Life in my world is sometimes schizophrenic. My interior world, here on the farm, with Maria and the animals, in the natural beauty here, with the good and simple people here, is contemplative, peaceful, connecting.

The exterior world seems angry and disturbing to me, perhaps because I am sometimes dependent on a corrupted and corporatized media culture to show it to me, and an invasive information technology that promotes argument and hostility while pretending to be my friend.

How do we come to understand such an angry world, so filled with argument and hatred and judgment?

A woman on Facebook sent me a message urging me to burn in hell for worrying about the circus elephants that are now free, she said, from the onerous task of amusing humans. Her profile photo shows a small dog with a party hat juggling a ball on his nose.

I have more than 43,000 likes on Facebook, but someone urges me to die painfully at least once a day. A creative group I run was nearly done in by angry people who seem addicted to heart emoticons and kissy-kissy signatures — X.X.O.O. But they are not always very loving. People with photos of cute lap dogs send messages or pure rage.

I must admit here – I do not seek to be a sourpuss – that heart emoticons frighten me.

I love emoticons and use them constantly, but I think those little hearts are really demons and dybbuks,

I think they are spies send to distract and mislead us. I see them as the illusion of love without the work of love, of communicating or actually connecting with love, or of being thoughtful. To me, the heart emoticons are another step in the emotionalizing of personal media. We send lovey-dovey messages to one another all day, while our universe turns harsh and cold, and we forget how to think for ourselves.

Heart emotions promote the  illusion that new information technologies are about connection, but I think they are Trojan warriors, sent to cause the most intense polarization in cultural and political history. What more trusting symbol is there than a little red heart? We can say I love you without having to life a finger. Or even love you.

In my dreams, the little emoticons grow teeth and bite, millions and millions of them.

I dread the idea of older people grumping about new things, I’d rather throw myself into an icy river than be one of them.

My life is about change and new things, but  I don’t think I’m not going to ever send anyone a heart emoticon. I’ve sometimes sent Maria an emoticon with heart eyes, but never a heart emoticon. I just can’t bring myself to do it, it seems shallow and phony to me, I’ll choose almost anything else, I love the dancing mice personally. And I like just saying I love you.

Maria does not agree, she sends heart emoticons to her friends, and they send them back to her. Curiously, she has never sent me one.

This is my problem, I know. As usual, I am out of sync with the world.  Even as the world around me gets angrier, I see streams of little hearts flying across social media like flocks of geese heading South. If they are supposed to signal a more loving world, we might need to take another look. I don’t trust any of them, they are the insidious world of devils playing with our minds. If I love people or their work, I’ll tell them.

We don’t have to buy the whole package to live in the new world, do we,  and I don’t need Facebook to make love for me.

If I’m not using heart emoticons, how then, do I deal with the angry world around me, with the awful news they choose to tell me?

Go inward.

I embrace the courageous acceptance of interior trials in solitude and contemplation. If I can find my own truth and sense of self, I feel less vulnerable and disturbed by the angry truths of others. I believe there is purification accomplished in us by practicing patience and humility in loving other men and women and of respecting their loving their ideas and hopes, even sympathizing with their most angry, and unreasonable needs and demands.

Compassion is a most powerful political idea, even if it ebbs and flows in the angry world. It is my left and my right. I do not always get there, but I always try. The great irony of this adventure, I find, is that the more compassion I practice and advocate, the angrier people get. I remember urging compassion for the unfortunate dentist who shot Cecil The Lion and his family, the righteous mobs online came howling after me, many writing to remind me that Jesus and Gandhi would hate Dr. Palmer just as much as they did, and go after his children and their cell phone contacts too.

The most powerful spiritual practice I know is to try to see the world through the eyes of the people I care little for, or who hate me the most. Everyone is doing the best they can, everyone believes they are on the righteous path. We are all people. The more I look at the world that way, the more I learn, the more I grow, the calmer and more peaceful I feel. It is hard, I often fail, it is powerful.

We all have to deal with the angry world but anger and superficial symbols of affection are, I think, are the fuel anger runs on.

Living out of touch with other people, hating them and arguing with them,  I think, I  lose that deep sense of spirituality and calm, that is where pure love lives for me.