February
6, 2015 DAVID BROOKS
If you read the
online versions of newspaper columns you can click over to the reader comments,
which are often critical, vituperative and insulting. I've found that I can
only deal with these comments by following the adage, ''Love your enemy.''
It's too
psychologically damaging to read these comments as evaluations of my
intelligence, morals or professional skill. But if I read them with the
(possibly delusional) attitude that these are treasured friends bringing me
lovely gifts of perspective, then my eye slides over the insults and I can
usually learn something. The key is to get the question of my self-worth out
of the way -- which is actually possible unless the insulter is really
creative.
It's not only
newspaper columnists who face this kind of problem. Everybody who is on the
Internet is subject to insult, trolling, hating and cruelty. Most of these
online assaults are dominance plays. They are attempts by the insulter
to assert his or her own superior status through displays of gratuitous cruelty
toward a target.
The natural
but worst way to respond is to enter into the logic of this status contest.
If he puffs himself up, you puff yourself up. But if you do this you put
yourself and your own status at center stage. You enter a cycle of keyboard
vengeance. You end up with a painfully distended ego, forever in danger,
needing to assert itself, and sensitive to sleights.
Clearly, the
best way to respond is to step out of the game. It's to get out of the status
competition. Enmity is a nasty frame of mind. Pride is painful. The person
who can quiet the self can see the world clearly, can learn the subject and
master the situation.
Historically,
we reserve special admiration for those who can quiet the self even in the heat
of conflict. Abraham Lincoln was caught in the middle of a horrific civil war.
It would have been natural for him to live with his instincts aflame -- filled
with indignation toward those who started the war, enmity toward those who
killed his men and who would end up killing him. But his second inaugural is a
masterpiece of rising above the natural urge toward animosity and instead
adopting an elevated stance.
The terror
theater that the Islamic State, or ISIS, is perpetrating these days is
certainly in a different category than Internet nastiness. But the beheadings
and the monstrous act of human incineration are also insults designed to
generate a visceral response.
They are a
different kind of play of dominance. They are attempts by insignificant men
to get the world to recognize their power and status.
These Islamic
State guys burn hostages alive because it wins praise from their colleagues,
because it earns attention and because it wins the sort of perverse respect
that accompanies fear. We often say that terrorism is an act of war, but that's
wrong. Terrorism is an act of taunting. These murderous videos are attempts to
make the rest of us feel powerless, at once undone by fear and addled by
disgust.
The natural
and worst way to respond is with the soul inflamed. If they execute one of our
guys, we'll -- as Jordan did -- execute two of their guys. If they chest-thump,
we'll chest-thump. If they kill, we'll kill.
This sort of
strategy is just an ISIS recruiting tool. It sucks us into their nihilistic
status war: Their barbarism and our response.
The world is
full of invisible young men yearning to feel significant, who'd love to shock
the world and light folks on fire in an epic status contest with the reigning
powers.
The best way
to respond is to quiet our disgust and quiet our instincts. It is to step out
of their game. It is to reassert the primacy of our game. The world's mission
in the Middle East is not to defeat ISIS, which is just a barbaric roadblock.
It's to reassert the primacy of pluralism, freedom and democracy. It's to tamp
down zeal and cultivate self-doubt. The world has to destroy the Islamic State
with hard power, but only as a means to that higher moral end.
Many people
have lost faith in that democratic mission, but without that mission we're just
one more army in a contest of barbarism. Our acts are nothing but volleys in a
status war.
In this
column, I've tried to describe the interplay of conflict and ego, in
arenas that are trivial (the comments section) and in arenas that are monstrous
(the war against the Islamic State). In all cases, conflict inflames the
ego, distorts it and degrades it.
The people we
admire break that chain. They quiet the self and step outside the
status war. They focus on the larger mission. They reject the
puerile logic of honor codes and status rivalries, and enter a more civilized
logic, that doesn't turn us into our enemies.
