“Being authentic and being open as you are Jon, it is inevitable that other people’s ‘unresolved issues are activated. Feeling discomfort is part of each person’s journey toward’s their own greater wholeness. In the throes of unexpected upset, it is understandable that some folks will lash out.
I admire your authenticity and hope people who find your words problematic will find their own peace. Kathy”

I liked the idea Kathy kindly brought to me in a message this morning. And I admire her desire for angry people to find their peace, including me. In America, in 2021, we will all need to find our way of dealing with hostility.  It will be around a long time.

The problem is no longer just about who is right or wrong, or who will win, or who will lose. The problem is learning how to communicate and respond without anger or hurt. That’s so much bigger than other people or me.

On social media,  people are called influencers; others are just natural-born grievance makers. More and more, people are victims, often of a new kind of mob. In our open culture, people either like what I write or don’t.  I can’t speak for other people, only for me. The idea that Kathy sparked in me is this. It’s not about me. Hostility in our world is so much bigger.

We need to understand it, not just fight about it.

People will lash out at statements or ideas that upset, anger, or surprise them. How can we productively respond to this? No human being is always right and consistently wrong. There is some truth in everything; what’s at stake is the inability to express a thought, response, or idea that reveals a limitation on people who are, as Kathy put it, seeking their wholeness.

For a long time, I tried explaining to people who were upset or disappointed that insulting me and calling me names is never a good way to start a conversation. I never think I am always right; I am quite willing to admit making mistakes and being wrong.

Making mistakes means that I am thinking. Sticking a label on my head that identifies me as “left” or “right” or “red” and “blue” means I am not thinking. I am honest and opinionated, and I will upset, offend, and enrage people for being so open and direct about my ideas.

I would be surprised if Kathy were not a therapist; she is more interested in understanding why people behave the way they do than blaming them for it.

One of my favorite spiritual thinkers, Henry Nouwen, added to the discussion Kathy sparked in my head when I dug up an essay he wrote about hostility. He cautioned against listening too much to people who seem to reject or dislike you.

“They confess their poverty in the face of your needs and desires,” he writes. “They say only that you are asking for something they cannot give, and they need to get some distance from you (or your ideas) for you to survive emotionally.”

The sadness, he said, is that you perceive their necessary withdrawal as a rejection of you  instead of as a call to return and discover there your true belovedness.” This idea is helping me understand the future and preparing for it.

Put differently, the person who is attacking me does not know me well enough to hate me. It is not as personal as it seems and should not be taken that way.

And I do not know these angry people well enough to hate or dismiss them. We can’t change or heal other people, but we can keep ourselves grounded, our humanity intact.

When anger or rage enters the equation, honest discussion and humanity disappear. Our society is lost in painful emotion and drama. Kathy is not suggesting that I dismiss hostility or cruelty; she asks me to understand that people will inevitably get upset when we are honest and speak our minds – right or wrong.

I realize that people who cannot disagree without anger and contempt are not necessarily wrong. But they are damaged somehow, upset by the open expression of things they don’t understand or agree with. They feel victimized, diminished, disrespected.  It feels very personal to be attacked, but it can’t be personal because we don’t know one another.

Seen in that context, this frees me up to understand rather than respond, which is calming and puts hostility in its proper place. This idea requires patience and discipline, and strength. Those are good things to work on.

I might be right or wrong, but the anger is not about me at all any more than their rage is. I don’t have to like it, and I won’t accept being abused. I am obliged to be thoughtful about an issue that I will face almost every day for years to come. I can’t change the world out there, but I can work on the idea here.

I don’t need to respond to these angry people; I need to let them have what they need; it isn’t about me.

Sadly, those of us who make a living by sharing their opinions and ideas and lives on social media are paying a growing price for being open and thinking freely. “Growing illiberalism, fueled by social media, is trampling democratic discourse,” writes Anne Applebaum in the October issue of The Atlantic (my favorite magazine now).

I’ve been online for decades, and I’ve seen what Applebaum describes happen. We were so busy bowing to this new technology and the money behind it we permitted it to darken our country.

Almost weekly, I am accused of racism, sexism, white privilege; one woman who was angry about what I wrote suggested on my Facebook Page  I was guilty of sexual harassment by offering she gets an enema to calm down.

“No one – of any age, in any profession, is safe,” writes Applebaum. On the left and right, mobs of vigilantes pour through professors, journalists, authors’ lives, phones, social media history,  and public officials looking for evidence of fraud or “crimes” of the left or the right, some dating back to early childhood.

In the age of Zoom, cell phone cameras, miniature recorders, and other forms of cheap surveillance technology, anyone’s comments  can be taken out of context; anyone’s story can become a rallying cry for Twitter mobs on the left or the right.” Privacy was long ago given up for convenience and entertainment.

We all watched and let it happen.

I work for myself, and by design, the only one I can offend that matters is me. And I am determined to be honest, and open about my life. I am older and have no ambitions other than to keep on doing what I am doing. I cherish that.

I have no secrets; I am not applying for an academic job or planning to run for office. By now, nothing is damning to say about me that I have not expressed myself. But being honest has its risks, one being that people will lash out being upset or defied. People on the left have accused me of supporting the Patriarchy by befriending the Amish; supporters of Donald Trump have called me more names than I even knew existed when I wrote critically of him.

I have a strong ego, but I am girding myself for years of anger, grievance, rage, and social media mob justice; I know many of you have experienced it also.

The answer is, as Nouwen suggests, to return home when people are hateful. To go back to myself. I need to find my actual space and love myself for who I am, not for people who need to see me as something they want me to be, not necessarily something I am.

.  I told a friend who started a political blog and asked me for advice that the most important thing is staying true to yourself, staying inside, and refusing to take the bait. I am learning to deal with this and want to share my experiences in case they are helpful. I love democracy, and I love free speech and will do anything I can to support it.

This means avoiding other people at times; it means never writing in anger or hurt; it means stepping back and seeking perspective. And it means going home. Home is a spiritual center, a soul.

Home is where I am truly safe, where I can receive what I need and desire.  I have come home to my farm, wife, and blog, and I will not run away again.

I am full of hope and look ahead to better times. They are inevitable.

Here I will find the freedom, to be honest and open; here, I have found the love and work that will bring rest to my heart and shield me from the anger raging outside.

The hostility, censoriousness, shunning, rage, ritualized apologies, and public sacrifices are typical behaviors in illiberal societies with rigid cultural codes.

Thanks, Kathy and Mr. Neuwen, you have given me a new way to understand an essential part of my life for some years to come.