…and it’s not all small stuff

Reviewing the halfway-point comic of Questionable Content‘s “The Talk” storyline, Eric Burns of Websnark discussed his feelings on suicide.

The next day, Eric noted that there was something missing from the resultant discussion:

Only… there was also something missing from the discussion. Something that you would fully expect, given the rawness of the emotions and the touchiness of the subject. But, for the most part, it just wasn’t there.

Acrimony.

There was a profound lack of acrimony out there, in discussing this subject.

You have to understand — this is a bit surprising to me. I mean, there was acrimony flying on all sides over weddings and snarking priorities just a few days ago. Warnings made, whistles blown, the whole nine yards.

That’s not quite how I’ve experienced most online squabbles in the past (usually, a group that’s acrimonious during the little discussions will really blow up in the big ones), but I have seen it from time to time. A group that’ll tear itself apart over nothing will find a way to be civil when there’s something important to deal with.

It reminds me of a discussion I had with my sister the other day, in which she accused me of being overly dramatic. I take completely trivial things way too seriously. I get agitated, I yell, I rant and rave (you think I’m bad on here about my comics and/or television shows?), but in the end, I know that it’s not important. Sometimes, I even exaggerate my reaction on purpose, simply because the pure absurdity of getting all worked up over something that’s virtually meaningless in the grand scheme of things amuses me.

On the other hand, when I’m faced with something serious, I try (and sometimes succeed) to keep myself from getting worked up. It’s a philosophy that’s served me well in recent years (ever since I had to abandon my original philosophy in dealing with stress, which was to simply dismiss everything as if it doesn’t matter): Allow myself to overreact to the little piddly stuff, and then when I need to remain calm for the big stuff, I’m able to do so much more easily (otherwise, lots and lots of little frustrations build up until you have one big explosion when a big strain hits you).

I’m prone to agree with Jon that the lack of ‘cross pollination’ in ideas leads to a lack of rational debate. I’ve never been shy about debating various things with my liberal friends. Being forced to defend my beliefs strengthens them, I think.

Since The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe comes out today, I figured I’d go with a C. S. Lewis quote for today’s Quote of the Day:

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the sort of thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or He would be the devil of hell. You must make a choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.

-C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)