Of Anger, Emotion and Opinions

I am not sure whether others feel it this way, but I hate reading political blogs.

Yea, you read it right, I hate reading stuff that is similar to what I am writing in this very blog. I have some sort of emotional fatigue when I am reading political stuff online.

You might be intrigued. You might think that I am an enthusiastic / passionate / fanatic young guy who would go read and shout and whine in all the political blog out there. But let me assure you that I am not. Although I read blogs written by Jeff Ooi, Lim Kit Siang, Tony Pua etc; I am not a blind, "brainwashed" supporter who agrees with and parrots everything they says. I read them, and I doubt, and I think.

But anyway, you see, I am tired of reading those blogs.

While it's good to read the latest news from an alternative angle, and learn about the scandals they expose on a weekly basis; I am exhausted from the anger that I read in the posts and the comments. I am exhausted from reading thousands of posts and comments which are basically cut-and-paste of things like

• Go to hell Barisan Nasional!
• Wake up idiotic people who vote for BN!
• Vote Barisan Nasional out of power now, they are idiotic!
• Throw away your tongkat my fellow Malays!
  

Every time I read new posts complaining about the government's unfairness or corruption or incompetence, I don't feel like reading the comments at all. Because the same few commentators are always repeating the same comments on each and every post. It's like reading an old, uninteresting story book.

I understand that people are angry when they talk about angry issues; but I don't like listening to angry people - they are not friendly and not cute. In fact, when I am here in an Australian city, sometimes I find the activists rather intimidating. In my university and in this city, everywhere you go, you are bound to stumble upon someone campaigning or speaking publicly about wars, socialism, John Howard, gay rights, climate change, anti nuclear power, idiot Bush etc. They give out flyers, they ask you if you have a minute to spare to listen to their causes, they take on the streets to demonstrate about government policies, and so on. And they always have that stereotypical activist look - passionate (tending towards fanatic), angry, riled-up teenager who looks like they might get into a fight with anyone who disagrees with them.

So yeah, those "political" and partisan people are intimidating. Of course I support the freedom of speech, and I agree with some of their ideologies; but their presentation to the public is always fueled with too much anger, and they are always appealing to emotion. And people hate emotional, angry people. We categorize them as "the fanatics".

From this alone, it's easy to see why ordinary peace-loving people don't like to talk about politics. To them, politics are dirty things, things that only emotional people or pretending-to-be-cool people would argue about. So people eschew political issues, they don't read about it, they prefer talking about favourite food than politics, and they become chronically fatigued with politics.

But this needs to change. Being chronically fatigued is good for nothing. It will only keep us in the vicious cycle of having bad governance -> tired of the inability to change things -> not interested in speaking / changing the situation -> continue to have bad governance. We need to break the cycle.

When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be an alternative, not-so-angry commentary blog. I know that people hate angry activists and political tirades as much as I do, so writing yet another angry blog would not get peace-loving people to read and understand the issues. But as I started writing articles, I felt that it's so hard to control my emotion when I talk about the idiocy and incompetence of our leaders. I started feeling "what the fuck", and I started writing "what the fuck". I started chastising the politicians and the political parties using lines that I hate personally. I started to empathize with those angry people - we act angry because we are angry. Although it might not appeal to ordinary peace-loving people, we just can't help making ourselves look like mad dog - because we indeed feel as mad as a dog.

However, after some consideration, it dawned upon me that emotions need not translate to the writing that is meant to disseminate information. When emotions dominate a writing, it simply means that you are losing grip of your rationality and objectivity - you become a bona fide fanatic.

So the next time I lose control and become a mad dog, tell me about it. I would prefer having readers actually read about my points, instead of siok sendiri for the emotional catharsis but drive people away from reading things I would like to tell.

Also, above all, I hate to be an emo guy.