is it okay to hate stuff for no reason?

Listening to this podcast in my vintage 2009 prius, I am manic, which shows up in my body as I have no fucking idea how

You know that feeling you get when you’re listening to a podcast or reading a book and there’s an idea that makes your brain explode because you’ve had the same exact thought but haven’t ever put it into words — so not even a thought more like a feeling a tingle a jolt — and now there is someone else out there in the world articulating that idea so perfectly that you’re no longer alone?

Driving in my vintage 2009 Prius, I’m feeling electric listening to philosopher Mariana Alessandri promoting her new book Night Vision on the podcast The Gray Area as she explains host Sean Illing about how our society’s obsession with positivity and #nobaddays robs us of the fundamental okayness that awaits us in the darkness. 

Negative emotions, she says, are not things to run from – they are natural and good, not problems to solve, and my brain screams YES I AGREE because the hero dose of Affirmation is hitting hard like really hard like my chest gets tight like shit I’m overwhelmed like oh god I’m anxious about how good this idea is and it's honestly all TOO MUCH I must do something with this blazin’ hot potato of an idea or else I’m going to drop it aka a fate worse than death so ACT NOW DO SOMETHING THIS IS TOO GOOD AND YOU’RE GONNA LOSE IT. 

The cave 

Listening to Alessandri explain Plato’s cave, I am manic, which shows up in my body as I have no fucking idea how because I become completely detached from my limbs and ligaments, merged with what she’s saying, aware but only intellectually of how rare a feeling this is in contrast to how I feel most of the time, which is like a giant empty cave full of holes that all the ideas disappear into and now I’ve lost focus entirely but I realize it so I’m back.

The allegory, as it is usually told, is about these prisoners chained inside a cave who, on account of never having seen anything else, mistake the shadow puppet plays on the cave walls for reality. Then, one of the cave dwellers is freed. He discovers the outside world full of the real stuff in the light but the light is so bright so he’s blinded by it. Eventually, once it's dark out, he realizes that the truth of reality - the non-shadow puppet realness - is out here, in the world of ‘real’ light and darkness. He is, indeed, enlightened!  

The allegory implies, then, that the pain you feel in life, therefore, is because you’re forever stuck in the darkness, watching whatever the puppeteers decide is on for the day’s Caveflix and chill. If you could only see the Light, aka God (or Truth for our atheist fans in the back), then you would be rid of your Brokenness and finally enter the world of God and Truth and Great Vibes All Around, yea? 

No, says Alessandri. There’s nothing wrong with the darkness, and the feelings we associate with it — sadness, anger, grief, depression and anxiety — are not just waystops on our path toward the Good and the Light:

It’s understandable that we would want to avoid darkness, but we hurt ourselves chasing the light. What we need going forward is to stop trying to shed light on darkness and instead learn to see in the dark.

I’m listening to all this and sweating wondering if I should pull over and write some of this down. It’s so good it’s TOO good I need to do something with it, unload it or act upon it but I won’t I’m an idiot and I’m going to lose it forever and go back to my life as a dumbass NO BECAUSE I WILL ACT NOW, before it goes away before I forget before I am sent back to the drab place the sad place the boring place THE WAITING PLACE. 

Oh the places I will go when I am activated by an idea that makes so much sense to me that it makes me make sense. Finally, briefly, I have a story – I’m not alone out here in the wilderness of my own making. I am in communion, perhaps not with God (in 2023? sorta cliché no?) but something even better - a smart lady on a podcast! 

But soon, my panic reminds me, I’ll be alone again.  

Sorry i got angry

Alessandri explains that she wrote her book because she’s an angry person, and that society’s Lightness Metaphor combines with our Brokenness Story to tell us that anything in the dark like, say, anger, is our fault. 

Even the fiercest defender of dark moods—someone who believes that darkness is more than failed light—still feels pressure to lighten up. The same person who knows that #staypositive burns them will let slip words like “pity-party” or “wallow” to describe their darker moments.

When we say “I’m sorry I got angry,” we are, without knowing it, adhering to a Stoic understanding of emotion that says we have chosen to get angry and that, had we been able to control our emotions like Marcus O’riellius, we wouldn’t get angry at all. 

Now bubbles up a different heat of recognition, the kind that says ‘omg we hate the same things??’ I’ve tried writing about my disdain of Stoicism, but haven’t been able to — the Stoic Man Logic was too strong and I couldn’t prove my point well enough to justify the feeling.

For the last week, I’d been drafting this post:

A list of stuff I hate that needs no justification.

1. Stoicism

2. Tim Ferriss

3. Seth Godin

4. Derek Sivers

5. Andrew Huberman 

Why? I don't know – that’s the whole point of the title did you not read it?

But I didn’t publish it, because we can’t simply go around hating things for no reason, can we? 

…Can we? 

Regardless, I have been! Shan’t I be allowed to write about my hatred of something, if for no other reason than to explore that hatred and what it says about me and how I’m feeling? 

See even there, I’m trying to justify it. To extend Plato’s allegory a tad, it’s like we are each puppeteers, casting onto the cave the shadow stories of how we hope to be perceived by the world.

And if those shadows don’t align with the stories we’ve already accepted as true, for example – the hyper masculine ‘logic is needed to feel or believe anything’ – then we will scream and panic and look for any way out of the cave and into the light, even if it blinds us dead. 

I don’t need a reason

So there I am in the Prius biting my fingernails down to nubs, awash in the PFOMO (pre-FOMO) of knowing I’ll soon lose these ideas and once more be alone, sure, and painfully aware that I could have not been, if only I could have done something different something better something that brought forth my ideas into the light but wait. 

WAIT.

That’s Alessandri’s whole point, ya dingus. I can just sit here, detached and nervous and okay here with this crazy feeling in the dark, not needing to wrestle it to the ground or learn from it or anything else but even thinking about that makes me double nervous like I’m gonna get in trouble like Mr. Gordon the elementary school vice principal is walking toward me and about to say, “Why are you feeling alone when you’re surrounded by people and hey, why do you hate those stoics what did they ever do to you?” and I’m just gonna look up at him in my old navy tech vest, color blue, and say “I don’t need a reason, the dark is good, here listen to this podcast don’t ask me questions about what a podcast is if you don’t get it that’s on you Mr. G.”

The “I am broken” and “Light will heal” metaphors feel inescapable. Even thinking “it’s okay to be angry for no reason” feels like a remixed version of “it’s okay,” that says being in the dark is okay and good only because of how they will eventually bring us back to the Good state of Lightness.

Is there any way to escape that? To feel bad and have that not be okay but still be fine with it or at least not trying to wrestle it to the ground like a soviet bear? 

I don’t fucking know.

Wisdom to Wilder pipeline

Sitting now parked at my son’s daycare, sweaty and without fingers, the obvious question emerges: How do I teach Wilder about this? What will I tell him when he says, “Dada I hate brad” and I say “why” and he says “no reason just do lol.”

I’ll say “bro it’s ok to hate whoever, the darkness is good, let’s go listen to some metallica.”

No, I’d ideally say “that’s okay bud anger is an okay emotion just like all the others. Can you think about why you’re feeling that way?” Except I’d never be so calm and wise and instead bumble out something like “Oh um no that’s not, we don’t want to, no he’s - lemme talk to Brad’s dad actually nevermind he’s a big guy i think he could kill me lol”

I told my editorial/marketing person¹

Erin Shetron

that I was scared to publish this, that a voice was screaming, this is bad, hating things for no reason is not okay it is bad and mean and I cannot allow it!

Her response perfectly sums it up: “Maybe it is bad and mean but it’s also human.” 

And there it is, the both are trueness of it all. I’ll just explain that to Wilder and when he says he doesn’t understand I’ll say, “Brother, both are true,” and when he says, “Dada I do not want to read your computer words I hate them” and I will say, “I hate that you hate them, but ya know what? All of this hatred here in the dark is a-okay hows about we turn the lights off and see what’s on Caveflix and chill oh look it’s The Bee Movie that’s a weird one what was Seinfeld thinking lol.”

Thank you to the newest paid subscribers

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Mike Sowden

if anyone could check in on that guy I am worried.

We joke a lot on BAT but I do want to say, no joke, thank you to everyone who pays for Both Are True. This newsletter is reader supported and every subscriber brings me closer to being able to have this be my actual big boy Job. Reading these messages from y’all makes me cry like I cannot believe real humans out in the world want to support this work its a huge wow.

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Comments!

1. What do you hate for no good reason?

2. Does hating stuff make you feel bad and mean?

4. do you have a version of “it’s okay to be angry/hateful/mad” that doesn’t feel like you’re just pacifying yourself back into “goodness”?

5. hi

7. you ever seen the bee movie? Wild stuff. I know its an internet meme but I’d never actually sAt down to watch it and I mean wow.

8. Do you know all the words to Oh The Places You Will Go like I do?

1. this is the title she said she’d like I asked her