisely because we’re not stupid — we could and should do better! And I’m sure I do it, too, because I am a stupid ass and can fall into the same stupid patterns of behavior as everyone else, likely more so if you really wanna know. I’m not claiming to be perfect. Ask my wife; I can be a huge asshole and often. Seriously. As if you haven’t picked up on that already.

Thinking about one’s response/reaction, well, that’s not a gut reaction. When people disagree with us intelligently, we might see that we’re wrong and grow. Or, they might. Gut reactions don’t help anyone, not even the reactor. We just spread stupidity.