I agree with this sentiment.
In the last four years I've become an "angry optimist" living by the concept of "militant decency." A fellow Terry Pratchett fan puts it best: pic.twitter.com/HqWqwcHTfZ
— Donna Dickens (Not Parody) (@MildlyAmused) November 15, 2022
What are you waiting for? Get angry, just be careful to aim it at the right targets.
Thank you, PZ. This is that time of year I look up the Hog Father and other Discworld series from his alternate universe of fun, merriment, and brilliant social commentary. Ah, the real world is missing that beautiful mind! Peace and love, friends. Hugs!
Oops, I accidentally tragically ran over Rupert Murdoch.
ANGER IS AN ENERGY!
ANGER IS AN ENERGY!
ANGER IS AN ENERGY!
ANGER IS AN ENERGY!
Johnny Lydon / P.I.L.; “Rise”
https://youtu.be/Vq7JSic1DtM
Angry is good. Angry gets shit done.
So many targets, so little time.
“Terry Pratchett was a wise man” – tautology.
To preserve this after Musk kills Twitter:
Well, it looks like the original was on tumblr, so it’s probably safe.
So naive. You realize this is exactly what the brown-shirts told themselves. And the KKK. And the “patriots” after 9/11.
Let me give you a more important principle than “it’s okay to be angry if you imagine yourself to be good” – any right you give to yourself, you must equally give to all others. So if you claim a right to be angry on the basis of believing yourself to be right – you cannot object to anyone else taking their anger out on you as long as they believe themselves to be right.
On the other hand, if you proclaim, “all people should have human rights”, then you can absolutely condemn anyone who denies human rights. See how that works?
Tl;dr be careful what you wish for.
@Silentbob you are confusing anger with violence. If you think that Nazis or KKK were decent, you are in trouble.
Also, paradox of tolerance strikes again.
@ Silentbob #8
This is a very good point you’re making. But note what the writer of the above post and PZ himself are saying on this subject: they’re talking about doing the right thing and making the world a better place and aiming your anger at the right target. Where the KKK and the Brownshirts, et al., go wrong is that there’s no thought backing up their anger. To make sure you are actually in the right you don’t lash out blindly out of anger. That anger needs a lot of thought and learning backing it up. It’s very easy to fool yourself into believing that you’re in the right.
Also, where I find a bit of naivety is in the notion that “anger itself is not the part I should be fighting”. Oh, yes, it is. Anger is something you always need to keep under control. It is so easy to lose yourself in your anger, to get swallowed up by your anger, so that you stop thinking about what you’re doing.
I myself am a person who is very naturally angry. I’ve been given good cause in my life to be angry. But as I know myself I know that I need to keep that anger on a very short lead. It would be so easy to lose myself and become as bad as those who make me angry.
moonslicer, ’tis a silly point.
Note that the OP refers to being an “angry optimist”, not merely to being “angry”.
(an angry optimist or an angry pessimist or an angry fatalist or an angry nihilist — there are infinite possibilities, depending on granularity)
Also, it’s conjoined with “militant decency”.
So, to merely talk about being angry is to entirely miss the point.
(Or: [A, B, C, D] are at play, not just [A])
—
Another relevant point is that the concept of “human rights” is an ideological construct, not a reflection of reality or laws of physics.
(Better to speak of the degree of congruence of claimed rights to legislated rights, I reckon)
—
To pre-empt potential vacuous complaints, I consider the concept of human rights as aspirational and I definitely endorse that (being human and all) and am very happy to have it enforced by the powers-that-be.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
One can penalise those who breach those rights, but the point is that those rights can be breached. Or abrogated, for that matter. Because they are just ideas.
Pratchett is great. Secular humanism runs throughout his books. Here’s the speech Death gives to Susan at the end of Hogfather”
““All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.” …
“YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? ”
Jack Krebs@12–
Great stuff. I think the single greatest thing Pratchett ever wrote is the end of Small Gods, but this is close.
Yeah, well. Good author. Respect.
For me, by far his best work is The Dark Side of the Sun (1976) and Strata (1981).
“And the Sabalos family was rich – so rich, in fact, that it could afford the simple life.” (DSS)
Jack Krebs@16, chrislawson@17,
If Death is speaking for Terry Pratchett there, I’d say TP got it completely wrong. Justice, mercy, duty are not lies, but human constructs, just as much as a building, a computer or a novel. If you grind the universe to atoms you won’t find buildings, computers or novels either. Nor for that matter an animal or plant.
Oh, FFS.
That’s my secret, PZ – I’m always angry.