While I recently posted on something that popped up at Bruce Charlton's blog that I disagreed with, there are reasons I pay attention to his site, and not to find ragebait to get spun up over. Not coincidentally, I'm effectively in complete agreement with this post against topical rants.
“Outrage du jour” posts serve a definite purpose – whether or not this purpose is beneficial or harmful depends on the topic addressed and the manner in which the writer has approached it. As with most things in life, outrage posts have their pros and cons.
On the pro side, outrage posts draw attention to abuses and evildoing. Posts of this kind can be quite informative. Depending on a writer’s perspective, they can also be rather entertaining, perhaps even humorous.
On the con side, outrage posts can breed smoldering anger, paranoia, and resentment...
Francis concludes that it is overall a bad idea to produce such topical, reactive posts - at least on a regualr basis. I concur, mostly because 'resentment' is a toxic emotion for a Christian - indeed one of the worst of sins, since it feeds upon itself and never can be assuaged.
Yes, I have indulged in a few fisks, but unseen are all the topics I put in my queue and just let go rather than write an angry "can you believe what he did" rant about it.
So yes, sometimes something comes up that requires mockery, or a "crap, see what they did?", and occasionally the timely reminder is needed that yes, the left hates us, hates what we believe in. But if that is what you dwell on you are feeding resentment, and tearing down, not building up. I wasn't kidding those times I said that this is more to get my ideas fleshed out than to rage. I want to learn, and where possible, from what I've learned, to teach.
And outrage posts are not much good beyond teaching target ID, and why their ideas suck.
It's why Owen , in a recent youtube vid on Monsters INC., pointed out that yes, Disney hates us, and dwelling on that instead of getting over it to then go build and create, just mires you in poison and hatred.
Update: Owen's streams, as well as Vox Day's darkstreams, are easily available over at unauthorized.tv and usually up to date within the last day of new streams going up at Youtube.
