A friend of mine told me that someone had gone on her website and started staying nasty things about me and calling me names over things I have been writing lately about the New Inquisition over animal abuse. My friend is a loving and polite person, and she responded thoughtfully and courteously, as she always does. The last line she wrote caught my eye; “Have you written to Jon?,” she asked? “He is good at responding to these kinds of inquiries…although he may not take you seriously if you call him names.  it is unnecessary…”

Several things struck me about her very gentle reply. First, it was Secondly, it was very perceptive, about anger and about me. I have a lot of anger in me, and have worked to deal with it and understand it and control it. By and large, I have been successful. Some things can provoke me,  but not many and not for long. I am too grateful for my life to argue it with strangers. And perhaps it is true that people mellow with age. I believe I have mellowed with age, in my remaining time, I would rather do so many things than argue.

One way I deal with the rage online and in our world is to not argue about the things I write.  My life is not an argument, neither are my ideas. You can take them or leave them but you can’t tell me what to write or how to think.

It would be easy with Facebook and Twitter to argue all day – many people do – and the anger and cruelty out there is breathtaking. I do not even believe it is real.  I often wonder why we treat one another that way? I don’t know, I think it is easy to start judging people online, and that leads to rage and narcissism and self-righteousness. We can’t simply tolerate ideas we don’t agree with, many people need to attack them and the person who offered them.

Mostly, I hear from good and interesting people, even when they disagree. There is really not that much anger around me. It is not allowed on any of my sites, I think anger is just fuel for more anger. You cannot have a healthy discussion with unhealthy people.

Maria and others believe that I love stirring the pot up, and maybe I do. It isn’t conscious, I do believe my job is to make people think, that’s what writers have always done and are supposed to do. But my friend’s message was very interesting to me, because I saw that she was right. I never take name-calling or rage seriously, I never listen to it or hear the messages.

I think people who send angry or hateful messages are disturbed, they are not well or happy. One good friend prays for them when she comes across the furies online.

And the sadness in that is that quite often there are things to learn in those messages, things worth thinking about, obscured by cruelty and rage. So maybe something for me to think about it. There is always something to gain from someone else’s message, that is how I can grow and learn. Even if we forget it sometimes, we are all human beings, all on the same side in some very obvious ways. We live on the earth and we die on the earth.