“What the fuck is wrong with these people?!”
-Ellie Williams, Philosopher Extraordinaire
Well said, Ellie, marvelously well said. Perhaps a tad… irreverently blunt… but certainly passionate, and definitely astute. It’s a comment that could be directed at, alas, far too many members of the population at large these days, and is something which comes to mind for me in my daily interactions with people… well, Each. And. Every. Day.
I confess I’ve fallen into a very Bad Habit of late: Twitter appears replete with fascinating videos of people Losing Their Shit (LTS), mostly when interacting with law enforcement officers, and I also confess these videos are… well, mesmerizing, and not just when there’s household chores waiting to be done. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and most of us have a macabre fascination with things like that. They usually tend to develop the same way: there’s a wary circling of the wagons (sometimes literally), a defining of the incident’s parameters, the rising tension, and then the explosion, which occurs either over a certain amount of time, or… well, explosively sudden. Then they tend to conclude the same way i.e. the subject of the police officers’ attention winds up getting their just rewards (read: arrest and detention). And the end of every video, I ask myself Ellie’s highly pertinent question… though I’m pretty sure hers was meant to be rhetorical. Then again, so is mine… because, in our heart of hearts, we all know the answer.
Scenes where literary characters LTS are great fun to write, aren’t they? (And just as much fun for readers to read, bless their black, twisted little hearts.) This is because most of us --- if our parents have done their jobs properly, which seems by no means as certain a thing as it used to --- have been taught since childhood to Keep It Under Control and not Lose Our Shit… at least once we’ve left the feral confines of toddlerhood. (It fits in beautifully with Robert Fulghum’s famous poster Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a copy of which I used to helpfully have posted on my classroom wall… and even more helpfully would periodically refer my students to.)
So, it all led me to contemplate why our literary characters tend to LTS. There are numerous reasons for such a meltdown --- too many to list here in their totality, and many of them tend to run together --- but I randomly picked a few of what I consider to be among the most relevant, for your entertainment and edification:
Entitlement – based on my highly academic (ahem) Twitter research, this must be one of the top reasons why people LTS. There are simply too many people/characters who possess this quaint notion --- well, it would be quaint if it wasn’t so damned annoying --- that the rules just don’t apply to them. (Are you listening, parents?) This is egocentrism, folks, plain and simple, and as I used to tell my students, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst of the worst cardinal sins. (Sorry, Roman Catholic church.) Because it boils down to this: I want, and my wants are more important than yours. That is one deadly formula for mayhem.
Rage – everybody gets angry now and then, but rage is the state beyond anger, that terrifying point where people really LTS and view their surroundings through a fine red mist. Rage means you’ve been pushed just a little too far, most of the rational controls in your mind have been toggled over to the ‘off’ position, and in that state, you could cheerfully kill someone. Unless you suffer from some deep-seated psychiatric problem, it generally takes a great deal, and a lot of provocation, to push someone over the edge into genuine rage. Thank goodness.
Desperation – this is rage’s more melancholy twin, though perhaps more worthy of sympathy. Characters who LTS due to desperation are often at risk of losing something so vitally important to them or those nearest and dearest to them that they can’t work it out rationally.
Bullying – although it seems to have reached new heights (depths?) of epic proportions in the age of social media, bullying has been around in all its nasty forms for pretty much as long as humans have walked the planet. People bully others for all sorts of pathetic reasons: to assert power and control, to bring the victim down to the bully’s level, to deliberately inflict pain and suffering, to register their disapproval of the victim being different from the rest of the pack --- the list goes on and on. Victims may suffer in silence, or may eventually be goaded into the act of LTS.
Being Ignored – we all want to feel like we’re listened to; conversely, no one wants to feel they’re not being heard. But to be ignored… to be deliberately, actively discounted… our views not even taken into consideration when we’ve put them out there to the world (I think this must count as one of the writer’s greatest fears, truth be told)… that can certainly push people to LTS. “I matter, and you need to hear what I have to say!”
Sigh. What fragile, frail little flowers we are… all too emotional and ready to Lose Our Shit, some of us with more provocation, some with less. And lest you accuse me of being supercilious, I’d be the first to admit I’m a part of that category. We all are, really. But with the exception of Entitlement, most of these reasons for losing our shit are reflections of how vitally important something is to us. Perhaps not very socially acceptable reflections, but then again, we’re not automatons, and as the old saying goes, due to the shortage of robots, some of the staff are human and may react badly or unpredictably when abused.
-Ellie Williams, Philosopher Extraordinaire
Well said, Ellie, marvelously well said. Perhaps a tad… irreverently blunt… but certainly passionate, and definitely astute. It’s a comment that could be directed at, alas, far too many members of the population at large these days, and is something which comes to mind for me in my daily interactions with people… well, Each. And. Every. Day.
I confess I’ve fallen into a very Bad Habit of late: Twitter appears replete with fascinating videos of people Losing Their Shit (LTS), mostly when interacting with law enforcement officers, and I also confess these videos are… well, mesmerizing, and not just when there’s household chores waiting to be done. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and most of us have a macabre fascination with things like that. They usually tend to develop the same way: there’s a wary circling of the wagons (sometimes literally), a defining of the incident’s parameters, the rising tension, and then the explosion, which occurs either over a certain amount of time, or… well, explosively sudden. Then they tend to conclude the same way i.e. the subject of the police officers’ attention winds up getting their just rewards (read: arrest and detention). And the end of every video, I ask myself Ellie’s highly pertinent question… though I’m pretty sure hers was meant to be rhetorical. Then again, so is mine… because, in our heart of hearts, we all know the answer.
Scenes where literary characters LTS are great fun to write, aren’t they? (And just as much fun for readers to read, bless their black, twisted little hearts.) This is because most of us --- if our parents have done their jobs properly, which seems by no means as certain a thing as it used to --- have been taught since childhood to Keep It Under Control and not Lose Our Shit… at least once we’ve left the feral confines of toddlerhood. (It fits in beautifully with Robert Fulghum’s famous poster Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a copy of which I used to helpfully have posted on my classroom wall… and even more helpfully would periodically refer my students to.)
So, it all led me to contemplate why our literary characters tend to LTS. There are numerous reasons for such a meltdown --- too many to list here in their totality, and many of them tend to run together --- but I randomly picked a few of what I consider to be among the most relevant, for your entertainment and edification:
Entitlement – based on my highly academic (ahem) Twitter research, this must be one of the top reasons why people LTS. There are simply too many people/characters who possess this quaint notion --- well, it would be quaint if it wasn’t so damned annoying --- that the rules just don’t apply to them. (Are you listening, parents?) This is egocentrism, folks, plain and simple, and as I used to tell my students, as far as I’m concerned, is the worst of the worst cardinal sins. (Sorry, Roman Catholic church.) Because it boils down to this: I want, and my wants are more important than yours. That is one deadly formula for mayhem.
Rage – everybody gets angry now and then, but rage is the state beyond anger, that terrifying point where people really LTS and view their surroundings through a fine red mist. Rage means you’ve been pushed just a little too far, most of the rational controls in your mind have been toggled over to the ‘off’ position, and in that state, you could cheerfully kill someone. Unless you suffer from some deep-seated psychiatric problem, it generally takes a great deal, and a lot of provocation, to push someone over the edge into genuine rage. Thank goodness.
Desperation – this is rage’s more melancholy twin, though perhaps more worthy of sympathy. Characters who LTS due to desperation are often at risk of losing something so vitally important to them or those nearest and dearest to them that they can’t work it out rationally.
Bullying – although it seems to have reached new heights (depths?) of epic proportions in the age of social media, bullying has been around in all its nasty forms for pretty much as long as humans have walked the planet. People bully others for all sorts of pathetic reasons: to assert power and control, to bring the victim down to the bully’s level, to deliberately inflict pain and suffering, to register their disapproval of the victim being different from the rest of the pack --- the list goes on and on. Victims may suffer in silence, or may eventually be goaded into the act of LTS.
Being Ignored – we all want to feel like we’re listened to; conversely, no one wants to feel they’re not being heard. But to be ignored… to be deliberately, actively discounted… our views not even taken into consideration when we’ve put them out there to the world (I think this must count as one of the writer’s greatest fears, truth be told)… that can certainly push people to LTS. “I matter, and you need to hear what I have to say!”
Sigh. What fragile, frail little flowers we are… all too emotional and ready to Lose Our Shit, some of us with more provocation, some with less. And lest you accuse me of being supercilious, I’d be the first to admit I’m a part of that category. We all are, really. But with the exception of Entitlement, most of these reasons for losing our shit are reflections of how vitally important something is to us. Perhaps not very socially acceptable reflections, but then again, we’re not automatons, and as the old saying goes, due to the shortage of robots, some of the staff are human and may react badly or unpredictably when abused.
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