Sunday Support Group: Negative Energy

You've heard the expression "negative energy." But what exactly is it?

A psychologist might say that someone is "getting someone else to hold their feelings." And what the heck does that mean?

Here's a totally made-up scenario. Let's say that Person A gets into a fight with a tradesman, person P. They've got differences over services and a bill, and instead of resolving it calmly and unemotionally—you know, "like adults" (another fanciful expression!), the discussion deteriorates and turns acrimonious. Afterward, Person A is left feeling angry, aggrieved, wronged. He's worked up. Upset. Person P has vacated the premises, but Person A "perseverates" on the situation (keeps going over his arguments in his mind again and again, without anything changing.)

He later goes to the supermarket. In the parking lot, Person L pulls slowly out in front of him because she doesn't see him. He's not inconvenienced; he was only going three miles an hour; he wasn't that close to her; he doesn't have to slam on his brakes. Normally, he would just wait for her to pull around. Person L might even wave in apology when she realizes what she's done.

Instead, Person A "sees red." (Another expression.) His mind seizes on his rightness and her wrongness. Ignoring the fact that his car will be blocking a lane in the parking lot that other people need to use, he slams it in park, leaps out, stalks righteously over to Person L's car as she's waiting to pull out into the roadway, taps on her window, and, when she lowers it, proceeds to rant harshly at her for "cutting him off."

Person L, frightened, puts up her window, stares straight ahead, and nearly pulls in front of a truck which blasts its air horn at her. Person A retreats—thank God!—and she successfully negotiates her way out into traffic, finally. A quarter of a mile down the road, she bursts into tears.

That's "getting someone else to hold your feelings." (If you've never read James Joyce's very short story "Counterparts," you should. A brutal and scarifying elaboration of the seemingly harmless little expression "kicking the cat.")

Person A had no real reason to confront and verbally assault Person L. But he's dumped his toxic feelings on her, the residue of his dispute with Person P, and he's certainly been a conduit for spreading negative energy in the world. She had been feeling sunny and friendly, and had just enjoyed a chat with the nice young checkout girl. She didn't have to have her morning ruined.

Just because one person is feeling shitty is actually no excuse for them to make another person feel that way.

Afterwards he doesn't even really feel better, except that maybe now he's perseverating on Person L's supposed transgression and his own feelings of righteousness about the situation—I had the right of way!—people like her shouldn't be allowed to drive!—instead of his dispute with Person P.

Emperors...not
The older I get, the more aware I am of "negative energy" and its various forms and manifestations. The other day, on my vacation, I was reading a forum (about pool, not photography), and came across a thread about a subject I wanted to know more about. One of the participants was a "deep expert" who also happens to be, in my judgement (judge not, and ye shall not be judged), an egotistical horse's ass. In the thread he was getting into it with some other personage who also couldn't be wrong. They proceeded to rub each other raw; and about four pages into the six-screen thread I was starting to feel agitated myself just from reading it. (...And if you've never heard Todd Rundgren's faux-operatic little lampoon "The Emperor of the Highway," give it a listen. Read the lyrics too. Makes me chuckle to this day.)

There was really no reason why the two of them couldn't simply have been polite. They could have disagreed just as much, and just as effectively. I had kept reading the dang thread because there were a few nuggets of good information in it.

About twenty minutes later, standing at the stove, stirring, I became aware that I was feeling stressed and tense. I've been in the habit lately of "interrogating my feelings"—another fancy phrase; I just try to become aware of what I'm feeling and then see if I can figure out why. Curiously, it's not always an easy riddle. This time, though, I quickly realized it was because of that nasty exchange I had read earlier in that forum.

Back at the computer later, I checked. That thread turned out to have been from March 2015.

So for almost six years that misbegotten little pustule of ugliness had lain buried like a time capsule waiting patiently for people like me to come along and trip over it. At which point it releases its vapors of nastiness anew to pollute someone else's air.  Maybe the better hyperbolic metaphor would be a forgotten and neglected but still-armed land mine? The antagonists could have been dead, yet there it stays, frozen in amber, preserved, to radiate its bad vibes indiscriminately into the future like a buried curse.

That's negative energy too.

Snark and scorn
I find I have a lot of resolutions this year! And I don't even believe in New Years resolutions.

One is, clean the house. Not for virtue; only because I suspect I will feel happier in a clean, orderly house. Second, I want to get most of the things I don't need out of my life.

That goes way beyond the two Micro 4/3 lenses to which I still cling. I hang on to all sorts of things. For instance, when I lived in Washington D.C., I taught myself Japanese four-hole stab bookbinding. I made two very nice Japanese-bound books back then, one of which is blank. That was, at a minimum, 30 years ago. Could have been more. Yet I still have the box of bookbinding supplies. I've carried it with me faithfully through a number of house moves, just as if it still belonged to my future. ...Which thirty-odd years of neglect have amply demonstrated it does not. I will harden my heart and let go of that box—this is that year!

Material resolutions are trivial, though. They're probably what give resolutions a bad name. Real resolutions should more properly be set in the spheres of wisdom and personal growth.

Real resolutions are behavioral and spiritual.

One of the reasons I started TOP more than 15 years ago is that I wanted there to be a little oasis where at least gratuitous negative energy was kept mostly at bay. Where casual and needless snark and scorn and casual provocation wither from lack of nourishment. By and large we do pretty darn well, you and I. But there is certainly no shortage of negative energy out there in the world.

So my resolution for this year is to work on improving tolerance. Although this is at root basically a spiritual goal, there are many concrete ways I can work on it. One, for me, will be to be as mindful as I can be of negative energy—not only to recognize when others are dumping it on me—and work on tolerating them when they do—but to be more aware of the situations in which I am tempted or led to dump it on the heads of others.

...And to clean the house. But let's not get carried away!

Mike

P.S. If you haven't yet, see the Update in the "Random Excellence I Dare Not Show You" post. We heard from the photographer.

Book of interest this week:

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
(clicking on the links above takes you to Amazon)

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dan Khong: "Talking of resolutions, for the first time in my life, I made three in 2017 that can never be broken, and I am still planning on doing these three this year: 1. Every month, to give some money to deserving people (who I don't know). 2. At least once a month, to invite different people (who I know) out for lunch and have conversations. 3. To journal."

David Lee: "I really enjoyed this. Except for the word 'tolerance,' which I don’t like because it gives me the impression that being tolerant is a way of telling myself that I am a much better human being than the rest and because of that I have to understand their limitations and try to, well, tolerate them."

Mike replies: Except that that's the core of the problem. Perhaps without the value judgement (your "much better than").

Aren't we all in actuality little egotists whose Universes center on our own heads and whose interests are more important to us than those of the strangers we rub up against in the world? It's a decidedly human tendency to think everything's "all about us." I do think tolerance is a matter of consciously trying to understand and have patience for other viewpoints. I've been trying to remind myself on a daily basis that a.) I'm no better (but also no worse) than other humans; b.) that other people are dealing with their own challenges and resentments and "understanding with their own understandings," which may cause them to behave in ways that are distasteful or disagreeable or simply mystifying to me, and that I need to let them be themselves; c.) I should resist the urge to try to control others, because I'm not in charge and nobody appointed me to be their policeman; and d.) to remind myself, when other people do things that I don't like, that I also have behaved badly at times in the past so perhaps I shouldn't judge. All of those reminder-thoughts, I would argue, as they become habitual, increase my tolerance and help me take it easy.

Tolerance has a real benefit, too, one that's frequently hidden from our concept of it. We humans naturally tend to internalize things  and exaggerate in our minds the significance of our own actions, status, standing, etc. Accepting that it's not "all about us" makes it more clear to us that it's actually all about them—! In other words, we can more naturally or habitually "not take things personally." If Person L in the example above were truly tolerant, her reaction might be along the lines of: wow, this fellow has had a bad day. He's lost control of his emotions and he's acting crazy. Poor fellow. He's going way overboard in defending his selfish interests. He really must have a lot of stress in his life, etc., etc.—and perhaps then she would not be upset by him at all! So (in the context of the post topic) she'd be immune to his negative energy.

Anyway it's been my observation that the most tolerant people I know are slow to anger and aren't easily upset or nonplussed. Tolerance helps them be steady and calm.

Comments

[Ray Hunter]

The digital age enables negative energy, vintage as well as freshly brewed, to be spread far and wide. It seems that some groups "default" to that attitude out of habit, whether it is work groups or online groups. One, or possibly a few, participants can influence others and lead to a negative group habit. Another photography site I read (I won't name it but it rhymes with lodge doormat) has certain regular participants who bring that energy. A thread entitled "my daughter just got a new puppy" turns into "what layabouts federal employees are" in just a few iterations. Thank the moderators, the lightning rods and referees of such places, for trying to keep it on an even keel.

[Eric Brody]

Negative energy abounds in our current world. Some people seem to feed off of it like a fictional monster off an electric grid. They seem to enjoy antagonizing and "winding up" others. Sadly many inhabit the political and journalistic sphere and appear to have influence beyond that which is reasonable. Photo forums are not immune. I have stopped reading those on DP Review for that reason. Even LULA can get vitriolic with ad hominem nastiness. I value and support your work because it is intelligent, reasonable and actually fun to read most of the time. I'd love to play pool but have not done so in years; I'd love to eat better but manage to survive with my fish eating vegetarian spouse. I'd like to see less rancor but also have little hope of that given that so many people in our country seem to be so hopelessly selfish. Best to you in the new year.

[Rob Campbell]

Two points, Mike: firstly, if you throw something away, then going by my personal experience, within no more than a fortnight you will curse yourself because that item turns out to be just the key to something else you may be making or considering making, by which time it's too late to go back out to retrieve it from the garbage; secondly, cleaning the house is an exercise in futility, as everyone's experience must surely prove. One of the more short-lived onanistic pleasures, then.

[c.d.embrey]

I've been on the 'net since the early 1990s. Before the World Wide Web there were News Groups. News Groups were sorta like present day forums. Flame Wars were common.

The one thing that hasn't changed is that many people hide behind internet handles An anonymous little twerp can act like he's a buff 6'2" tough-guy. This results in people typing things that they would never say face-to-face.

The web is full of self styled experts parroting misinformation they got from another clueless expert. Meh!

Life happens, and if I can't control it, I pay no attention. I look both ways before stepping-off-the-curb, but I can't stop the sky-from-falling. Worrying about things you can't control just causes unnecessary ulcers.

[Bandbox]

Mike, If you're sure that blank stab-bound book has to go, don't throw it away. Send it to Dan Khong, who has resolved "to journal" this year. Maybe he can use it. Hand bound books are excellent for journaling. I've been making my own for years with mixed-media collage pages that incorporate my photographs.

[Gary Nylander]

This is a good post to start the new year, thanks very much. That's what I like about your blog, upbeat and positive and covers a wide range of subjects even though it's not always about photography. I wish you and the readers a happy and healthy 2021 with less negative energy.

[Olybacker]

"One of the reasons I started TOP more than 15 years ago is that I wanted there to be a little oasis where at least gratuitous negative energy was kept mostly at bay."

Mike, I think you have achieved that goal and I thank you for it.

I have experience of five or six other photographic sites and their associated forums and some I can think of were loaded with 'negative energy'. It was interesting that later on, one by one in a completely haphazard, non-organised, way different members revealed in their posts on the site the fact they they had suffered from and/or had been treated for depression. They also tended to reveal at times strong views that they held on politics, work, society, social norms, etc.

Keep up the good work, Mike. A happy and healthy New Year to you and all who use this web-site. Oh, and happy hours on that pool table, too. ;-)

[Ed Otten]

Mike, your elaboration on the meaning of tolerance and the implications for human behaviour is worthy of framing. I'm sure many of us have struggled with the mystifying behaviour of others in this trying year. Your very humane perspective was welcome indeed on this grey morning. I will try to do better.

[John Robison]

Your scenario about the tradesman and customer made me chuckle. Just before lockdown we had a family of 3, friends, come and stay due to a temporary housing problem (they have moved now.)
The dad is a general contractor and told me that visits to potential customers for an estimate are also an evaluation of the customer. If he feels ‘bad vibes’ then the estimate is almost always enough to keep the customer shopping.

There are some folks you just don’t want as customers.

[Thomas Rink]

Being in a bad mood is most enjoyable when you can share it with others!

[Rob Campbell]

But Mike, it really is all about ourselves: we can't be anyone else and, equally, they, the others, are thus saved from being us.

One of the worst talents we can have is the ability to see - or worse, understand - the other person's point of view: the moment we do that we have lost the argument.

The above does not preclude trying to get along with others in peace. Thing is, though we are possibly not elected to be in charge of others, those who have been are patently no more capable of doing a good job with their responsibility than is anyone else who seeks those jobs. Someone has to take a stand; may as well be me, and starting with my own affairs and protecting those interests against all comers.

Blatant examples of lack of proper control from those officially in power is visible in every Covid news story: how many masked, prominent guys have touched elbows in a display of "awareness" followed in nanoseconds by a hug or a shake of the hand with somebody else? When will politicos insist that those idiots still walking the streets unmasked be arrested and go straight to prison, no questions asked? A couple of nights ago a disused factory/warehouse in Barcelona was scene of an illegal rave party. Police were sent to break it up and several of their cars were burned; of the hundreds of attendees, only a few were arrested. Why not all of them? That hundreds go to these events in times such as these demands "tolerance" levels of zero in the treatment of such morons.

It's easy to wish for a perfect world of loving neighbourliness, but most unlikely ever to experience it.

[Clay Olmstead]

Kudos to you for sending underused objects out into the world, where they can fulfill the purpose for which they were intended.

I think your definition of tolerance is a lot more active than most peoples'. Short of repeating that whole explanation (which was wonderful), it's like you need a new term, like "conscious tolerance" or "engaged tolerance." Neither of those quite gets it, but I'll keep working on it and let you know if I come up with anything.

[Mike Ferron]

That bit about the forum members seems to be a universal theme when it comes to unmoderated online comments. Worst is anything political. Matters not how one leans because any resemblance of an intelligent conversation quickly turns to childish name calling. Reading past the first few comments is most often a waste of precious time.