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Self-expression is so self-evidently a human necessity because its opposite, an inability to express oneself, inevitably leads to frustration. People vary in their ability to express themselves, of course, and there can be political obstacles as well as personal to self-expression. One of the reasons that the people behind the counters at the social security office near where I worked were protected by fist-proof glass windows was that many of the people with whom they dealt could express their frustration (which, given the nature of bureaucracy, was often justified) only by punches and kicks.
Eleven years of compulsory education, or at least attendance at school, had left them unable to compose a letter or pursue an argument other than by aggression and violence. It seems to me, though, that too-easy a means of verbal self-expression has its drawbacks too: for I noticed that as soon as it became possible for anyone to respond almost instantaneously to what was written in a newspaper or online article, the tone of the commentary often became shrill, insulting and vicious. First the author is insulted, and then the commentators start to insult one other, often in a very nasty way.
In the days when the only way of responding to what someone had written was to write a letter yourself, which usually took a long time to reach him via his publication, a certain politesse was generally retained. The arguments in letters were not always sound, but at least they were arguments. Even the lunatics, who could usually be recognised at once from the envelopes of their letters, did not resort to abuse. It was sometimes not easy to understand what they were trying to say, but at least it was not insult. All that changed with the development of the internet and social media. Tempers seemed to rise. The old adage that one should not write in anger and should let twenty-four hours pass before responding was quite forgotten.
I was surprised too that it was not only illiterates who resorted almost immediately to abuse: professors did so also. Indeed, it often seemed as if abuse were not so much a substitute for argument as the only form of argument. No subject was too obscure or anodyne to provoke the bad temper and language of someone. To give some idea of what I am talking about, I will quote two posts on a website that I looked at recently when I wanted to have the figures for the price of cigarettes in the different states of the USA (the largest financial beneficiary of the sale of a packet of cigarettes is always the government).
Here is what I found: They forgot to include the price of a few baseball bat’s [sic] to ram in the asses of people who use cancer as a poor and sick excuse to make cigarettes even more expensive. Only loosers [sic] smoke. Hope they all die a painfull [sic] death. The authors of these beautiful sentiments do not appear to be well-educated (though one never knows these days). But eminent professors of literature have replied in similar, though better-spelt, vein to some of my literary articles which, though intentionally controversial, were argued on evidence which, if not definitive, was at least real. They did not reply by counter-evidence but by abuse.
My question is as follows: did all this bile exist before the means of its immediate public communication was possible, or has it been called into being by those means? Those who favour the hydraulic theory of emotions – for example that there is always a certain amount of aggression to be expressed, and if it is not turned outward in some constructive fashion it will turn either inward or outward in a destructive way – would presumably think that the bile was always there and was previously expressing itself in some way even more unpleasant than these internet posts.
In other words, it is not a but a good thing that such sentiments as those quoted above should be expressed in public. As William Blake put it, ‘Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.’ But those who favour the view that an appetite grows with the feeding would think that the ability and willingness to express bile will simply result in the production and expression of yet more bile. In other words, the habit of expressing your bile or your venom makes you more bilious or venomous. If you control yourself, then, your bile and venom will tend to disappear.
These two contrasting attitudes might be called the Romantic and the Classical. Having once had a bad temper myself, I tend (which is to say prefer) the classical. Not expressing my temper has helped me control it. But whether the Romantic or Classical view of the irritability of so many commentators on the internet and social media is more accurate I cannot say. Nevertheless, I believe that Blake was wrong when he said that the Tigers of Wrath are wiser than the Horses of Instruction.
